The Olympus EP-1 Backlash

Now the negative reviews keep piling in. New York Times columnist and Mac enthusiast David Pogue gives yet another less than stellar review of the latest Olympus Pen. It's gonna hurt.

UPDATE: 7/30/09
Dante Stella
Theonlinephotographer
dpreview
David Pogue

Pan The Pen

Dante Stella declares the Olympus EP-1 an epic failure, with a question mark appended, I think just for being polite.

Olympus

This is the Olympus EP-1 a la Tokyo Camera Style shot. I bumped into this guy (this guy is also known as my brother) in Champagne court and he had this latest toy with him. I was able to scam him to take a few shots of the camera and even funner shot the EP-1 myself. The camera does indeed feel substantial and heavy when compared to the SD880 IS I was carrying at the moment. My first impression was the auto focus doesn't seem to be swift or decisive when shooting in available light indoors in the seedy shopping arcade.

E-P 1 In The Wild

Seems like everybody has caught some sort of serious compact camera bug. I should say there is always some group of extremely well-off people who prefer compact cameras to manly man gigantic SLRs with oversized lenses. The Olympus pen is emblematic and a continuation of this serious(ly expensive) digital compact camera trend represented by the Leica M8, D-Lux 4, Panicsonic LX-3, Sigma DP-1, DP-2, and Ricoh GR Digital II, Epson R-D1s. The Olympus E-P1 attracted tons of attention from serious amateurs and arm-chair photographers alike. Tokyocamerastyle has a couple of pictures showing the pen in the wild as carried by a woman. Oh well, the camera does look like a girly camera. But I don't think I would have any qualm wearing and using one. I would get one of those original half frame pen.