Olympus OM-1

[M-88]

I have two.

One in mint and the other really bashed up. Great systems but there is a reason why Nikon took top stop. They're not 100% as reliable as Nikon. Not a problem for a hobbyist, but if I was a pro back in the day I would have gone with Nikon for pure reliability.

If you were a pro back in those days, there's a good chance that you'd be using Nikon gear for several years before Olympus introduced OM system. It wouldn't be very economical to ditch an acclaimed, tested camera system to something that just hit the market yesterday, for the sake of compactness. Surely certain amount of "a reason why Nikon took top stop" can be attributed to this circumstance, not to their generally higher reliability. Any contemporary camera could have been serviced/repaired back then and pros had backup bodies. Repair has become next to impossible only now, when there's scarcity of replacement parts and qualified personnel.

 

[Rick A]

I had the option of buying Nikon and Canon versus the OLY, Canon lens mounts were too fiddly, Nikon's external meter linkage looked like a screw up waiting to happen, Olympus ergonomics and size won out for me. I have destroyed several cameras and lenses in past years, I don't think Canon or Nikon would have survived either. Camera and tele lens dangling round my neck whilst driving my Jeep over some treacherous terrain, lens smashes into steering wheel. OOPS! Mostly buggered up the filters, actually destroyed a lens once. Wrecked my dirt bike with a backpack full of gear, cracked a lens and wrinkled a film door on an OM-1.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

I had the option of buying Nikon and Canon versus the OLY, Canon lens mounts were too fiddly, Nikon's external meter linkage looked like a screw up waiting to happen, Olympus ergonomics and size won out for me. I have destroyed several cameras and lenses in past years, I don't think Canon or Nikon would have survived either. Camera and tele lens dangling round my neck whilst driving my Jeep over some treacherous terrain, lens smashes into steering wheel. OOPS! Mostly buggered up the filters, actually destroyed a lens once. Wrecked my dirt bike with a backpack full of gear, cracked a lens and wrinkled a film door on an OM-1.

...and thankfully, you survived!

 

[MattKing]

If you were a pro back in those days, there's a good chance that you'd be using Nikon gear for several years before Olympus introduced OM system. It wouldn't be very economical to ditch an acclaimed, tested camera system to something that just hit the market yesterday, for the sake of compactness. Surely certain amount of "a reason why Nikon took top stop" can be attributed to this circumstance, not to their generally higher reliability. Any contemporary camera could have been serviced/repaired back then and pros had backup bodies. Repair has become next to impossible only now, when there's scarcity of replacement parts and qualified personnel.

And the professional market was a tiny, tiny subset of the overall market.
Mostly, Olympus's interest in the professional 35mm market was concentrated on micro and macro graphy. That was natural, given their presence in the world of microscopes.
http://www.alanwood.net/downloads/olympus-om-macrophoto-group-brochure-1080.pdf