Olympus Pen E-P1

I want to spend the next few blog posts digging into the new Olympus Pen E-P1 four thirds system and give my experience and opinion from an enthusiast shooters point of view.

As I've previously stated, I'm not going into the technical specs of this system and cover every menu option and megapixel Olympus has given us. This will more server to document one shooter use, why I bought the camera, why I like the camera (which I very much do) and what I wish was different about the camera.

Why I spent my own hard earned dollars on the new Pen system?

My family loves to travel. My wife and I are getting to the "borderline" empty-nester stage of our lives with just one high school kid left in the house meaning we have freedom with our spare time that we never had before when the kids were young. And with that time we enjoy getting away, seeing new places and experiencing new things. And I love to capture it all on digital film (and often times publish it for ourselves in Shutterfly produced photo books). But I've found that I don't very often enjoy hauling around all of my Canon 40D gear, lenses, tripods, etc. on these trips. Too much weight and too much hassle (not to mention all the issues these days with trying to fly with a bunch of equipment). So in the last couple of years I've been on a journey to find the perfect travel camera. Point-and-shoots are fine for snapshots but I take my photography much more seriously than that and want better quality than can be delivered by the tiny sensor in even a good PS camera. A couple of years back I landed on a Canon G9. A very nice unit, a good size with full manual control and the ability to shoot RAW. It was a good move and a good start on this journey. About 18 months later Canon released the G10 with it's improvements over the G9 making it that much better for travel without gear. I'd taken many trips with the G10 and had fantastic results. But still the limitations of a fixed lens left me feeling like that unit was still a compromise, even though I was getting good results. Then this summer Olympus releases their Micro Four Thirds Pen E-P1 system with a full four thirds sensor and interchangeable lenses all in a package close to the same size as the G10. This sounds like another step towards travel photography nirvana. So the G10 gets sold on CraigsList (like the G9 before it) and now I'm shooting with the Pen.

My Outfit

Here is what the new kit I'm shooting with consists of:

• Olympus Pen E-P1 Micro Four Thirds Camera
• Olympus Zuiko 14-42mm f3.5/5.6 zoom lens
• Olympus Zuiko 17mm f2.8 pancake lens
• Olympus FL-14 flash gun
• Fixed optical viewfinder attachment (for use only with the 17mm pancake)
• Aftermarket travel wall charger and aftermarket spare battery
• Lowepro PhotoRunner camera bag
• Slik carbon fiber travel tripod with small Manfrotto ball head

The entire outfit in the bag weighs in at just under 4 pounds making travel and the tripod just a couple more. Just right for weekend trips, city travel and the like. (Obviously this is not the gear you're going to take for an African safari but I might consider it a backup for that given an addition long lens.)

That's all for this post. Next time I'll start delving into my experiences with the camera. Until then here are a few more shots taken with the Pen.

Enjoy!

Tom Laux

August 21, 2009