My Albuquerque

Lee Friedlander pictured the same apartment building in his Albuquerque in 1975, but he got a lot more stuff into the photo.


Albuquerque by Lee Friedlander

I'm not sure what camera Friedlander was using to shoot that dog..
My dog house shot is from my Olympus Infinity Stylus.

Cate

I have added a page to my vintage cameras site about the Olympus Infinity Stylus.

mju

Hard to put aside the Olympus Infinity Stylus (mju). It's a great little no-fuss machine to have in your pocket. Mine has a bit of a light leak showing up near the top edge of the images. Some black tape didn't solve the problem, so I guess I'll try replacing the light seals all around.

Stylus

Some images from my two-dollar Olympus.



I prefer the lesser degree of automation of my earlier 35-RC, but the point-and-shoot capability of the stylus is seductive, and the image quality from Olympus lenses is always superb.



Much of the appeal for me of the little Olympus Infinity Stylus lies in its polished black form. I think it is a good example of the design genius of Maitani who was so good at synthesizing combinations of innovation and tradition.



The design of the Infinity Stylus packed fully automated 35mm photography into a container that would slip effortlessly into a pocket. At the same time, the sculpted black case suggests the beautifully crafted small boxes from Japanese tradition known as Inro and their sash cord toggles, the Netsuke.

Camera Design



I picked up this plastic point-and-shoot camera recently at my local thrift store for two dollars. Judging from the graphic theme on the front, it was built in 2003, which marked the 75th birthday of Mickey Mouse. Conceptually, the Mickey Mouse camera with fixed aperture and a single shutter speed is essentially a box camera, similar in operation to the earliest photo image-making instruments. At the same time, the simple plastic camera features a number of refinements including the sleek, molded shape, an integral lens cover, and -- most importantly from the perspective of economy and efficiency -- a thumbwheel film advance. All of those features were pioneered by the Japanese company, Olympus, whose chief of design for four decades was Yoshihisa Maitani.



Coincidentally, I also acquired at the same time, place and price an Olympus Infinity Stylus, also known as the "mju". The Olympus is also a point-and-shoot; it first appeared in 1990, but it is a very sophisticated instrument, indeed, with auto-everything -- including the film advance, exposure and focusing. The compact, organic shape of the Stylus evolved from an earlier Olympus called the XA which dates from 1979; that camera also had a lens cover that was integral to the camera's front structure. While the Stylus, had a motorized film advance, the manual thumbwheel advance was a feature of Maitani's first great camera design, the Pen, which appeared in 1959. The Pen was also especially significant to camera design history and evolution in it's price point, which was about about a fifth of that of similar quality cameras then on the market.



All of the above Maitani/Olympus history comes from a nicely done web site developed by a Maitani fan in Hong Kong.