A "Black" Olympus Pen S Half Frame Camera.

A "Black" Olympus Pen S Half Frame Camera. With 3cm f2.8 lens. Shutter firing, a few minor areas of paint loss. This is the actual camera John Foster devotes three pages to in his seminal work "Olympus Viewfinder Pen Cameras". It appears that he had this example in his collection for some time but, at first, was not convinced it was a genuine black camera and was possibly a "repaint". However, in 2019 the book was reprinted and included his further research which led him to believe that it might possibly be genuine after all. "Black" Pen S cameras are very seldom seen and when they do appear (often from China) the "S" logo is usually red. On this (and 2 or 3 other examples seen) the "S" is white. In addition it was originally thought that the body of a black Pen S would be brass and not chrome, but in his book John states that some early black Olympus OM1 SLRs were simply black paint over a chrome body, as appears to be the case with this example. Pictures of some obvious repaints found on the Internet seem to show a much thicker white in-fill to the serial number than can be seen on this camera. To confuse things even further, John notes that his camera does not have the "Made in Japan" engraving filled with white enamel, whereas it clearly does.

Provenance: The John Foster Olympus Collection