Camera from Kodak New for Old collection

Olympus Pen-EE camera

The Olypmus Pen series of cameras were created by Yoshihisa Maitani (1933 – 2009) a designer who worked for the Olympus Corporation in Japan. The Pen camera is a small, compact ‘half frame’ camera, meaning that two photographs can be exposed on one frame of film, doubling the number of pictures you could take. The Pen EE was launched in 1961 and contains a selenium light meter around the lens, used to measure available light and select the camera’s shutter speed.

This camera is part of the New for Old collection, named after the camera exchange scheme ran by the Kodak company. Through this scheme, customers received a price reduction for a new camera in exchange for an old one. The collection represents a range of 20th century camera types from early box brownies and folding roll film cameras through to Polaroid cameras and Kodak tele-instamatics. A diverse group of manufacturers are represented in the collection, from around the world.