Olympus is well known for putting innovative and intelligent technology in their cameras, but that reputation goes back longer than you might think. This neat video looks at a camera that’s six decades old but has a compelling auto-exposure system that allows it to work without batteries.
Coming to you from technology connection, this fascinating video reviews the Olympus Pen EES-2. Part of a series first introduced in 1961, the Pen EES-2 is a 35mm half-frame camera. The camera is fine if nothing fancy, featuring a mechanical film upscaling and shutter control, but it’s interesting when you consider the ring around the lens. What looks like a macro ring light is actually a selenium photovoltaic cell. This creates an electric potential when light hits it, a voltage whose magnitude depends on the intensity of the light hitting it. This voltage can then be used to set automatic exposure by selecting one of the two available shutter speeds and adjusting the aperture to balance, even refusing to take a photo if light is available. insufficient. It was an original automatic exposure system, and a super nifty one at that, saving battery power for the very light in the scene the user was photographing. Check out the video above for the full recap.
