Olympus AM-100: Plastic Camera in 35 mm

11

I recently scored a really cool little zone focus plastic camera at the Sun Thrift charity shop in Sunland, CA. It’s an Olympus AM-100.

Here is the Olympus AM-100 — a little plastic zone autofocus camera from 1987. This unit I got from a thrift store actually works! I found it caked in dust and cigarette mung for 2.99 USD plus tax at the Sun Thrift, cleaned it up with a wet rag, put batteries and a film in it, and it worked. Here are the photos to prove it! The photo of the camera itself was taken with a Ricoh Caplio 500G industrial camera. The background is an old pillow slip. The Olympus AM-100 looks like a toy but the plastic is very thick and the lens is too good to be a toy. It’s heavy for a little plastic camera.

The lens ranges from f/3.5 to 22 and multi-coated. It has a three-zone hyperfocus activated by two buttons on the front of the camera. The bottom button is a close-up that can shoot from 0.5 to 1 m. When no button is pushed, that means the focus is on 1.5m to infinity in normal light (1.5 to 4 m wide open). The top button right under the flash is infinity. The shutter is electronic and the speed ranges from 1/45 to 1/400 with auto programmed exposure. The only thing missing is a B setting. Flash is auto with GN = 10 and it cycles in just two seconds! The film is 35 mm while the film speed set is by DX code and ranges from ISO 50 to 1000. Batteries are two AAAs and I’ve noticed that it eats up batteries rather fast.

If you find one of these, snag it immediately. It looks like a toy so you should get it very cheap, but it’s much more than it seems. Info is from www.optiksammlung.de. Enjoy!


This is a review submitted by Community Member herbert-4.

Scritto da herbert-4 il 2009-10-31 in #gear #35mm #review #toy-camera #olympus #plastic-camera #zone-focus #olympus-am-100

11 Commenti

  1. vicuna
    vicuna ·

    The quality of the lens and sharpness of the pics seems quiet good for such a cheap looking camera...

  2. plyshbel
    plyshbel ·

    Very nice and sharp images!

  3. stouf
    stouf ·

    Cool review ! And great shots !

  4. dogma
    dogma ·

    Great review!

  5. janed
    janed ·

    I found one of these listed on eBay for 99p, an as a result of this article I bought it and it arrived today - looking forward to seeing what it can do

  6. mcrstar
    mcrstar ·

    nice camera and great review!

  7. 110isnotdead
    110isnotdead ·

    Interesting camera :)) Kindof a changing of the guard for focusing.

  8. alexkon
    alexkon ·

    Excellent camera! Wonderful shots!

  9. bigcityal
    bigcityal ·

    I picked one up, sort of in between my XA2 and Stylus Epic I have design problems with - apart from not being able to turn the flash off it seems good.

  10. bigcityal
    bigcityal ·

    I picked one up, sort of in between my XA2 and Stylus Epic I have design problems with - apart from not being able to turn the flash off it seems good.

  11. julienlasota
    julienlasota ·

    @bigcityal hi! stick some gaffer tape on it

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