Lomopedia: Olympus Ecru

It may look more like a sophisticated surveillance camera, but this unusually-designed camera was introduced by Olympus in 1991 as a limited edition concept camera. Called Olympus Ecru, this all-automatic compact camera got its name from — you guessed it — the French word for unbleached and was intended to be a symbol for “living an intellectually enhanced life as natural as unbleached cloth.” Only 20,000 units of this quirky, white-bodied camera were made, with 10,000 sold in Japan and the other 10,000 overseas.

Apart from its unusual design (including a polished aluminum lens cap), users have noted that it's basically an Olympus Stylus Infinity fitted into the white body fashioned by industrial designer Naoki Sakai. It has an f/3.5 3-element 35 mm Olympus lens, Kepler type optical viewfinder, a built-in flash, active infrared autofocus for automatic focusing from 0.35 m to infinity, shutter speeds from 1/15 to 1/500 sec, and aperture of f/3.5 to f/16.

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Technical Specifications

Camera type: Compact
Lens: 35 mm f/3.5 (3 elements)
Film: 35 mm
Image format: 24 × 36 mm
Autofocus: Active infrared, for focusing automatically from 0.35 m to infinity
Exposure: Automatic
Shutter speeds: Between 1/15 and 1/500 sec.
Aperture: between f/3.5 and f/16
Viewfinder: optical finder (Kepler type)
Flash: Built-in, guide number 12
Batteries: AAA × 2
Dimensions: 106 × 91 × 40 mm
Weight: 215 g without the batteries

All information for this article was sourced from Camerapedia, Olympus Global, and wolf4max on Flickr.

2014-05-23 #gear #lomopedia #35mm #review #point-and-shoot #1991 #compact-camera #1990s #concept-camera #olympus-ecru #lomopedia plasticpopsicle の記事