We all know photography got to the stage where if it is not DSLR you don’t trust it to do any decent job. Actually it became something more like “if it doesn’t have at least APS-sized sensor, don’t buy it”, but yet there are those two companies – Olympus and Panasonic, that still try to set up a new trend – of smaller four thirds sensors. Or, which is more apparent – of smaller DSLRs or even range-finders with interchangeable optics. We won’t go into detailed review of their system (not that it doesn’t deserve a review of its own, as we have objections to everything it tries to present), but we feel obliged to talk about one of Olympus’ models that tries to get sentimental: the Pen E-P1, which really sounds as the e-peen it is, as it represents truly the marketing goals of Olympus – tell people it’s good and make it look like camera and they’ll buy it…
Olympus tried to make one of the smallest , if not the smallest digital camera with interchangeable lens, which looked a lot like their old (and again smallest) film cameras from around 1960. For those photographic dinosaurs who were at their active age back then E-P1 might look like the best camera they had in sixties, but right now we only see old-fashioned body with one of the smallest sensors in today’s DSLR (or like) world. Don’t get us wrong – it’s not a Mustang, so the “old-fashioned” thing doesn’t mean it’s stylish (it doesn’t matter that those guys at DPReview think retro means stylish. It’s not. Period.). And it looks plain ugly once you attach black lens to it, believe us. And it’s 4:3, so your friends’ heads will get cropped at the studio when you print your photographs.
What we dislike is that Olymous have, in theory, very good vision of what small DSLR-like cameras have to be. But then they actually do something that is so close to compact cameras, that the only thing it has in common woth DSLRs is the optics, if anyone still cares about it after the first time he tries how slow is the slow contrast-detect autofocus. Plus you get the best feature of DSLRs – the dynamic range, wasted just to get that camera in your pocket.
Now what is the reason of all this? Beats the hell out of us too, but it’s twisted, and it bears such a name.
7/10 as we give some credit to Olympus for all the nice controls E-P1 has. And you can always buy one to your wife and she will become a photographer. At least in bright, but cloudy days if she doesn’t shoot moving objects.
Higher Twisted Rating is worse!
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