First off, as you’ve probably noticed, there are two striking things about this camera:
- It’s gorgeous!
- It’s itty-bitty (with a big lens)!
Officially, Olympus has this to say about what exactly this thing is:
“Olympus Unveils A New Era With The E-P1: Not A Point and Shoot. Not An SLR. It’s A PEN. What Will You Create?”
I mean, with the stainless steel and leather, it’s actually quite reminiscent of a classic old 1950′s 35mm film camera, like the old Canon my dad has. As a matter of fact, I’ve found out that it was specifically designed to
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pay homage to the old ‘pen’ series of Olympus cameras of small, fixed lens, SLR models from the 60′s and 70′s. The build quality is excellent, it feels surprisingly compact and solid in your hand, especially compared to full-sized DSLRs, and could be easily carried in a small bag. It has a lovely 3-inch display that works wonderfully indoors, but is |
pretty much invisible outdoors, and the downside to this is that the E-P1 has no view finder, which means if you can’t see the display you just have to guesstimate and hope you get lucky. Mind you, however, Olympus does offer an optional viewfinder for 100 bucks, but it doesn’t go through the lens and can’t really compare to the ones you find on the standard DSLRs. Also: no flash. There isn’t one included anyway, that’s another extra $100 above the $799 price tag if you want it.
Video Quality
The E-P1 is capable of AMAZING 720p video, you just have to see this it’s unbelievable, here’s a video clip that Engadget recorded with their E-P1:
As you can see, the quality is excellent, the continuous focus lens works great, but there is a problem with the audio: you can hear the lens focusing, and Olympus isn’t offering an external audio input on the E-P1 right now.
Additional Resources and Further Reading
Offical Olympus Site with about 20 pages of tech specs
Extraordinarily detailed review by Gadling Gear
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