How old is your Olympus Trip 35? Learn how to decode the hidden date code and discover the exact month and year your camera was made.
One of the amazing plus points of owning the Olympus Trip is the ability to be able to age it within a month of its manufacturing date.
It is often thought that the unique serial number on the top of each camera indicates its age… and it does… sort of… but it is not that accurate.
Ultimately, the serial number on an Olympus Trip 35 camera does *not* give you a precise date of manufacture. The only way to tell is to open the film compartment and carefully remove the pressure plate on the back of the door (this is quite easy. It simply slides free from its locating pins) and then look for the code on the back of the pressure plate.
The code consists of 3 characters:
1st = Japanese character or letter (in later models) signifying the assembly plant.
2nd number representing the last digit of the year of assembly.
(e.g. 5 = 1975, 0 = 1980).
3rd number or letter representing the month of assembly,
1-9 for Jan-Sep, X, Y, Z for Oct-Dec.
… for example; N1Y = Nagano – 1971 – November
Of course the TRIP 35 was manufactured between 1967 and 1984, so if you are unsure if you have a 1968 or 1978 model, the chrome shutter button is the earlier and the black the later. The actual swap from Chrome to Black button happened in June 1978.
Trip 35 Production Factories (Update: 15.10.2024).
Finding information on the production facilities Olympus used to manufacture the Trip has been difficult, but throiugh various research, I have come up with the following production units which are identified by a letter or symbol on the film pressure plate.
æ—¥ [effectively S] – Shibuya [Outer Tokyo], H Hachioji Shi (Central Tokyo), K – Kyoto and N – Nagano.
If you have any further suggestion or insight, please let me know.
HOLD ON A MINUTE!
Now! If you have read this far and thought “this is all well and good – but my Trip 35 doesn’t have a stamp behind the film pressure plate!”
Well… that’s because you have a very late edition Trip 35. For some reason, unknown to me (so help me out if you know)… the factories stopped stamping behind the film plate and instead used a new 4 letter code that can be found in the film canister (void). I’m saying void because as I type this I have a total mental block on the correct term for it – or maybe it’s the wine!?
Anyway – fill your boots… and age your camera with this explanation…
The 4-Letter Date Code Explained…
Very late-production models from the 1980s switched to a 4-letter code system.
The letter sequence NICC decodes as follows:
- NI: The assembly plant location. NI stands for the Nagano factory in Japan. Most later model cameras were manufactured here.
- C: The year of manufacture. In this later system, letters stand for specific years starting with A for 1981, B for 1982, and C for 1983.
- C: The month of manufacture. Months 1–12 are written as letters. In the example case… the final digit, C represents March.Â
So NIBE = Nagano, 1982, May.
