So... is it a Pen F or Pen FT?

[kb244]

I know the FT/F is a SLR but I figured I'd try here anyways. I received in my posession a Pen FT (or so I thought) despite some discreperencies I am happy with it, just has some oddities.

Gona go ahead and list off some of the oddies.

1) Has a Hot Shoe that actually works
2) Says FT on the top and on case, but came with an F accessory shoe attachment
3) Viewfinder is just an even black border, no meter window on left or extra black space to acomidate for it.
4) Has a battery compartment in the bottom despite no way for there to be a meter display in the viewfinder, but it is an FT body...
5) Has a microprism spot (which further make it seem like it should be an FT body)
6) Self Timer is broken or at the very least doesn't seem like it's attached to anything.
7) There is ASA setting on shutter dial, and the 0-7 setting on lens which would be on an FT.

Other than the microprism spot, everything internally seems to be more like an F rather than an FT. When I open the bottom theres only one blue wire connecting to the battery but not another wire, then a red one near the middle which seems like they mighta used an FT body and it's wiring to wire the hot shoe to the shutter tripping.

I couldn't tell you what the serial number is since the hot shoe is on there permenetly. But appears to end in 734.

Simply put it just seems... odd, but I think I'm going to like it regardless.

 

[Brac]

Search the internet for Olympus Pen FT and you will soon find the instruction manual for the FTwhich you can see/download. I got rid of my FT some time ago as I hardly ever used it, so can't remember a great deal about it. But the camera on the front only says F not FT, as you can see from the instruction book.

 

[kb244]

Search the internet for Olympus Pen FT and you will soon find the instruction manual for the FTwhich you can see/download. I got rid of my FT some time ago as I hardly ever used it, so can't remember a great deal about it. But the camera on the front only says F not FT, as you can see from the instruction book.

Perhaps you missed a clipping right out of the manual I posted? Or the list of discrepancies that I listed that would have been on an FT but not on this one?

 

[kb244]

From rangefinder forum.

Looks like an FT with two mods:
- replacement of inside half-transparent/meter mirror with full mirror (get rid of meter and increase vf brightness by one stop)
- addition of hotshoe (pretty cool, I find).

So if thats the case, guess its well worth losing the meter and self-timer for then.

 

[John Koehrer]

But the camera on the front only says F not FT, as you can see from the instruction book.

The FT is engraved properly, F on the front and FT on top.
You can remove the F acc. shoe, it should slip off.
There should be a frosted window somewhere on top of the camera to illuminate the meter window it's a small plastic rectangle near the back edge of the camera. It's likely that someone has blocked it off either intentionally or accidentally while messing round inside the camera.
Did you watch the mirror while tripping the shutter ? If it's a pellicle mirror it should remain stationary, standard mirror should flip out of the way to expose shutter for exposure. Also with a pellicle you shouldn't have blackout through the finder when you make an exposure.
There's only one lead from the battery to the meter, the chassis itself is the ground.
There should be a synch connection which should go to the hot shoe/pc connection.
The problem with the self timer is very common. Sometimes if the shutter is NOT cocked and the self timer is charged and released the shutter itself will lock up. It sounds as if the ST is disengaged. Maybe the previous owner saw no reason to risk accidentally jamming the camera.

 

[kb244]

John check the post right above yours. It seems like it may have started out as a normal FT, but that someone not only removed the meter to make room for the hot shoe, but they also replaced the half-silvered mirror near the mirror with a full silver mirror to increase brightness, and likely blocked off the frosted window to have it not show in the viewfinder at all, since it seems to be painted black from the underside of the frosted window, cuz just a tiny bit of that paint is near the top out of the edge of the window.

I was getting a lot more discussion over at rangefinderforum about this and they came to a number of conclusions but the one above appeared to be the most plausible to support the symptoms.