Olympus mju-II
Olympus · Fixed lens · 24×36mm on 35mm film, with a masked panorama crop switchable mid-roll · 1997
Also known as: Olympus mju-II · Olympus μ[mju:]-II · Olympus mju II · Olympus Stylus Epic · オリンパス μ-II · Olympus Stylus Epic DLX
Variants & identification
| Variant | Mount | Years | Serial ranges | Production |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| mju-II / Stylus Epic | 35mm compact | 1997 | — | "Over 3.8 million were produced" — Olympus's own History of Cameras page for the model, as archived in December 2007. A production figure, not a sales figure; see disputed |
| mju-II Quartz Date / Stylus Epic DLX | 35mm compact | 1997 | — | No separate figure published |
| mju-II LIMITED / Stylus Epic Limited | 35mm compact | 1998–1998 | — | 65,000 stated as the limit — 5,000 for Japan and 60,000 for export. Olympus's Japanese museum page and its English History of Cameras page give the same split. A stated limit is not a count of cameras built |
- Olympus published three numbers for this camera and they cannot be laid end to end. Over 3.8 million mju-IIs produced, on the company's own History of Cameras page. Ten million cumulative mju-series sales, reached in February 1998, counting from the series' introduction in 1991. And 65,000 for the LIMITED. The first is a lifetime figure for one model that went on selling for years after 1998; the second counts the 1991 mju and the zoom models too. Neither tells you what the mju-II had contributed by any given date, and no breakdown has been published. What can be said is that this is the only camera in this section whose maker printed a production figure for it at all.
- That figure has to be read from an archive. Olympus's current Japanese product museum page for the mju-II carries a description and a release month and no quantity; the 3.8 million is on the English-language Olympus Global History of Cameras page, which is no longer live and survives in a capture of 10 December 2007. The wording there is "over 3.8 million were produced". Secondary writing has rounded that in both directions — camera-wiki, which is where most English readers meet it, gives "around 3.8 million examples were sold".
- The mju-II Zoom models — the 80, 115, 140 and 170 — share the name and the clamshell and almost nothing else, the zoom lenses being several stops slower. They are not variants of this camera and are not given rows here.
- camera-wiki's list of the mju-II's awards is worth recording because it dates the reputation to the camera's own lifetime rather than to the film revival: a G-Mark for Good Design from the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry in 1997, EISA's European Compact Camera of the Year for 1997–98, a Design Innovation '97 from Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen, and Consumer Digest "Best Buys" listings in 1997 and 1998.
- No discontinuation date has been found in any source consulted. The camera is generally described as remaining on sale into the early 2000s, but that is a description rather than a date, and years.last is left unset here rather than filled with a plausible year.
- Olympus's February 1998 release for the LIMITED does not state a price. The press table gives only 製品名, 発売日 and 販売台数 — the name, the on-sale date and the quantity.
How to tell them apart
- The lens barrier is the on switch: sliding it open powers the camera and pops the lens out, and there is no other main control
- JIS protection class 4 (防まつ形) — splashproof, not waterproof, and Olympus never claimed more
- Six flash modes selected by repeated presses of one button, and the setting resets to auto every time the barrier is closed
- A single CR123A 3V lithium cell in the base
mju-II / Stylus Epic:
- Sliding clamshell barrier that covers the flash as well as the lens when closed
- Black or silver body; 108 × 59 × 37 mm and 140 g on Olympus's own figures
- A single spot-metering button and a mode button on the top plate, and nothing else
mju-II Quartz Date / Stylus Epic DLX:
- A date window and imprint controls on the back door, with an auto-calendar running to 2030
mju-II LIMITED / Stylus Epic Limited:
- A darker metallic finish over the standard body, described by Olympus as ブラックメタリック and by camera-wiki as burgundy
- Supplied with a genuine-leather case and strap as well as the RC-200 remote
- mju-II / Stylus Epic: The camera the whole family is bought for. Olympus's release describes the lens as 4群4枚 — four elements in four groups — with an aspherical element, and puts the autofocus at three-zone measurement with a maximum of 414 distance steps from 0.35 m to infinity.
- mju-II Quartz Date / Stylus Epic DLX: The date version, and the one sold in the United States as the Stylus Epic DLX. English writing often makes the panorama switch the difference between plain and DLX; Olympus's Japanese specification sheet lists 画面サイズ 24×36mm／パノラマサイズ切替式 for the ordinary mju-II as well, so on the home-market camera the panorama mask is not what separates them. What is left is the date back.
- mju-II LIMITED / Stylus Epic Limited: Issued to mark ten million cumulative sales across the mju series, a milestone Olympus dates to February 1998. The camera underneath is the 1997 mju-II unchanged: same lens, same 414-step autofocus, same 108 × 59 × 37 mm shell. Olympus's press release of 12 February 1998 gives the on-sale date as late April 1998; Olympus's own museum page gives 発売年月 1998年2月. Two pages from the same company, two months apart.
Specifications
- Format
- 24×36mm on 35mm film, with a masked panorama crop switchable mid-roll
- Finder
- real-image finder with autofocus marks, close-range correction marks, focus confirmation and a flash-ready lamp; panorama masking switchable · 0.45× magnification · no rangefinder image
- Shutter
- programmed electronic lens shutter · Programmed only, 4s – 1/1000. Olympus gives the automatic range as EV 1.0 (f/2.8 at 4s) to EV 17 (f/11 at 1/1000) with ISO 100 film · self-timer
- Film advance
- automatic motorised wind and rewind, with mid-roll rewind
- Back
- hinged; the Quartz Date version imprints the date on the film and carries an auto-calendar to 2030
- Meter
- Two-segment programmed metering with a switchable spot mode. DX film speeds ISO 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600 and 3200; intermediate DX values are set to the slower speed, and non-DX or sub-ISO-50 film is set to ISO 100.
- Weight
- 140 g
- Dimensions
- 108 × 59 × 37 (Olympus); 108 × 59 × 35 in camera-wiki and English Wikipedia mm
- Country
- Japan
- Original price
- 36,000 yen excluding tax at launch in March 1997, including the RC-200 remote, case and strap (today ¥40,000)
- Accessories
- RC-200 infrared remote release, itself splashproof, with a user-replaceable CR1220 cell · Leather case and strap, supplied with the LIMITED
Where sources disagree
- Number made
- Over 3.8 million produced — Olympus's own English History of Cameras page for the µ[mju:]-II: "The µ[mju:]-II became a best-seller and super-long-seller, and over 3.8 million were produced."
- 3.5 million sold (Ray Rapkerg, EMULSIVE: "The MJU II sold 3.5 million units")
Better supported: Olympus
The citation chain was followed to the end here, and it holds. camera-wiki footnotes its "around 3.8 million examples were sold" to an archived Olympus page; that page is Olympus Global's History of Cameras entry for the model, captured on 10 December 2007, and it survives. Two things change once it is read. Olympus says produced, not sold, and it says over 3.8 million rather than around it — so the number is a floor from the manufacturer, and the wiki has softened it in both directions. EMULSIVE's 3.5 million is a sales figure with no source attached and is the weaker of the two.
- Mju-II LIMITED, body colour
- Black metallic — Olympus's press release of 12 February 1998 (ブラックメタリックカラー) and its museum page
- Burgundy fascia — camera-wiki
Better supported: Olympus
A straightforward conflict about the appearance of a specific object, and the manufacturer describing its own paint outranks a wiki. Sellers use both words, which is worth knowing before buying one described as burgundy.
- Mju-II LIMITED, on sale
- Late April 1998 — Olympus news release, 12 February 1998 (発売日 1998年4月下旬)
- February 1998 — Olympus product museum (発売年月 1998年2月)
Better supported: The press release
Both pages are Olympus's. The release is contemporaneous and states a future on-sale date; the museum entry appears to have taken the announcement month as the release month, which is a common way for a retrospective catalogue to go wrong.
- Weight and dimensions
- 140 g without battery, 108 × 59 × 37 mm — Olympus specification sheet
- 135 g without battery, 108 × 59 × 35 mm — camera-wiki
- 145 g, 108 × 59 × 35 mm — English Wikipedia
Better supported: Olympus
Three sources, three weights, ten grams apart, and a 2 mm disagreement about the thickness of a camera whose selling point was its size. The manufacturer's own sheet is carried in the numeric fields here.
What reviewers say
- James Tocchio (Casual Photophile) (blog) — Praises the lens as sharp and punchy, the autofocus as missing about two per cent of the time and the metering as fantastic in difficult light, then declines to recommend the camera at its going rate: the body sounds hollow, the flash resets to automatic every time the barrier is closed, the flash output is heavy-handed, and there is no exposure compensation or manual control of any kind. His conclusion is that it is neither compact enough, adjustable enough, affordable enough nor interesting enough to be worth the money people now pay.
- Ray Rapkerg (EMULSIVE) (blog) — Tested against the premium compacts and found wanting on results rather than on convenience: the shutter lag is longer than he would like, the autofocus is not always accurate enough to show what the lens can do, and the pictures come out — his word — "adequate". Against the Contax TVS III he puts it flatly: one has the wow factor, the other the meh factor. He still calls it the people's camera, and cites 3.5 million sold as the reason.
- Dmitri (Analog.Cafe) (blog) — "Neither overrated nor overhyped" — the market wants exactly its set of features: f/2.8, 1/1000 s, spot metering, weather sealing, the best built-in flash in its class. Wide open the frame lacks a little bite, it reads DX only in whole stops (four contacts, not six), and his copy occasionally overlapped frames.
History
Sliding the barrier open is the whole interface. The lens comes out, the flash wakes, and the camera is ready; sliding it shut turns everything off and, irritatingly, throws away the flash setting. There is a mode button and a spot-metering button on the top plate and nothing else. Olympus put a 35mm f/2.8 in front of that, sealed the body to JIS protection class 4, and got the result down to 140 grams.
The specification is better documented than almost anything else in this part of the catalogue, because Olympus published it. The news release of 18 February 1997 gives the lens as 4群4枚 — four elements in four groups — with an aspherical element; the autofocus as three-zone measurement with up to 414 distance steps from 0.35 m to infinity; the programmed shutter as EV 1.0 at f/2.8 and four seconds through EV 17 at f/11 and 1/1000; and the sealing as 防まつ形, splashproof. The camera went on sale on 26 March 1997 at 36,000 yen before tax, remote and case included. Where other compacts in this section rest on somebody’s measurements, this one rests on a document.
Olympus also published how many were built, which almost no maker in this section did. The figure usually reaches English readers through camera-wiki as “around 3.8 million examples were sold”, and the footnote under it points at an archived Olympus page. Follow the footnote and the page is still there — Olympus Global’s own History of Cameras entry for the model, captured in December 2007 — and it says something firmer and slightly different: “over 3.8 million were produced”. Produced, not sold; over, not around. The number survives its own citation chain, which in this segment is worth saying out loud, and it comes back from the trip stronger than the wiki left it.
What it will not do is join up with the company’s other two numbers. In February 1998 Olympus marked ten million cumulative sales across the mju series, which had begun in 1991, and issued the mju-II LIMITED to commemorate it: 65,000 cameras, 5,000 for Japan and 60,000 for export, a split both the Japanese museum page and the English history page give. The ten million counts the 1991 mju and the zoom models; the 3.8 million is a lifetime total for a camera still selling years after the milestone. Neither tells you how many mju-IIs existed on any given date, and no source consulted supplies a breakdown that would.
The variants are thin by design, which is the correct shape for a camera sold on having no options. There is the plain body in black or silver; there is the Quartz Date, sold in the United States as the Stylus Epic DLX; and there is the LIMITED of 1998. English writing frequently makes the panorama mask the DLX’s distinguishing feature, but Olympus’s Japanese specification sheet lists panorama switching for the ordinary mju-II as well, so on the home-market camera the date back is the difference and the panorama is not. The LIMITED, similarly, is the 1997 camera in a different finish — Olympus calls that finish black metallic, camera-wiki calls it burgundy, and a buyer looking at a listing should know that both words describe the same object.
Two smaller disagreements are worth carrying rather than smoothing. Olympus’s press release dates the LIMITED to late April 1998 and Olympus’s own museum page dates it to February 1998, which is the month of the announcement rather than the month of sale. And the camera weighs 140 grams on Olympus’s sheet, 135 on camera-wiki and 145 on English Wikipedia, at either 35 or 37 millimetres thick. For a camera whose argument was its size, three published weights ten grams apart is a small scandal, and the manufacturer’s figure is the one carried here.
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.
Example photos
Sample photo wanted — shot with a Olympus mju-II? We'd love to feature it (with credit).
Live listings
Asking price, USD: a median of $450 across 27 fixed-price listings on 2026-10-19 (middle half $340–$530). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 9 days: down 10% from $500.
By day
| Date | Median | Middle half | Listings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-19 | $450 | $340–$530 | 27 |
| 2026-10-18 | $450 | $340–$530 | 27 |
| 2026-10-17 | $450 | $340–$530 | 27 |
| 2026-10-16 | $450 | $340–$510 | 25 |
| 2026-10-15 | $430 | $340–$520 | 26 |
| 2026-09-21 | $380 | $330–$500 | 27 |
| 2026-09-18 | $400 | $320–$530 | 34 |
| 2026-09-11 | $500 | $400–$620 | 22 |
| 2026-09-06 | $500 | $400–$620 | 21 |
Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.
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Listings updated 2026-10-19. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.