Any Olympus FTL user?

[baachitraka]

What you like and hate about the camera?

 

[MattKing]

The OM-1 evolved from it .
There weren't many around in our market.

 

[F4U]

I remember them, although it wasn't made for very long, maybe a year or less. There was nothing remarkable about them, good or bad. Just another Pentax/Praktica screw mount camera that was a dependable performer. By 1971, the Japanese had reached a high level of quality in their electronic and photographic goods, and the FTL was a typical example of that. Nothing to love or hate. If you found one today in well cared for condition and the meter is still good, then I'm confident it would do a good job.

 

[Rick A]

I bought a complete set when it first hit the market, It was my first 35mm SLR. It was a marvel, especially since the lenses locked onto the body, plus TTL metering with the aperture wide open(not stop down), unlike all the other Pentax screw mount cameras. I had it for a couple of years and traded it for a motorcycle, then bought an OM-1 kit.

Matt King: no, the OM-1 did not evolve from it, Maitani was still working on the M-1 design when Olympus released the FTL and in interviews claimed he had no part in it.

 

[darinwc]

I have an Olympus FTL, but I have a lot of other cameras as well. Someday I need to put it to good use.

It is a nice, solid, compact SLR body. about the same size as a spotmatic.
When used with its Olympus dedicated lenses, it offers open-aperture manual metering.
The metering system is a very nice match-needle system and there are no click-stops on the Zuiko lenses so you can match it up exactly.
The lenses have high build quality and I believe are nearly the same designs as the OM versions.
There are a good selection of lenses for a short-run camera, but not like the OM series of course.