Olympus Wide S, anyone have one?

[rob_murray]

I found one of these but It has a broken film winding spool. Would be

great for parts, but sure would be nice to get it operating. nice

looking lens 35mm F2.0, eight elements! Anyone use one? Anyone even

seen one? I think they were made in 1957-58.

[vivek iyer]

Can't help you with that, Rob.

 

On your, "35mm F2.0, eight elements!",

 

The Olympus XA lenses are also multi elemented although a tad slower.

The XA-4 will even let you do macros.

[peter_evans4]

<p>I don't have one and I'm not sure that I've ever seen one. But I'm looking at a book that describes it (very briefly). It was announced (in Japan) in July '57, and advertised till the end of '57; if I understand correctly, it was replaced in early '59 by another model identical but for the replacement of the Seiko MXL shutter by the Seiko SLV shutter (same specs). List price (which back then I think meant <em>the</em> price) was ¥37,000; quite a lot. Though it says "Wide - S" on the top, it was advertised as the "Wide Super"; you might try googling for that.</p><p>I did recently buy a ratty looking (thus very cheap) Olympus Wide: no rangefinder, knob wound, and f.3.5. I then looked it up and found that Olympus had advertised it as the world's first wide-angle (-only) camera. I wonder if the claim was justified. Oh, and the camera performs fairly well.</p>

[rob_murray]

Thanks. I found that the Wide S may actually be the Wide Super.

Look at this page. Shows the Wide Super manual.

http://www.claus-marin.de/35wideseng.htm

[peter_evans4]

I suppose they're the same rather as what Canon advertised in Japan as the "Populaire" as well as the "P" is the P (with no mention of "Populaire"). As that (rather luridly colored) website shows, Olympus was churning out a lot of models in that period. Surely you'll encounter a clapped out example of something sufficiently similar to have a salvagable winding spool that will fit.

[alvin_wong]

<p>There is also a page on the Wide-S on Karen Nakamura's photoethnography.com website.</p>

<p>The Wide-S looks like a very nice camera. I narrowly missed winning one on Ebay one month ago, although I was able to get an Olympus Wide-E, which is the same as the original Olympus Wide except with a selenium cell meter. The Wide-E has a nice, sharp lens, and the scale focusing isn't a big deal, especially if you stop down the lens. Did I mention the very large and smooth film advance lever?</p>