Glass Bodies a variant-level encyclopedia of vintage lenses and cameras by iwillpat

Olympus OM-2000

Olympus · Olympus OM mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back · 1997

Also known as: OM2000 · OM 2000 · Olympus OM2000 · オリンパスOM2000 · オリンパスOM-2000 · オリンパス OM2000

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
OM-2000 Olympus OM 1997–2002 — No figure published
  1. No production figure and no launch price has been found. The Olympus museum site has no page for the OM-2000, and the Wikipedia article on the OM system gives it one paragraph.
  2. The weight is disputed: ImagingPixel gives 405g without batteries and filmphotography.eu 430g. The lighter figure is adopted as the one that states its condition; the dimensions are filmphotography.eu's alone.
  3. The CT-1 chassis is named by ImagingPixel and by CamerAgX; camera-wiki says only that Cosina built it and likens it to the Nikon FM10, and adds that the same Cosina innards later carried the Voigtländer Bessa and Zeiss Ikon rangefinders.
  4. The finder coverage of 93% and the ISO range of 25 to 3200 in third steps are ImagingPixel's; CamerAgX confirms the 3200 ceiling. The coverage figure is left out of the finder table for want of a second source.
  5. Reviews are thin. Lomography's Lomopedia entry and Casual Photophile could not be fetched, Ken Rockwell returned an error, and Mike Eckman, 35mmc, Kosmo Foto, Japan Camera Hunter and Emulsive have no OM-2000 review. CamerAgX is the one dedicated review found.
  6. No photograph of an OM-2000 was found on Wikimedia Commons, so the page carries none.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • The only OM body with a vertical-travel metal shutter, a top-plate speed dial and a 1/125 flash sync
  • LED meter readout in the finder: green dot for correct, red + and - for over and under
  • No shutter speed ring around the mount, no TTL flash, no winder or motor coupling, fixed back and fixed screen

OM-2000:

  • Anthracite (gunmetal) finish only, with a rubberised body covering and a polycarbonate outer shell
  • Shutter speed dial on the top plate; no speed ring around the lens mount
  • Vertical metal shutter blades visible with the back open, where every other OM shows a horizontal cloth curtain
  • Spot/average selector switch for the meter, with a viewfinder LED to show which is set
  • Shutter release locked until the film advance lever is pulled slightly out from the body
  • Made in Japan engraving

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back
Finder
Fixed eye-level pentaprism, fixed screen with split-image and microprism collar; the spot reading is taken from the central circle · no rangefinder image
Shutter
vertical-travel metal focal plane, mechanical · B, 1s – 1/2000 · flash sync X at 1/125 · self-timer
Film advance
single-stroke lever; the release is locked unless the lever is pulled slightly away from the body
Back
hinged, fixed
Meter
Silicon photodiodes, switchable between centre-weighted average and a spot read from the central focusing circle, shown by LEDs in the finder. ISO 25 to 3200. Two SR44 or LR44 cells run the meter only; the shutter needs no battery.
Motor drive
Not compatible — No winder or motor drive fits, nor any OM data back or TTL flash (camera-wiki).
Weight
405 g
Dimensions
138 × 87 × 51, body only (filmphotography.eu) mm
Country
Japan
Accessories
S Zuiko Auto-Zoom 35-70mm f/3.5-4.8, Cosina-built, sold only as the kit lens with this body · S Zuiko 70-210mm f/4.5-5.6, Cosina-built, offered alongside · S20 flash, manual and auto with no TTL

Where sources disagree

Weight (grams)
  • 405g without batteries — ImagingPixel
  • 430g — filmphotography.eu

Better supported: 405g

ImagingPixel states the condition of its figure; filmphotography.eu does not say whether cells or the kit lens are included.

What reviewers say

History

Olympus stopped making consumer OM bodies in 1992, when the market had gone to autofocus, and kept only the professional single-digit bodies in the catalogue. In 1997 it put an OM mount on a Cosina chassis and sold the result as the OM-2000. The chassis is the CT-1, the same platform under the Nikon FM10 and, as camera-wiki notes, the base that later carried the Voigtländer Bessa and Zeiss Ikon rangefinders. It is the last OM-mount body sold and the only one Olympus did not build, and the people who cared most about the OM name did not accept it: Wikipedia records that the die-hard fans never counted it as a true OM.

What Cosina supplied is in some ways a better specification than the OM-10 and OM-20 it stood in for. The shutter is a vertical-travel metal unit, mechanical and independent of batteries, running B and 1 second to 1/2000, and because it travels the short way across the frame it syncs flash at 1/125 where the horizontal-cloth OMs sync at 1/60. The meter is a pair of silicon photodiodes switchable between centre-weighted average and a spot read from the central focusing circle, with a green LED for correct exposure and red marks either side, and it runs from ISO 25 to 3200 on two SR44 or LR44 cells. There is a self-timer that raises the mirror at the start of its run, and a provision for double exposures. camera-wiki points out that in these respects the cheapest OM matched the rarest, the OM-3.

What it lacks is the rest of the system. The speed dial is on the top plate, not around the mount, which is the first thing anyone used to an OM notices. No winder or motor fits, no data back, no TTL flash; the S20 flash sold with it works in manual and auto only. The back and the focusing screen are fixed, and the screen’s microprism darkens with slow telephoto and macro lenses. OM lenses all mount, and accessories that attach to the eyepiece fit; nothing else does. The kit lens was a Cosina-built S Zuiko 35-70mm f/3.5-4.8 sold only with this body, with a 70-210mm f/4.5-5.6 offered alongside, and camera-wiki describes the zoom as sharing the body’s worryingly light construction.

There is one finish, anthracite, over a polycarbonate outer shell and a rubberised covering, and one thing to know before pressing the button: the release is locked until the film advance lever is pulled slightly out from the body, an interlock Cosina fitted to several of its cameras, done with a small tab under the lever, and one that a confident owner can disable by inverting the plate under the lever’s plastic cover. CamerAgX finds the rewind and self-timer levers fragile, the metal shutter loud and the camera shaky enough at slow speeds to want a tripod, and still calls it a cheap and convenient bearer of Zuiko lenses worth keeping as insurance for anyone with OM glass. The weight is 405g without batteries by ImagingPixel and 430g by filmphotography.eu, no production figure or launch price has been found, and production ended with the OM system in 2002.

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This history is AI-written, from the sources listed at the foot of the page. Where the record is silent it says so rather than filling the gap — but no human wrote these sentences.

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $170 across 27 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-18 (middle half $80–$240). First day tracked.

Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.

Show 21 more listings

Buying from Yahoo! Auctions outside Japan. It is a domestic marketplace: sellers ship within Japan, and most will not register an overseas buyer. A proxy service bids on your behalf, receives the item and forwards it, for a fee and a wait. Buyee, Jauce and ZenMarket each accept a Yahoo auction number directly. Listed alphabetically for information — none is recommended over another, and none of these is an affiliate link.

Listings updated 2026-09-18. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.

Related: Olympus OM-1 · Olympus OM-10 · Olympus OM-2 · Olympus OM-2 Spot/Program · Olympus OM-3

Lenses for this body: Zuiko 28mm f/2.8 · Zuiko 50mm f/1.8

Sources (5)

Every page here is assembled from public sources, and the gaps are real ones. If you own this camera, know a serial number I'm missing, or can see where I have it wrong, tell me — corrections, serials and sample photos are all worth having.