Olympus Zuiko 35mm f/2.8 (mju-II fixed)

It rides in a jacket pocket and survives a rained-out afternoon that would send an SLR back in the bag. That is the situation the mju-II owns. A clamshell point-and-shoot the size of a deck of cards, weather-sealed against splash, and behind the sliding cover sits this 35mm f/2.8 Zuiko. People do not buy this camera for control. They buy it because it is already in their coat when the light does something and an interchangeable-lens body is at home on a shelf.

The four-element design is simple rather than exotic, and it shoots above its price bracket by a wide margin. Wide open at f/2.8 the center is genuinely sharp, sharp enough that this little compact gets cross-shopped against fixed-lens cameras costing several times as much. The corners soften and the field is not dead flat, so a close subject against a far background can show a little edge mush, but for a snapshot camera the resolution is startling. Contrast runs high, colors lean a touch cool and saturated, and the multicoating handles backlight far better than a leaf-shutter compact has any business doing. Point it straight into a hard point source and you can pull a faint ghost, though the coating suppresses flare more cleanly than most pocket cameras of its size.

Bokeh is not the point at this focal length and aperture, and the mju-II does not pretend otherwise. Out-of-focus areas are smooth and unremarkable rather than swirly or creamy. What you get instead is a deep, forgiving zone of focus that makes the autofocus look smarter than it is. The signature is a crisp, contrasty, everyday-document look that street and travel shooters chase. It became a genuine cult object on that strength, and it is the kind of camera people hand to a friend and get back frames they did not expect.

The honest weakness is that you are mostly riding along. Exposure is automatic and the meter reads a wide center area, so a bright sky or a backlit subject can fool it. There is no exposure-compensation dial, but there is an override: press the flash and self-timer buttons together to force a spot reading, then lock exposure on the subject you care about. That trick rescues most backlit and bright-sky frames once you have it in muscle memory. The flash is the more persistent annoyance, since it wants to fire in any dim room and the camera forgets your defeat setting every time you reopen the clamshell. Slow shutter speeds behind a sharp lens also mean handshake blur indoors, which is the standing tax on f/2.8 in a body this small.

Today a clean working one costs more than it ever did new. The usual rivals are the Yashica T4 with its Zeiss Tessar and the Contax T2 a few rungs up the ladder, and plenty of buyers pick the Olympus anyway for the weather sealing and the true pocketability. If you load slide film or anything with narrow latitude, meter the scene first with Zone Light Meter and frame for the highlights, then use the spot-meter trick to set the camera where your reading wants it. The body handles framing and focus. The exposure decision can still be yours when it matters.