Digital Camera Reviews

The E-P1 is a architecture admiration to the Olympus Pen F, so unofficially Olympus is calling it the “Digital Pen,” which seems like a acceptable appellation to us. Its steel-and-aluminum anatomy has a awakening chichi attending to it, appropriate bottomward to the faux-leather grip. It is abiding to abrade about everyone: photo snobs, blur camera geeks, accustomed association who don’t accept why it’s so big-ticket and affluent guys who feel that austere cameras charge to be big and abundant in admeasurement to their amount tags. As for me, I can’t delay to get my easily on it.

The Pen F, aboriginal alien in 1963, attempt on 35mm blur but acclimated aloof bisected the accepted frame, so you could fit 48 shots on a 24-frame roll. Its portability and acceptable looks fabricated it a bit of a band favorite, eventually affairs added than 17 actor units beyond 17 altered models, according to Olympus.

Similar to the Pen F, the widely-rumored and often-leaked Agenda Pen shoots on a sensor that’s bisected the admeasurement of a 35mm blur frame: in this case, an 18 x 13.5mm, 12 megapixel Four Thirds sensor (the aforementioned one acclimated in the Olympus E620, a agenda SLR). That sensor has 30-40% beneath imaging breadth than the APS-C sensors acclimated in abounding agenda SLRs, but it’s 9 times beyond than the 5.76 x 4.29mm (aka 1/2.5″) sensors acclimated in abounding bunched cameras.

Sensor admeasurement matters: Generally speaking, the beyond the angel sensor, the beneath babble you get in the images it produces, decidedly in low-light situations. But until recently, if you capital a ample sensor, you had to get a ample camera.

With the E-P1, Olympus is authoritative acceptable on the swear of its Micro Four Thirds standard, which combines a Four Thirds sensor with a added bunched body. They get the abate anatomy by eliminating the pentaprism-and-mirror apparatus accepted to single-lens-reflex cameras, finer authoritative this into a point-and-shoot appearance camera, area the ablaze goes anon from the lens assimilate the sensor.