The Earliest So Far

So over the years, more and more of these M-SYSTEM 55mm F1.2 have shown up on the market and perhaps a lot of collectors have added at least one to their collection.

The 55mm F1.2 is not particularly a spectacular lens. Some like it and simply some don’t. The normal OM-SYSTEM versions are quite readily available and affordable. So what makes me so addicted to the lens is indeed uncertain. Perhaps it’s the discovery of the M-SYSTE misengraved copy, that beautiful amber gold front element or how well the 55mm looks on Olympus film cameras.

Still the craziest find!

Beign such an addict, I have found quite a number of copies for myself and started to shift the attention to hunt for the earliest copy I can find.

Apart from the probable existence of the 100001 in Olympus Museum, what’s quite certain would be the 100021 and 100025 lenses in the Olympus M-SYSTEM lens catalogue and M-1 camera catalogue.

In my documentation post, I also shared shots of the 100022 and 100057 I found online.

Together with the 100060 that I spotted online years ago as well as the 100081, which I found and have owned for a couple of years, I had seen around 7 of these 1000xx lenses.

Until the arrival of this…

100037 is by far the earliest I can get.

The lens itself is in a pretty rough condition. Very dirty as well as lots of barrel scratches especially around the aperture ring. I can’t tell if the glasses can be cleaned up completely. I’ll probably try to do some CLA first and see how much dirt I can get rid of. Maybe someday I’ll send it to a professional repairman. Worst case scenario, I’ll just keep it as is as my main idea is to preserve this piece of history.

These are all very very early lenses I believe, provided that Olympus really adopted chronological serial sequencing.

To an addict like me, I choose to believe the serial sequencing was done this way and am ecstatic to have found this special piece!

Gonna do more updates regarding the CLA if possible. Stay tuned!

Cheers,

Wilfred