Amateur Photographer Magazine

 First look: Olympus E P1 camera (update) - Page 1:Introduction

Tuesday 16th June 2009

Damien Demolder

Amateur Photographer Editor Damien Demolder reports from the launch of the Olympus E-P1 'digital Pen' in Berlin.



Berlin, Germany -- It's ironic that a camera aimed at consumers too frightened to buy 'complicated and heavy' DSLRs should create so much interest amongst hardened SLR users.

I suppose it's because although we like the big camera that offers all the control, we also want small, neat, portable and stylish, and for the first time in a long time we are seeing cameras that offer all of those things – high style, highly compact and the sort of flexibility that only comes with an interchangeable lens system.

PEN - CONCEPT OR CON? - click here

The Micro FourThirds models we've already seen from Panasonic, the Lumix G-1 and GH-1, demonstrate perfectly the principle of SLR control in highly compact bodies, but with the launch of the Olympus E-P1 – the 'digital Pen' – we can see for the first time the potential of the new Micro FourThirds system and what it has been designed to do.

Brilliant though they are I suspect the Lumix products we have seen so far will not present a welcoming and friendly face to the millions of new photographers seriously choosing between a compact camera and an SLR.

To those who do not know that a DSLR needs a mirror to be a DSLR these cameras look astonishingly like...DSLRs. In their current body form they will appear just as frightening as fully grown SLRs, purely because of their shape.

The Olympus E-P1 however definitely does not look like a DSLR, and it definitely does not look complicated. It looks highly desirable and reasonably simple to use – at least as simple as most compact cameras. That it has a wealth of control on a par with a standard DSLR is neither here nor there; that it appears easy to use is all that counts.

The photographic press surround the E-P1 camera after its unveiling in Berlin

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