Talk:Olympus OM system

Legends

We read: "The OM system was designed by the legendary camera designer Yoshihisa Maitani."

Maitani is indeed a famous designer, and deserves credit. But I'm puzzled by the way that most references to him in this encyclopedia preface him with "famous". If he's the famous Maitani, then since Olympus, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, etc are more famous than he is, shouldn't they too be prefaced with "famous"?

"Legendary" strikes me as way over the top. Or have some legends grown up around him? -- Hoary 22:48, 18 May 2006 (EDT)

You are right to tone down the articles.

However it is fair to recognize that Maitani has acquired a notoriety that most other camera designers don't have. Just like Barnack, many people know his name while this was never the name of a company or a camera model. In contrast, there are many important cameras whose designer has fallen into oblivion. For example, I would be unable to tell the name of the designer of the Nikon F or Exakta or Spotmatic, while there is a whole website called maitani_fan.

As for the legends, I have read in a book titled 往年のオリンパスカメラ図鑑 that some people stop him in the street and ask him to sign the top plate of their Pen or OM camera, and that the company offered him a diamond-point pen for that purpose. It is a fact that Olympus and Maitani himself have pushed the image of a "genius engineer" (in the same book it is called nothing less than 天才技術者). There are many interviews of Maitani published in various places, and most of them establish a comparison between the Olympus Pen, XA and OM small size models and the Leica screw models, in a tone that implicitly presents Maitani as Barnack's spiritual son.

I think that we must at least tell something about this special popularity, presented in a neutral tone. The best place to put this is probably the page about him. --Rebollo fr 07:47, 19 May 2006 (EDT)

Table

Hi there. I am a bit crap at this wiki mark-up language; can somebody draw up this table in a nice way; like on the Wikipedia OM page, but in this order?

Or... I can just try and make it look nicer I guess... :(

http://homepage.mac.com/capek/om-releases.gif Timmy Toucan 12/12/06

Hello,

The short answer is that the Wikipedia timeline is released under GFDL and theoretically you can copy it and paste it here provided you cite the provenance.

Of course it would be better to re-build it from scratch. You will find a starting point in the Category:Timeline templates. (All these timelines are inspired by Wikipedia's Template: Early Ferrari vehicles.)

--Rebollo fr 19:33, 12 December 2006 (EST)

Alright then... many hits of 'preview' later... Ta-Daaaa!!! (Still a work in progress, hence it being here)-Timmy Toucan 14/12/06

OM Body Release timeline
Model	72	73	74	75	76	77	78	79	80	81	82	83	84	85	86	87	88	89	90	91	92	93	94	95	96	97	98	99	00	01	02
OM-1
OM-2
OM-10
OM-3
OM-20
OM-30
OM-4
OM-2SP
OM-40
OM-77
OM-4Ti
OM-88
OM-3Ti
OM-2000
Pro (Single-digit) bodies marked in lighter blue.

Excellent!

I have removed the "Timeline templates" category to avoid this talk page being categorized there. You can work directly on the page Template: Olympus OM timeline or Template: Olympus OM body timeline (or whatever title you feel appropriate). The template won't appear to the average reader until you insert it in the articles.

Wouldn't it make sense to separate the OM-1 and 2 from the OM-1n and 2n? I also prefer the version where the models are not cut by the decennial bars, but of course this is extremely subjective and unimportant. --Rebollo fr 06:00, 14 December 2006 (EST)