The Olympus XA was a series of 35 mm cameras manufactured and marketed by Olympus of Japan from 1979 to 1985. The original XA was a rangefinder camera with a fast 35 mm f/2.8 lens, and aperture priority metering. It was one of the smallest rangefinder cameras ever made, together with the Contax T . Later models—XA2, XA3 and XA4—featured scale focusing instead of rangefinders.
46-592: It was designed by Yoshihisa Maitani who had joined Olympus Optical Co Ltd in 1956. He was the chief camera designer and managing director of Olympus Optical Co Ltd., having developed a number of legendary cameras during his career. These included the Pen series, the OM series, and the XA series. Before he retired, the company also released the IS series and the [mju:]/Stylus series of cameras,
92-519: A Leica IIIf ; because he regarded it more as a hobby than a career, he enrolled in Waseda University to study automotive engineering, but continued to spend his free time in photography. After Sakurai learned that Maitani had filed a camera patent as a student, he recruited Maitani to work for Olympus. When he started with Olympus, the company sent him to the factory for two years to learn practical aspects of manufacturing before moving to
138-401: A distance of 33.6 mm (1.32 in) from the front element to the film plane, enabling Maitani's 4 cm camera. The original model, the XA, was sold from 1979 to 1985. The original XA's lens was protected by a sliding dust cover. Film wind is by thumb-wheel, aperture is set on the right side of the body using a small lever, focus is set by a small lever below the lens, film speed (ISO)
184-611: A guide number of 10. The A16 took two batteries and had a guide number of 16. The A9M and A1L were smaller units for the XA1 and XA4 respectively. Yoshihisa Maitani Yoshihisa Maitani (January 8, 1933 – July 30, 2009) was a designer of cameras for the Japan-based camera manufacturer Olympus Corporation . After studying mechanical engineering at university, he joined Olympus Optical Co., Ltd. (now Olympus Corporation) in 1956. Maitani went on to work for them for 40 years. He
230-529: A parallel evolution from Paul Rudolph's 1890 Anastigmat lens, which had four elements in two cemented groups. Hugh L. Aldis patented the Stigmatic lens line for Dallmeyer in 1895; in one implementation, the front group from the Anastigmat design was modified by adding a narrow air gap, which acted as a positive element and improved zonal correction. Later, Rudolph adopted the same device to modify
276-461: A planned series of advertisements that would feature Maitani prominently, similar to how contemporaneous campaigns made automotive designers into household names. In October 1979, Maitani relented, on the condition the ads were limited to the American market only, and the ads, crediting him as a mononymous genius, were running by early 1980. Although some have credited Maitani with the design of
322-492: A process that Maitani called his "unreasonable demand to reduce the size and weight by half", adding that "repetitions of this process eventually led to the creation of something that photographers want, something that I wanted. If something is not available to buy, you have to make it yourself." A few years later, Olympus released the OM-2, which used an electronically-timed shutter and exposure meter that measured light reflected from
368-463: A success, Sakurai approached Maitani and told him that photographers were asking if a Pen SLR was possible; when Maitani showed him the design sketches and explained how it would result in a SLR with an unconventional shape, Sakurai was initially surprised, then approved the development project, which resulted in the Olympus Pen F . To achieve acceptable shutter speeds, many patents were awarded for
414-510: A very good optical performance at a reasonable price, and are often quite compact. They are also frequently used in photographic enlargers , as they provide more contrast than many competing lens designs due to the limited number of air-to-glass surfaces. All lenses can be focused by moving the lens assembly towards or away from the film ("unit focusing"), and the Tessar is no exception. Unit-focusing Tessars were used on higher-end cameras such as
460-844: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Tessar The Tessar is a photographic lens design conceived by the German physicist Dr. Paul Rudolph in 1902 while he worked at the Zeiss optical company and patented by Zeiss in Germany; the lens type is usually known as the Zeiss Tessar . Since its introduction, millions of Tessar and Tessar -derived lenses have been manufactured by Zeiss and other manufacturers, and are still produced as excellent intermediate aperture lenses. The Tessar design uses four spherical lens elements in three groups, one positive crown glass element at
506-515: Is set on a dial below the lens, the viewfinder is optical direct-view with the rangefinder frame embedded in it and a display of the shutter speed at the side. There was also a small lever on the camera's base which when flipped out, added 1 1/2 stops exposure to the shutter speed. This could be used to counteract the effects of subject back lighting. The XA1 used a fixed-focus lens. Although the cameras resembled each other, there were subtle differences in design. The XA3 and XA4 were slightly larger than
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#1732787033750552-461: The Anastigmat design, resulting in the Unar of 1899. In addition, this allowed the photographers to have greater freedom when choosing the lenses. In one implementation, the Unar has four air-spaced elements in four groups, which replaced the two cemented interfaces of the earlier Anastigmat design. In 1902, Rudolph realized the two cemented interfaces had many virtues, so he reinserted them in
598-704: The Biotessar consisting of two elements cemented in the front, a single negative element in the center, and three cemented in the rear. After World War II and the partitioning of Germany , the Zeiss factory at Eisfeld ended up in East Germany; Zeiss Jena developed a popular camera line named the 'Werra', after the Werra river which runs through the town. Many models were equipped with Tessar lenses, which were marked as "Zeiss-Tessar", resulting in legal action from
644-509: The Leica rangefinder camera was a modified Cooke triplet with five elements in three groups, the third group being three cemented elements, with the aperture stop in the first air space. This lens, called the Elmax , gave good coverage of the 24×36 mm format and was used until improved optical glass allowed the third group to be simplified to a cemented pair when it was renamed Elmar . It
690-527: The Olympus Stylus (1991), that camera was designed by Tatsuya Suzuki, incorporating some of the basic concepts from the XA, including the capless, caseless design. Maitani retired from Olympus in 1996. The man behind the Olympus OM camera: Yoshihisa Maitani This biographical article related to Japan is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This photography-related article
736-630: The Olympus XA , which was the first camera to win a Good Design Award . Many of the cameras that I have developed have been unique Olympus-style products. And there's a reason for that. I was simply trying to make things that you couldn't buy anywhere. When the Monkey King boasted that he could fly to the end of the Earth, the Buddha told him to go. And indeed he flew to the end of
782-526: The Contaflex Super B, Rolleiflex TLR, and larger-format plate cameras such as the Maximar. Some lenses, including Tessars , can be focused by moving lens elements relative to each other; this usually worsens optical performance to some extent, but is cheaper to implement. As the front element of the Tessar has three times the power of the whole lens, it must be moved one-third of the distance that
828-420: The Earth and returned after signing his name on the wall. When he got back, the Buddha smiled and showed him the inside of his finger. "Here is your signature," he said. If you think about it, everything is in the hand of the Buddha. I love cameras, and I have willfully proclaimed my determination to create cameras that have never existed before. Yet when I think about it now, it seems to be that everything
874-479: The Konica that much, he would buy one for each of them; instead, he urged them to revisit the 100 concepts, but they could not come up with one he found satisfactory, so he started with the idea of a full-frame camera that could be carried everywhere, setting dimensional limits based on the size of a 135 film cartridge and eliminating the need for a case and lens cap. These rough concepts were developed eventually into
920-675: The United States, and to Krauss in France. Only licensed manufacturers were allowed to use the brand name Tessar . Many other manufacturers tried to copy the design of the Tessar lenses but due to the breadth of the patent, they could not. The simplest way was to use a cemented triplet for the rear group instead of a doublet. In 1913, many designs of this type appeared, including the Ross Xpress by J. Stuart and J.W. Hasselkus, Gundlach Radar , and Berthiot Olor by Florian. After
966-470: The XA and XA2. The original XA's dust cover dome resembled a flattened oval, whereas the other models had a more rounded design. Each of these substituted focusing distance for the right-side lever for the aperture-control of the original XA. As a result these cameras were automatic program only, whereas the original XA was an aperture-priority camera. The XA series was accompanied by a range of detachable flash units. The standard A11 took one AA battery and had
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#17327870337501012-567: The Zeiss company in Western Germany. For a while the Werra Tessar lenses were marked simply as "T", but eventually they were allowed to market the lenses as "Carl Zeiss – Jena Tessar". Zeiss had strong control over the Tessar design, because Rudolph's patent was very general. In the corresponding U.S. Patent, he claimed: "A spherically, chromatically and astigmatically corrected objective, consisting of four lenses separated by
1058-499: The back of his Anastigmat , maintaining the "air gap" of the previous part of the Unar , thus creating the Tessar design (from the Greek word τέσσερα ( téssera , four) to indicate a design of four elements) of 1902. The frontal element of the Tessar , like that of the Anastigmat , had little power since its only function was to correct the few aberrations produced by the powerful posterior element. The set of interfaces cemented in
1104-466: The camera for half an hour in silence, then enthusiastically encouraged production to start, resulting in the Pen EE. At the time the Pen launched, Maitani believed there would not be a market for a half-frame single-lens reflex camera , but began developing some of the key technologies that would be required, including a mirror that swung sideways and a rotary focal plane shutter . After the Pen became
1150-535: The design department, when he noticed the cheapest camera Olympus sold was ¥23,000 , nearly two months' salary, and he began working on a camera that would retail for no more than ¥6,000 instead. Comparing enlargements from his prototype with the Leica IIIf, he was dissatisfied with the sharpness of the lens on the prototype and so he asked the Olympus optical team to design a Tessar -type lens that would equal
1196-514: The designs of which were credited to others. Maitani started with the concept of a full-frame camera that can be carried in a pocket every day, working on basic size and shape in a series of clay models. He set a target thickness of 4 cm (1.6 in) and approached the head of the Lens Division, Yoshisada Hayamizu, who previously had designed the Tessar -type D.Zuiko lens fitted to
1242-480: The diaphragm into two groups each of two lenses, of which groups one includes a pair of facing surfaces and the other a cemented surface, the power of the pair of facing surfaces being negative and that of the cemented surface positive." — Paul Rudolph , US Pat. 721,240 The Tessar design patent was held by Zeiss for two decades, and licensed to Ross in the United Kingdom, Bausch & Lomb in
1288-609: The digital still cameras Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P100, DSC-P200, and DSC-W330 as well as the E-mount lenses such as Sony Alpha Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar T* E 4/16-70mm ZA OSS ( Sony SEL-1670Z ) and Sony Alpha Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar T* FE 4/16-35mm ZA OSS. Sony also uses Vario-Tessar lens branding for their consumer camcorders such as the HDR-CX405 extending the wide angle view with 1.9mm to 57mm zoom range. Tessar lenses are frequently found in mid-range cameras, as they can provide
1334-433: The end of 1967, he had convinced Sakurai to pursue a small, light SLR. Maitani set a target of half: 700 g (25 oz) and 20% reduction in height and depth, resulting in a camera that would be approximately half the weight and volume of a Nikon F . To optimize the utilization of internal space, the shutter speed control was moved to the lens mount. The resulting Olympus M-1, later renamed OM-1 , had come about through
1380-482: The film. After the OM-2, Olympus's market share for 35mm compact cameras began to fall and Maitani was enlisted to help design a new product. He assembled of team of 10 to brainstorm ideas; after one year, the team reported back they had 100 concepts but were impressed by the Konica C35 AF , which had just been released, and wanted to produce a competitor. Maitani dismissed that idea and told them if they liked
1426-432: The front protrudes. There's such a strong feeling of the lens poking out, the whole style is ruined. [...] if we can't make the four centimeter mark, well, this whole camera project will end up as a failure." The lens team began with a Tessar -style design, but by adopting what he later called a "reverse retrofocus " configuration, they designed a six-element, five-group lens with a focal length of 35 mm and, critically,
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1472-472: The front, one negative flint glass element at the center and a negative concave flint glass element cemented with a positive convex crown glass element at the rear. Despite common belief, the Tessar was not developed from the 1893 Cooke triplet design, although it appears the Tessar replaces the single rear element of the Cooke triplet with a cemented achromatic doublet. Instead, the Tessar underwent
1518-529: The half-frame and full-frame programs, so initially the sales department began exploring the possibility of rebadging another manufacturer's products. Maitani was aghast: why would anyone buy a camera rebadged as an Olympus when they could simply buy the original camera instead? After he had used SLRs reluctantly for macro photography , as the Leica were not optimized for that use, Maitani realized that SLR weight and size posed another barrier to broad acceptance; by
1564-500: The name Tessar in common with the original Tessar , not the four-element, three-group design. They are for example a 5-elements-in-1-group, aperture-less all- aspherical lens , as in the Nokia 808 Pureview and Nokia Lumia 800 camera. Vario-Tessar lenses also only have the name Tessar in common with the original Tessar . The Vario-Tessar name has been used by Zeiss for various zoom lenses fitted to Sony cameras, including that of
1610-469: The negative format that the lens is designed to cover, are all vital to the performance of the lens, and in the Leica lens these were all different from the Tessar . When the Leica was being developed, Oskar Barnack tried a 50 mm Tessar , but because it had been designed to cover only the 18×24 mm field of a cine frame, he found it inadequate for coverage of the Leica 24×36 mm format. The lens designed by Max Berek [ de ] for
1656-455: The original Pen . Hayamizu concluded that fitting a lens with a focal length of 35 mm was not possible in a camera body that thin, and told Maitani that a 31 mm lens would be required, which unfortunately would make it "unsuitable for taking shots of people". At that point, Maitani unveiled several of his prototype clay models, explaining that he already had discarded a thickness of 4 + 1 ⁄ 2 cm (1.8 in): "See how much
1702-616: The patent expired, Tessar -derived lenses were widely made by many manufacturers under different trade names. For example, the Minoxar 35/2.8 lens on the Minox M.D.C and GT-E is the fastest and widest Tessar -type lens achieved so far by using lanthanum glass elements. The picture quality was outstanding. Other Tessar -type lenses include: It is sometimes believed the Leitz Elmar 50 mm f /3.5 , designed by Max Berek in 1920,
1748-500: The posterior element had 3 functions: to reduce the spherical aberration; reduce the overcorrected spherical-oblique aberration; and reduce the gap found between astigmatic foci. The first Tessar appeared with a maximum aperture of f /6.3 , but by 1917, the maximum aperture had been increased to f /4.5 . In 1930, Ernst Wandersleb and Willy Merté from Zeiss developed Tessar lenses with apertures of f /3.5 and f /2.8 . In 1925, E. Wandersleb and W. Merté of Zeiss created
1794-400: The quality of the Leica; the resulting D.Zuiko was "really wonderful" but consumed his entire development budget. Using his factory experience, Maitani began cutting costs where he could and upon seeing the finished prototype, Sakurai approved production, but the factory manager refused, calling what would be sold as the Olympus Pen a "toy camera", so manufacturing of the half-frame camera
1840-407: The settings she had chosen, the picture would not be in focus, so he next designed a prototype with simplified controls, requiring just a single button press. The head of the sales department argued with Maitani over this philosophy, believing that real photographers required many controls and fearing that such a simple camera would not sell. After completing the prototype, the head of sales played with
1886-410: The titanium shutter and hardened gear train. Maitani called it "a huge failure" because the patents prevented any other companies from making competitive cameras. Because Kodak refused to create half-frame slide mounts, the American market for the Pen F was limited, and the head of exports began pressuring Maitani to develop a full-frame SLR. As a small company, Olympus could not afford to continue both
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1932-437: Was derived from the Tessar , as they share the same general layout. The Elmar lenses were used in the first Leica cameras. Although the Tessar and Elmar lenses appear similar in layout, there is a lot more to the design and performance of a lens than simply the layout of the glass elements. The position of the stop, the optical characteristics of the glasses used for each element, the curvature of each lens surface, and
1978-441: Was in the hand of Olympus. I'm sure that Olympus will continue to create unique cameras, and that those who love Olympus cameras will remain loyal users. Olympus cameras are a little unusual, but I hope that you will continue to understand and support those cameras. — Yoshihisa Maitani, Special Lecture (Nov 2005) In 1978, the United States distributor, Olympus Camera Corporation, began lobbying Olympus to approve
2024-556: Was involved with the design of many of the company's most well-known cameras, including the Pen and the Pen F half frame cameras, the OM System , and the XA . Maitani credits Eiichi Sakurai , a keen photographer, with shifting Olympus from microscopes to cameras starting in 1935. When he was attending middle and high school, Maitani belonged to a photography club, using the family camera,
2070-660: Was not until Zeiss Ikon was developing the Contax camera to compete with the Leica that the Tessar was redesigned to cover a 24×36 mm negative. The front element of the Tessar can be replaced to make a long-focus or wide-angle lens. In 1957 Carl Zeiss offered the long-focus Pro Tessar 115 mm f /4 and 85 mm f /4, and the wide-angle Pro Tessar 35 mm f /3,2 for use on the central-shutter SLR Zeiss Ikon Contaflex Super B cameras. Other Tessar lenses, for example those equipped on certain Nokia mobile phones, have only
2116-410: Was outsourced instead. At the time, most cameras were manufactured at a rate of a few hundred per month; Maitani set an optimistic production target of 5,000 per month, and the company was astonished to find the camera sold out so quickly. The low price also opened a new market for cameras: a month after it launched, Maitani watched a mother photographing her child using a Pen, but he realized that with
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