peterm1
Veteran
Maybe I can give a little information. I am a little familiar with this camera - but there is not much written about it. The slightly odd thing about it is that it had an M42 mount. I think it was Olympus' first full frame 35mm SLR (the half frame Pen preceded it) and was certainly released before the OM series. I was recently offered one of these 50mm lenses in M42 but never took it up (I have tooooooo many lenses and now have to be highly selective.) I also saw a copy of this camera for sale about 20 years ago and considered buying it then though I did not, but that was the first and last one I have ever seen. To me the camera looks pretty much like Canon's offerings of that era and there might be some substance to this as there is information available that it was a design bought from another maker as a stop gap measure till the OM series became available.
I came on this quote from the OM designer Maitani: "Actually, the FTL is not a design of Olympus. It is bought from another company to fill the production vacuum between the Pen and OM cameras. The OM camera was released in 1972 after five years of design, research and improvement. All the lenses are of the latest design. They are completely different from the FTL lenses and also the Pen lenses.”
