Yoshihisa Maitani Dies At 76

The man behind the Olympus Pen cameras, the OM-1 and the XA, Yoshihisa Maitani died yesterday at age seventy six. He lived to see his Pen camera system reborn as the Pen Digital through the work and enthusiasm of a new generation of engineers. The new E-P1 is not an exercise in nostalgia but a camera that acknowledges its ancestry while breaking new ground with its mirrorless design, compact lenses and in-camera digital image processing.

This photograph of my OM-2n looks a bit like a shrine in light of today's news.

My original XA-2 bought circa 1986. A classic camera and novel industrial design from Maitani's hand.

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