Olympus has finally made its official announcement after a Nikon-like campaign of leaks and glamorshots. The E-P1 is the first in the rekindled Pen brand and the excitement for it is probably well deserved. In the end it looks like many predictions of the specs are right although nobody could agree on how the E-P1 naming was going to be arranged. The camera comes in a variety of color combinations and even though I said I wanted black-black, the silver-black is starting to grow on me and gets bonus points if the camera can actually brass properly with wear.
The camera comes out of the gate with the two new lenses mentioned before (17mm and 14-42) as well as a new low profile flash unit, the FL-14. I’m curious to see how the 12.3 megapixel Live MOS sensor will perform, the 4/3 sensor format still doesn’t appeal a whole lot to me but the smaller sensor does allow for a more compact camera which is perfect for this kind of design and it’s still much larger than the sensor in a P&S camera. With an introductory price of about $900 with the 17mm f/2.8 and optical viewfinder accessory, it’s going to have to prove its worth to me since that’s not a no-brainer must-buy price for this piece of kit in my eyes.
I have high hopes for it, not only for Olympus but as always for this whole segment of cameras. To get more of the gory details on the Pen E-P1 I’d suggest going straight to the Olympus site.
There are also some lengthy previews already out on this camera:
DPreview
Imaging Resource
4/3 Photo
If you’re looking to buy it the PEN E-P1 with 14-42mm lens and the E-P1 with the 17mm f/2.8 and optical viewfinder are both now listed at B&H.
