The camera I am going to write about is out of production and will very unlikely get an improved model, as Olympus declared a while ago — and yet I think it is worth writing about it, because this is a good camera — dare I say, a unique one — and because talking about it will let me address some other interesting topics. So, here we go.
I hope you’ll forgive me if I start this very long post with a quite long introduction!
Micro Four Thirds (I’ll refer to it as m43 from now on) was introduced in 2008 as the first mirrorless system and has become a very polarising topic since then. A huge part of the polarised posts and comments about it can be associated with the following profiles:
The hater is a person that feels the need for denigrating the system, comparing it to other systems he thinks are better. Usually to full frame, but even APS-C will do, if he is a Fuji fan. He enjoys pointing out the fact that bigger sensors have better depth of field / dynamic range / insert here other features. He usually produces no photography to back his statements, and that’s because he is likely not a photographer nor he is passionate about photography: he loves to fight for his champion. This medieval attitude still lives today: a person picks a football team, a political party, a gaming console, a mobile operating system, a camera brand or tech, and then he goes around fighting others to prove what he chose is the best — because it feels validating to see others are worse than him or simply made worse choices.
The apologist is quite often a (secretly or openly) sponsored person or some brand ambassador: for him, m43 is close to perfection, he is not really willing to talk about any real issue and if he does, he has to downplay it. He makes posts and videos touching all the required marketing points, adding some humor, maybe some sensationalism (“m43 is now comparable to full frame”, which sounds close to the “m43 is demolished by full frame” proposed by the hater: they are both hyperbolic ideologic claims). The goal of the apologist is often to have you click on some affiliate link, or to promote a product so he can get money or free gear or paid trips from the brand. Another common kind of apologist is just in love with a brand: he gets nothing from the brand nor he sells stuff: he just needs to think what he chose is the better. Again, like with the hater, he is just fighting for his champion as a mean to protect his ego.
These two profiles apply to all brands and systems of course. Just swap “m43” for something else. It may be Fuji or Apple or Real Madrid.
Lately the apologists and the haters started exploring a new battle field: the financial reports. So we have haters celebrating the idea that Olympus will soon close because their Imaging Division is failing, and apologists saying that everything is just fine, that bad reports are the norm, that they mean nothing in particular. YouTube Channels and photography forums shifted from pseudo-tech to pseudo-economics.
Just as most of the people fighting about which sensor tech or size is better know very few about semiconductors and physics, in the same way the ones fighting about economics know very few about market dynamics, mass production strategies and financial planning. And yet they all meet in a photography forum to fight about that!
As you may have guessed, I think photographers should have very few interest in financial reports. The ones obsessed with such topics and focusing on that are haters, apologists or simply someone that doesn’t care about photography per se but loves to argue about what surrounds modern digital photography.
The financial battle ground doesn’t make much sense to me. If m43 is good for you, your camera and lenses won’t disappear if and when Olympus will close down — and if m43 is good for you now, I can assure you it will be good for you for the next years. Think about the practical output of your cameras and lenses, which is a print or a screen. Printing technology is seeing no true revolution. Screen tech is bringing higher resolutions but they are still far below what modern m43 cameras can produce in terms of resolution. If High ISO performance is crucial for your photography, you should consider Full Frame anyway. If you can live with cameras that give you good quality up to 800-1600 ISO then m43 is fine now and it will be fine in 2, 4, 6 years and maybe more, no matter what Olympus and Panasonic will do.
A long introduction for a very long post, I know! I had to write it because the camera I will talk about is a m43 one, and quite an infamous model too: the Olympus Pen-F.
I think nowadays most cameras are good enough. Writing about some particular model is bound to be an exercise in repetition. Unless a model has some serious issues, what else is there to say?Something will be marginally better, something will be marginally worse. At some point a new impressive feature will appear, but it will become mainstream in a matter of months. All cameras share more or less the same tech made by same companies.
Each camera is also being reviewed multiple times even before being released to the public. Websites living off clicks and ads are publishing hands-on articles, reviews of non final products, full reviews and sample pictures the same day of the release. How can you form an opinion about a camera after using it for a couple of days? How trustworthy are you if the camera was sent to you by the brand especially for a review? Popular camera gear websites are a sort of extension of camera manufacturers’ marketing departments. If a website lives off ads and sponsorship, it’s just naive to expect it to be always reliable and honest. It may be, occasionally.
The Olympus Pen-F was released in January 2016. It was received with a number of negative articles from popular websites: it was not innovative, it was not weather sealed, it was too much expensive, it had a focus on jpg profiles, continuous autofocus was unreliable, there was no mic input, etc. Some of these critiques were laughable at best. Some were spot on. And of course, the Pen-F was marked by what’s apparently the worst of all photographic plagues: it had a Micro Four Thirds sensor.
I bought this camera 2 years ago after gathering a lot of information. As I wrote somewhere else, I use Nikon full frame cameras for work and a Ricoh GR is always in my pocket. My iPhone is also a camera I use very often. What I was looking for was a camera for personal projects and for traveling, with interchangeable lenses, better image quality than the iPhone, not too heavy, and most important, fun and inspiring to use.
This wasn’t my first Olympus. I used a film OMD M10, a mju-2 which I loved, and I also used to own an Olympus E-M10: the experience with the latter had good and bad sides, so I wasn’t completely sure about going digital Olympus again. In the end I bought the Pen-F, with a bunch of lenses. After a couple or months this is the set of lenses I ended up with:
M.Zuiko 17mm 1.8: I didn’t really want this, since I don’t like 35mm as focal length, but it was included with the camera. I never used it and finally gave it to a friend as a gift for her Olympus PEN
M.Zuiko 25mm 1.8: an excellent 50mm equivalent, which would end up being my favorite prime
M.Zuiko 45mm 1.8: a very good and incredibly small portrait lens
M.Zuiko 40-150mm 4-5.6: a cheap and decent zoom, you never know when some reach is needed
M.Zuiko 12-40 2.8 PRO: a very good and versatile lens for travelling
Panasonic 14mm 2.5: I needed a 28mm equivalent of course, but I can’t say I enjoy this one
Panasonic 12mm 1.4: if this had 2mm more it would have been my dream lens. Still, a 24mm equivalent field of view is not so far from 28mm, which is my favorite one, and it somehow sits between 21 and 28
The PEN-F is the most beautiful digital camera I ever saw. There are only few details I would change, from a design point of view. The tripod mount is in a weird forward position. The thumb fake leather has a different texture compared to the one on the rest of the camera. Apart from these small details, the camera is just gorgeous. I did pick up the silver one because I think it fits better with the 60s mood the designers were after.
Some may consider shallow that I start talking about how the camera looks, but I think this is also an important matter. Nowadays, it is hard to find a camera that is not at least decent. Most of the modern cameras are good enough for shooting good photography and are exceeding the skills of most photographers. So, details like the design become important in differentiating the models and defining the experience.
Handling the camera is a pleasure, it is small but not too small, there is no grip and it feels like holding an old rangefinder, only smaller. Some people need a protruding grip, I am happier without. The controls are quite well thought and I appreciate there are no shutter speed and aperture manual controls, like on a Leica or Fuji for instance: I think a dual dial configuration makes more sense in a digital camera, but I recognise this is absolutely subjective and it belongs to that set of features that make a camera more or less fitting us.
The EVF in the Pen-F has decent resolution, lag is rare and not distracting, it is not as big as others you find in the latest mirrorless cameras but still not too small, and most importantly it serves its goal good, which is to help us compose our images. A bit of green tint is noticeable when shooting with a black and white mode, but nothing terrible: I shot for years with soviet rangefinders with really greenish optical viewfinders and I survived, taking decent photos in meantime.
Talking about comparisons: being used to the huge optical viewfinder in my Nikon D850 I still find it weird to use an EVF, and I doubt having more pixels in it would make a difference. It is still a small screen one cm from my eye. The viewfinder in my Panasonic G9 is much better than the one in the Pen-F but still far from ideal. I guess the tech will keep improving and at some point EVFs will be a good experience, but right now I feel they still need to improve. At some point I would like to try the ones on the Leica SL2 and on the Panasonic S1, I heard they are quite good.
As we look into the viewfinder, our right hand can operate the dual dials, changing aperture and shutter speed. ISO and white balance are changed with the same two dials, after pressing the ISO/WB button. I shoot the Pen-F in Manual mode so this review will assume that’s the mode set. With this setup I have all the most important parameters under control without moving the hand from my grip, and that’s nice. I do prefer the Nikon D850 way though, with an ISO button I can keep pressed for changing its value with the aperture dial, of even better, the way I set on the Panasonic G9, with the wheel on the back directly operating the ISO.
I mentioned the ISO: a delicate topic in the m43 world. I would like to leave it on Auto with a max value of 3200, trying to reproduce the TAv experience from my Ricoh GR, but the Pen-F tends to overexpose no matter the metering mode. And on a m43 we can’t waste ISO and use higher values when not needed. It is not unusual to have the Pen-F Auto ISO setting 3200 ISO when 1600 or maybe 800 would have been just fine! The exposure compensation dial is useful in such cases, but I don’t like using it because I tend to forget it is set, even if I have that info in the viewfinder. I don’t like reading too much stuff while I take photos. I prefer to set ISO manually depending on the scene: I set ISO to base 200, then I determine the minimum shutter speed I can accept, then the optimal aperture, then I eventually raise the ISO if necessary. This way I am sure I am using the perfect combination.
An important note about the exposure: try to get it right in camera. This is not a camera where you can turn night into day or recover lost highlights like there is no tomorrow. And that’s not so bad: it makes you look at the scene and think. With the D850 I know I can save almost every exposure. That’s not the case with the Pen-F: I must consider what I care about. I have limited resources. ISO gives me very few noise at 200, acceptable at 400, a bit too much at 800, too much at 1600, definitely too much at 3200 and that is where I would stop. Noise is always present, even at base ISO 200. A software like Topaz DeNoise or Prime noise removal in DXO Photolab will probably let you decently clean the 1600 and 3200 photos, but I don’t like to shoot thinking about if and how can I save the photo on the computer.
I keep noise reduction off on the Pen-F. I find noise reduction in cameras to be always worse than what I can do on my own with few minutes of good software. Noise is preferable to the effects of bad noise reduction, because it doesn’t smear details.
So, when it comes to ISO and exposure my advices are:
- Look at the scene
- Understand which shutter speed and aperture are needed
- Set ISO accordingly, aiming at the best exposure in camera
Post production could save noisy shots but don’t rely on it too much: it is just a last resort
All the care I am putting on the ISO topic somewhat answers the question even before it is being asked, but let’s still ask it: is the Pen-F sensor bad at High ISO, let’s say, above 800, if compared to contemporary bigger sensors? Yes it is. Is it a massive problem though? Not really. The wonderful Leica M9 is producing quite noisy photos after 800 ISO, and yet it is still used by many photographers for creating good or even outstanding photography. And it is a full frame, mind you! ISO is just a factor, and the performance on m43 is versatile enough for allowing us to do good photography. Most of the times anyway. It is all about knowing its limits.
This is a concept that is being lost: to embrace limits and work with them. We are thought we must desire and own the tool with less limits, always, because only then we will be able of expressing ourselves. I believe this is a dangerous lie. Limits are needed, because growth only happens when trying to overcome limits. Photography is problem solving, that’s the beauty of it. You look at the scene, you think about what you can do with your tools, and then find a solution: that’s so rewarding.
So I am fine with the bad High ISO performance on the Pen-F: it is ok I can expect mediocre quality at 1600 and bad one at 3200. When I think of this, I consider: what can I do for beating this limit? And I am captured by the process. Sometimes I will be unable of solving the problem, and the photos will bee too noisy. It is part of the game and it is luckily much rarer than what marketing of other camera brands wants you to believe.
The disappointing High ISO performance on m43 sensors comes from the fact that sensor R&D is now focused on Full Frame, because that’s where the money is and the market, no surprises, cares only about money. So m43 sensors are somewhat left behind. I think this will change, because m43 has some amazing lenses in the system and it does have size & weight advantages, but only R&D can unleash them.. if there is no money to invest, the system stagnates.
If m43 could get 1 or 2 stops better in terms of ISO performances and with a slightly better dynamic range, it would become insanely popular. Sony is creating most of the sensors used in popular cameras, and since years they are investing a lot in their full frame mirrorless system. Do you expect them to give a great modern sensor to a potentially dangerous competitor of their mirrorless bet? One thing is to give sensors to Nikon or Canon, when they are trying to enter the full frame mirrorless battle where Sony has years of advantages. Another thing is to fix the only issues of a competitive and technologically advanced system like m43, which is already doing great in video market and that could dominate most of the amateur and enthusiast market and even some parts of the professional one.
Many fans of m43 will praise the fact that it is a small system. That’s very clear when you look at the system as a whole and not the single camera/lens combination. A Sony A7 is not so big in the end, and fast lenses on m43 are not so small either. But once you start putting together a system, the difference in size and weight becomes evident. I can fit a whole Pen-F system in a small shoulder bag: the Pen-F, some extra batteries and a selection of 6 lenses that go from 24mm to 300mm equivalent. Of course this works with the 1.8 primes, because the 1.2 ones are bigger. But even then, I could fit the 12-40 and two 1.2 primes in that small bag, and that’s impressive.
I will talk about the lenses later, in another review. Writing an interchangeable lenses camera review is not as easy as with the Ricoh GR, because the camera is only 1/3 of the story.
The Pen-F was greatly criticised because it has a dial in front, and this dial is used for changing jpg profile. The horror! Some people lost their mind because of this. Shooting RAW is considered the only way to go for creating photography, and jpg files are seen as some mindless choice only terrible amateurs can make. I beg to differ.
I shoot RAW+JPG with the Pen-F, just as I do with the Ricoh GR. That’s because the jpg files produced by the Pen-F are usually very good. Time is precious. Why do I have to waste time working on RAW files if I have the chance of having the camera create a photo I already like? I would never shoot JPG only, but I think RAW+JPG makes sense if the camera produces good JPG files. And the PEN-F can produce amazing jpg files, with wonderful colours and black and white tones that constantly receive praise by people I show them to.
Some may say: RAW gives you better detail, you can manage the noise better and you can fix exposure. And that’s all good and true. I do work with RAW for my profession, but I like to have the option of having ready JPG too, because maybe they are all I need for that shot. That much maligned dial allows me to switch instantly from a very nice Moriyama-like mood (Grainy Film I & II), to a wonderful slide film like Color Profile 2, to a classy black and white Mono Profile 2. I posted many photos here in the review which are shot with them and not edited.
Using these filters I can visualise the scene in the way I intend, or very close to it. That’s a beautiful consequence of modern technology. Color profiles are not a silly gimmick as many pointed out from the height of their teacher’s desk. By seeing a live preview I can compose the scene using the filter for making it easier to accomplish my vision. Maybe once at home I will decide to scrap the SOOC jpg and recreate it with Silver Efex Pro starting from the RAW, who knows. The dial lets me change filter on the fly and so I am glad it exists, and I don’t mind it is where it is.
Some people complained because the dial says “art” and thought that is detrimental to their reputation (I am not joking!): to them I say, forget about this nonsense and focus on creating good photography, for the quality of our photos is what defines us, not what is written on our cameras.
A last complaint about the dial was that it could have been better used for another function, like changing other parameters. My opinion is that it would have been nice to have a neutral dial like on the lovely Pentax Q, where you can assign it to different parameters.
Another topic I would like to touch is the stabilisation: this is often seen as something not necessary. For me, IBIS is indeed not necessary, but very good to have, and the stabilisation on the Pen-F is just amazing. I say not necessary because in photography very few is necessary: light, a way to control light, a way to memorise the light. But IBIS has some advantages: when I am dealing with inanimate scenes it allows me to drop the shutter speed a lot and use the basic ISO 200 no matter the focal length I have on the camera. That’s quite impressive. You can be outside at night and shoot a very low ISO scene, while with the D850 I would have to raise up the ISO losing the full frame advantage, even if using a wonderful stabilised lens like the Tamron 45mm 1.8. When shooting people or animals IBIS is not very useful though, since the shutter speed you need is at least 1/125.
Micro Four Thirds also means that the native format is 4:3 instead of the more common 3:2, and this means changing our composition habits. I am still exploring this topic after years. I usually prefer 3:2 for horizontal photos and 4:5 for vertical ones. If we think of it, smartphones are making us all compose with moderate wide-angles and 4:3 ratio. The topic of composition is huge and yet so rarely addressed. Think of the last time any big photography website wrote an insightful article about this. Compare that number to the quantity of articles about new gear!
The Pen-F has a fully articulating screen and I am not a fan of it. I prefer the tilting screen on the D850, because it lets me more comfortably shoot looking down at the screen, something that remembers me the fun I had with my Lubitel medium format! The fully articulating screen has many advantages for sure, I just don’t need them.
I am sorry the LCD does not feature pinch to zoom when reviewing photos. Very often when I show photos to a client they try pinch to zoom, and I have to explain that they zoom with the on-screen slider or the back dial and then pan around with the finger. Strange decision from Olympus. I guess the LCD lacks multitouch as a mean of cutting costs.
One good consequence of the fully articulating screen is that I can turn it inward and close it, so the camera changes into some kind of Leica MD. This protects the screen, especially when travelling.
There is a proximity sensor that switches between LCD and EVF automatically. I turned off the sensor and I use the Fn2 button for doing that manually when needed. I find this faster and more fitting with my way of shooting. This is some usability advantage the Pen-F has over the Panasonic G9, where there is a button for switching between EVF, back screen or auto: this means that on the G9 I must press two times for cycling between EVF and back screen, since I don’t want auto. On the Pen-F I can just turn off the sensor auto switch in the menu.
Since we are talking about buttons, let’s see what else I customised. My other function button (Fn1) is now set to Focus Peaking: when I press it, the camera enables it. This helps a lot when focusing with manual only lenses, together with focus magnification, which I wished worked with 1 click instead of 2: the camera requires you to click one time to enable the area selection and then a second time to show the magnified area. Not very immediate. When shooting with a manual lens I have to first click one time for enabling zoom, then a second time for zooming, then a third time for enabling peaking. It would be wonderful to have all this happening with a single button press!
I set the video button to AF and this is the biggest usability improvement I implemented with my dial settings: by doing that I can separate focus from the shutter button. Yes I am a fan of back button focusing. Half pressing the shutter is still locking the exposure, so if you use Auto ISO you can lock focus with the video button, then point the camera where the exposure is fine enough, half press to lock exposure and then recompose and shoot. It sounds complicate but it is quite fast. The half pressed shutter also engages the stabilisation: I set IBIS to be not always active, so it only turns on when I half press the shutter. This saves a lot of battery and produces less heating. Highly advised.
Another important feature to master is the Super Menu that you activate by pressing OK when in shooting mode: this shows a summary of useful functions that you can navigate both using the two dials (one changes option and the other one cycles through the option’s choices) or using the touchscreen.
A lot of people complain about Olympus’ menus. I can’t understand this. They are menus. You spend some time with them, read a bit of manual, learn what you need and that’s all. If you listen to some people it seems as if learning Olympus’ menus is like learning to code in assembly. This fake issue is also one of the favorite ones that Olympus sponsored vloggers/bloggers complain about: since it is a non issue and it takes nothing away from the camera, it is a perfect way for some fake objectivity by criticising what they are expected to praise.
The first time I shot with the Pen-F I thought it was defective: many of my shots were blurred and I could not understand why. After reading a lot and doing some tests I discovered it was not a camera issue. The truth is that this camera does suffer quite a severe shutter shock when shooting at 1/60 and 1/125. There is a way to fix this, and that’s setting the camera shutter mode to Anti-Shock in the Super Menu and then setting Anti-Shock to 0sec. This will enable the electronic first curtain with no delay, and the Shutter Shock will disappear. Since I started using the F I had it always set like this, unless when I needed to use the full electronic Silent Shutter.
As I wrote, I shoot in manual all the time, with ISO mostly manual and rarely on Auto. Matrix metering (funny how a die hard fan of spot metering embraced matrix one!), Auto or Daylight white balance. As effects I shoot mostly in the three I mentioned earlier, with sharpness to 0. And that’s pretty much it.
I use single focus practically always. I only briefly tried other modes and I noticed continuous focus is indeed bad. But I don’t care because I use single central point focus anyway: the Pen-F has no joystick for moving the focus point, and that’s something I miss, because moving the point with the direction pad is not as immediate.. again, Olympus could do things better and faster when it comes to human interaction. Luckily the deep DOF allows me to use focus and recompose without too much fear of focus plane shifting.
The camera has face detection and even some kind of eye detection, and I can say they work fine enough if you are into such aids. This and the extended DOF of m43 help having a great percentage of in focus portraits.
I mentioned DOF and this requires some words. If you read articles online or listen to vloggers it seems the biggest problem of m43 is not even the ISO performance, but the “lack of DOF”, which is an amusing sentence per se, used to actually mean “lack of shallow DOF”.
The things is, m43 has a “crop factor” of 2x, so to get a field of view comparable with let’s say a 50mm, you need a 25mm lens. This means that you have the field of view of a 50mm but the DOF of a 25mm. So, at every equivalent focal length, you always have more DOF, because a wider lens has more DOF. That’s all.
But the DOF in m43 is one of the reasons why I appreciate the system: I like having more things in focus. I am tired of portraits with the background nuked into blurred oblivion, I don’t find portraits shot at 1.4 with a 85-105-135 lens to be so charming. I think composition should take care of some issues, not blur, and mindlessly blurring the background is a trick that gets old quite fast. I also think bokeh obsession is one of the most idiotic trends in photography and I could not care less about its shape, quantity and pattern. I despise the fixation on marginal topics like which sensor is better or how good the bokeh is. Photography for me is something else. It is personal exploration, it is a catalyst for experience, it is curiosity.
If I were told, in an hypothetical world where physics works differently: this lens comes in two versions, one that gathers light as a f1.2 but has the DOF of a f2.4, and one that gathers like f1.2 and has the DOF of f1.2, I would definitely choose the one that offers double the DOF. That is a plus for me and the only way you can see it as a minus is if you are obsessed with obtaining super shallow DOF, which lends us to the previous paragraph.
Talking about equivalence, some folks will say that crop factor also means that the sensor gets less light, and they apply it to the aperture too, but that is nonsense. Here are some photos shot with a 58mm focal length lens, 1/640, f2 and ISO200 with both the Pen-F and the Nikon D850. As you can see the exposure is kinda the same. For framing them in a similar way I had to crop the Pen-F photo to 3:2. They are straight from raw, just cropped and resized. I won’t tell you what was shot with Full Frame and what with m43, what do you think? Which one is which?
I would also like you to pay attention to the DOF of the photos: the 58mm becomes a 116mm on the Pen-F. The adapters used to mount this lens on the Pen-F and on the D850 have no glass so they do not influence the exposure or sharpness. To get the same framing I had to move back a couple of steps. What do you think of the DOF?
So, the Photo 1 was shot with the Nikon D850 and the Photo 2 with the Pen-F. Someone may have guessed this from the white element on the right: it is there with the D850 cos I had to be closer and I had less compression. The results speak for themselves though: it is possible to get a good background separation on m43 if using the right lens, and the “crop factor” does not influence the exposure. Minor differences in exposure are depending more on sensor tech, not sensor size. Did you guess correctly which photo was shot with what?
The equivalence battle became a great marketing tool for brands, and a fertile source of arguments for people wanting to argue on forums. The m43 isn’t actually a crop format derived from full frame, it is just a different format. The sensor size if having different ratio too. The 2x factor is just an indicator helpful to identify the field of view of a lens compared to full frame, since full frame was arbitrary chosen as a reference.
I really would have preferred not to write about all these topics: equivalence, DOF, etc. But I wanted to briefly clear some points that could obfuscate reality concerning this format: m43 is not perfect and it is not terrible. It is different, it has advantages and disadvantages. Just like 1” sensor based cameras, or cameras with sensors that are even smaller, or much bigger. Comparisons between technologies are always missing a detail, and that is the human factor and the destination of use. Trying to determine the absolute best of something is very often a way to deal with personal insecurity.
What about the people saying cameras are complex so you need a Leica to be in control, because its simplicity will let you approach photography in a more thoughtful way? I believe it’s nonsense: for being “digitally pure” you don’t need a Leica or a Fuji or a Nikon DF. It all comes down to preference. You can approach photography in a pure way even with a smartphone. What defines the purity of your approach is inside your mind. Pretty much every camera allows you to act on the exposure, with compensation or with direct control over shutter speed, aperture and ISO. Once you can focus and you can act on the exposure, you have all you need for being as “pure” as your mind lets you.
The Pen-F being a contemporary Japanese camera, if offers multiple approaches to photography: plenty of auto or semi auto modes, exposure compensation, direct control on the exposure triangle, etc. It’s up to you to use what fits you better. The level of versatility is not bothering me and I just ignore pretty much all of the extra features I don’t need, but it’s still good they are there, in case someone needs them and likes them.
My only doubts about if and when to use the Pen-F came from comparing it to the output of my Nikon D850. Apologists will tell you that the image quality produced by a m43 and a full frame is the same. I think this is a lie. I often shoot using multiple cameras at the same time, so I can compare the output of the D850, the Pen-F and the Ricoh GR in the same scene, and the differences are there. The D850 creates richer tones. More details of course. Dynamic range is impressive and it gives peace of mind: I know almost every shot can be comfortably edited to my taste. When shooting between ISO 64 and 400, noise is substantially absent. These are practical and real differences. Sometimes they matter, sometimes they don’t. They take nothing awake from the pleasure I experience when using the Pen-F. But to deny them is just a bit silly.
As you may have guessed I am disappointed with the status of nowadays photography discourse. All the fixation on technology, on new models. Forum posts and Youtube videos starting wars about topics that are so marginal to the whole photographic experience. And in meantime we see Instagram filled with copycat photography, sometimes very good in terms of quality and technique, but basically a constant repetition in pursuit of ephemeral popularity.
I don’t care much about ISO, equivalence, sharpness at borders, sensor size, megapixels. It’s disappointing to see photography became a hostage of marketing departments, completely enslaved to the economy that spins around it.
The reality is that any camera will be more than enough or at least just fine, so why should brands keep investing in R&D and produce new cameras and lenses? They have to convince us that we need something new and better. Most of the brands are releasing new cameras too often: a new model X for “pros”, then a model XA for amateurs, then the X Light that is like the pro but without some features, the X Mark II that is like the X with some added features they delayed on purpose, the XB that is like the X but black, and so on. Hundreds of new models being produced and thrown on the market, with lower and lower investment in quality control and materials, built in places where workers are treated like slaves, hoping for some profit. Forums and YouTube channels always working to promote that junk. You buy a camera and you know that in 6 months there will be a model that would change nothing in how you shoot but that will be aggressively marketed only to make you feel disappointment for what you own.
My advice is to look for a camera that makes you feel joy when in use and then go and take photos. That’s all. After you buy a camera, forget about forums and YouTube and reviews for a couple of years. Buy photography books instead, try to learn and improve as much as possible: no camera brand can sell you that. Learn to edit in a way that satisfies you. There is no camera we can own that can improve the way we perceive light and capture the world with our photography. The way you feel with the camera, how it works with who you are: that is more important than all the technology inside of it.
Back to the Pen-F. I occasionally had to shoot some video for work: the camera is capable of decent video output in 1080p/60. The stabilisation is so effective that you don’t need a gimbal for putting together decent videos, and no client ever complained. I ended up getting a Panasonic G9 for video: having 4K/60 and some other advantages is a great thing, but I understand and respect the fact that the Pen-F wasn’t created for video, so it’s ok.
As much as I love this camera, I can’t say the Pen-F is perfect. But still, no camera is. The EVF could be better, if we compare it to modern ones. It lacks a focus joystick. The software part could be better. I would put a third customisable dial in place of the EV compensation one (like on the amazing Pentax KP). Etc etc. But they are all minor details I am happily ignoring, because I enjoy so much to take photos with this camera, and I like the photos it produces.
I admit this was as much a review as an excuse for discussing a couple of related topics. As I write somewhere in the beginning of the article, there is not so much we can say about a camera. The bottom line is that the Pen-F is a beautiful and yet not perfect camera. Its design is gorgeous and it is packed with features. It is a joy to use, it is very well built, it is compact and light. Yes it has mediocre High ISO, which means quality degrades fast after 1600-3200 ISO. If you can deal with it, and you probably should, then this camera will bring you happiness and will be a great companion in your photographic voyage.
Great reading – again!
Wonderful that you write about m43 in this way. I think that people who use m43 cameras, like myself, saw through all the comercial bs and go their own way. In fact, most of my work is made with the m43 format, since it’s light and a nothreat to the people I photograph…I like to get really close. I make books and exhibitions and noone ever asked what cameras I use. I love my equipment and keep it very simple. Two cameras, two lenses and that’s it.
Thank again for a wonderful and insightful blogpost, Andrea. Looking forward to the next. Susanne
I can’t believe it, someone managed to get to the end of this wordy post 🙂 Thank you so much for your comment, Susanne. I pondered for long if to write a simple review of the PEN-F or if to embrace the m43 topic — in the end I decided to touch the argument. The resulting post is more convoluted than the Ricoh GR one, even after the much needed cleaning I did (it was originally two times longer!). I hope this text will be useful for people that is unsure if to choose the m43 system or not: I don’t want to convince anyone to buy into the system, but I surely would like to comunicate that all the fears about it are wrong. And maybe — that would make me happy — I would like to convince someone that fighting about cameras, tech and such is pointless waste of life. Your photography is powerful and touching, thanks for sharing it with the world — as you rightly say, clients & viewers don’t care about which camera we use, they care about the photographs we create — that’s how it should be, I think. Maybe at some point photography will free itself from the sterile hands of marketing. Thanks you very much for your comment, hugs from Italy.
You are always so easy to read and understand, I wish more pros would follow your example. When I started I was torn between Leica x’s one or Two model, and Olympus Pen F. Then I went with school of thought whatever I buy what would be back up! So I got a X1 and X2. The Pen F I feel is a beautiful camera that will make you happy for years. Then I tried D850 loved it but in the end way too heavy. I added two more Ax’s then GR 2 and GR4d . The ability to carry either in my coat pocket or in my hand w wrist strap, all day, is what I like best. I have to say I love the neighborhood you use in photos, no wonder you live there. Just food for thought do you think M/F with Hasselblad X1d 11 now priced like 850 $ that they are trying to get those folks to upgrade or are they battling FUJI GFX line. Anyway I have trespassed on your time enough, have a MERRY CHRISTMAS, HAPPY NEW YEAR, and stay healthy.
It was me trespassing on your time with my never ending post 🙂 I considered Medium Format for my architecture photography (the biggest part of my profession) but I still don’t feel the time is right for making the jump. The D850/D810 combo offers me amazing dynamic range and detail, in a relatively compact and robust form factor. I looked at the X1D II 50C and I love their design and philosophy… but they don’t have the lenses I would need (they go as wide as 21mm, that is 17mm in full frame world). For the same reason I didn’t get a Pentax 645Z (the widest lens is a 25mm, equivalent to 20mm in full frame, which is not as wide as I need). I keep my eye on the Hasselblad X system though! In one year or two I will very likely renovate my architecture setup: in my idea, at that time the X system will have wider lenses, and the m43 system will have new sensors — this way I will own a very high quality system for studio and architecture, and a more portable system for fashion on location etc. We will see! For now I enjoy and I am thankful for what I have 🙂 I wish you the best for the Holidays and a great and healthy New Year!
This is not a post… This a lawyer’s contract on rocket science on how to send a man to the moon)
That was an excellent commentary and review Andrea (and yes, not too wordy for me). I don’t own the Pen-F yet (have an E-M10 Mk II) but have lusted for it for no other reason that it has such a beautiful aesthetic feel to me. You have demonstrated getting great images from it makes it more “lust worthy” in my eyes.
There is something to be said for dealing with the limitations of a camera that forces you to think and overcome them.
I very much appreciate your writing style as it is concise and to the point.
Hi Steve, thanks for the comment! It is nice to read you didn’t find it too wordy! I remember when the PEN-F first appeared — I really lusted for it too but at the time I thought it was a bit too expensive for a camera I wanted but didn’t need. In the end I am glad I lately bought one, it is really something different and unique. Thanks again for your kind words!
Yes, you see Andrea, people really appreciate your blog;).
My first m43 camera was the Panasonic GF1 in 2009. Eventually I sold it and got hooked on the GX7. And what about today?
Again, I got the GF1 back (Old love never rust, a swedish(?) old expression;) again and use it with a toylens. Great for cats, since I work on a project I call Felis Catus. For my “serious” projects, my GX8 with the 17/1.8 ( love the 35mm in ff) and a 14/2.5 (28mm in ff) on my GX9, sometimes with a wideangle converter for tight scenes (22mm in ff).
In addition, when just going out, the GM1 with the kitlens..
All of my cameras are in the same format, whatever I choose to shoot. I am all for simplyfying and just concentrate on the subject. All of this I never speak about, but thought it could be interesting if anyone is wondering. Happy Christmas and A Happy New Year! Hugs, Susanne
Dear Susanne, thank you so much for the details about your camera setup, I found them to be very interesting and I’m sure others will too! The GF1 is quite an important camera, Peter Lindbergh was quite fond of it. Thank you for your wishes, I also wish you happy Holidays and a wonderful new year.
I couldn’t put up with the small EVF of the Pen F and sold it. I loved everything else about it, but every time I went to frame a shot, I was just bummed out by the smallness of it. For a camera like that, it should have been better.
I’m sorry for your experience with the PEN-F! The EVF on the F is a 2.36 million dot with 0.62x magnification and I agree with you it is surely is on the small side. The E-M5 mark II was launched 11 months before the F and had a 0.74x magnification EVF with the same 2.36 million dot resolution. I guess Olympus could have used that bigger EVF indeed, but I think they opted for a smaller one to give the impression of higher resolution. EVF tech in 2015 wasn’t that great anyway, the full frame Sony A7S mark II also had a 2.36 panel with 0.78x magnification. The Panasonic GX8 was the closer competitor for the F and was launched in July 2015 with a 2.36 panel but a 0.77x magnification. The EVF is one of the couple of details Olympus got wrong with the F, that’s for sure.
Hi Andrea, thank you very much for this great and refreshing review! I absolutely LOVE the images in this review, bravo! My compliments on your website and blog. I’ve book marked it for future reading!
You really hit the nail on the head with this review. The Pen F is an absolutely gorgeous camera to see and hold, and it is very capable of producing gorgeous images. Is it perfect? No, you’ve hit on all the important imperfections and things that could be improved. … but boy, is it fun to take out and shoot! I really like the much debated knob on the front of the cam to quickly switch between color and b&w shooting … that mono profile 2 is amazing!
I mostly shoot my Pen F with fast manual glass. The inexpensive and excellent Mitakon Speedmaster 25 f0.95 and Voigtlander 42.5 f0.95 work well for me. From time to time I bring it out with some legacy Oly OM or Pentax primes. The magnification and focus peaking functions make manual focus a breeze.
Your view of FF vs. smaller format sensors is also spot on in my opinion. Magnificent cams like the Nikon D850 produce amazing images and are definitely a superior tool in some situations. For my shooting style however, the M43 cameras and especially the Pen F are more than good enough and definitely more fun to use than lugging around a big and heavy cam. … It’s also funny to note that the original 35mm film format was referred to as “small frame” in my native language Dutch. If we believe the Marketing folks now, that same 35mm “FF” is a massive and must have sensor format if you want to be serious about photography … makes me chuckle :-).
Again, thanks for you review and I look forward to reading your future blog post!
Happy New Year and kind regards from Denver, Colorado.
Best,
Hans
Thanks for the kind words Hans! Needless to say, I agree with all you wrote 🙂 I think Full Frame was/is called “small frame” in Sweden too! In the end it is all about comparisons… smaller compared to what, cropped compared to what, full compared to what, etc. Too bad some people take this so seriously. The word choice is surely contributing to the confusion: that “full” in Full Frame makes you think of something complete, total.. while the “micro” in “Micro Four Thirds” sounds like something lesser. There was a time when everything “micro” was considered better and high tech (just think of cell phones), but these times are long gone and now “the big the better” became the marketing mantra again. It is all cycles, sooner or later micro will be trendy again 🙂 Happy New Year and greetings from Sardinia, Italy!
I worked in a photo lab in the early 90s, just as digital imaging was coming into being. The owner of the lab did a lot of studio work with 8×10 film. A lot of the professional work we did was 4×5, so to your point, 35mm “full frame” is kind of a silly yard stick. I bought a Panasonic GM1 precisely because it was tiny, not because it was the “best.” Regardless of the gear, if your camera isn’t in your pocket or your bag, you’re going to miss a lot of shots. I’ve been on the fence for a bit, but thanks to your article, I think I’ll stick to the system and add the relatively large Pen-F to the collection. 😉
My idea is that digital photography took off in a moment when 135 film was the most popular, so they choose that as a point of reference for comparing the size of sensors. In the end it is just a way for comparing the size of stuff, but brands are turning it into some way for defining absolute quality. And there is no absolute quality. It is all marketing crap. As you point out, what matters is indeed a balance between convenience, quality, features, etc.
I am a bit worried about Micro Four Thirds future, I confess. I tell you why.
Olympus recent cameras showed they can’t afford investing in the system: the decision not to include a modern EVF in their flagship camera E-M1 III speaks by itself, no matter what the “Olympus Visionaries” say. They are required to rationalise shortcomings. The same goes for the fact that they kept a UHS-I SD slot in that same camera, which was also a cost cutting decision probably connected to their choice of not redesigning the body nor update parts of the chipset. Olympus is trying to repackage and sell the technology they already have. And I say this with sadness, because I love Olympus and it is one of the very few brands I care about. I want Olympus to keep existing. I will probably buy a E-M5 III as second body to my m43 system at some point. I didn’t buy yet because I love shooting with the Pen-F!
On the other side of the system, Panasonic is trying the Full Frame road but it is a very difficult path, and they are betting on big heavy bodies, which may not be a brilliant idea — so it could be they will get back and invest on m43, especially since they have a huge following connected to their video offer. Stil, there are no new (practical) sensors on the horizon and neither Panasonic nor Olympus can afford the massive investment in computational photography that Apple or Google are making, so I can’t understand what Panasonic could put in a new camera for definitely improving, let’s say, a G9.
That being said, I still like m43 a lot and I keep my Pen-F close to me. The truth is that recent m43 cameras can produce images with a quality that is more than enough for most uses, both for amateur and professionals. The native lenses choice is amazing and unparalleled. Right now I shoot mostly with a Panasonic 12mm 1.4, an Olympus 25mm 1.8 and a Sigma 56mm 1.4, all wonderful, compact, high quality lenses that help me keep the ISO low without sacrificing DOF too much, thanks to m43 “double DOF per f-stop” effect. And the 25mm and 56mm are also not expensive! I am very happy with the system and I find no interest in making a small jump to Fuji or other APSC systems. For some of my job I use Full Frame, and that is why I keep my Nikon system: there are situations when a massive dynamic range makes my life much easier, and shooting architecture & real estate at ISO 64 with the Nikon D850 is optimal for me. But again, this is a matter of convenience. I could shoot all my professional photography with the Pen-F and very few clients would notice the difference. Maybe no one would. And I sell photos to national magazines and very high profile clients!
e. Nowadays most modern cameras can produce a quality that is good enough for most uses, so our choice should indeed keep in mind other details, like ergonomics, convenience, features, design, feelings. I think so. And that’s why I keep happily using my m43 system 🙂
Andrea,
An excellent article.
I come from an age where I used Olympus 35mm SLRs. There was no stabilisation with them and I find the whole subject bizarre. The general rule was that if, for example you were using a 50mm lens then a shutter speed of 1/60th sec would be the slowest you should use to avoid camera shake. I frequently broke that rule. I used to belong to a a theatre group and shot many of the productions, often where the light was poor, I’d be down to 1/8the sec at times. No camera shake handheld. I also owned a stripped down Nikon F at one point with just the prism finder, no meter or any other aids. The mirror shock on that was like firing a gun. If people these days need stabilisation on a mirror less camera, heaven help them if they ever tried one of those.
On to bokeh. I’ve read numerous reviews where there’s an almost morbid fascination with bokeh. There’s often surprise at the lack of it on wide angle lenses. Bizarre. Why don’t these people learn some basic physics? The wider the field of view, the greater the depth of field. Yes, with modern wide angle lenses, at wider apertures than f4, you can get some bokeh if you thrust the camera within an inch of the subject but if you really want it, you use a lens longer than 50mm (35mm equivalent). That why a portrait lens is called a portrait lens, it’s long enough to blur the background whilst still having the depth to get the whole head in sharp focus. If I never hear the word bokeh again, I’ll live a lot longer.
Agreed, the Pen F is a superb camera. Mono2 is brilliant. Once you learn the settings it’s easy. My Merc is completely unfathomable in comparison. I have the 17, 25 & 45 f1.8 lenses. The 17mm only sometimes seems to get better than good reviews but as far as I’m concerned, it’s superb. I rarely use the others.
Anyway, keep up the good work and thanks again for a bit of myth busting.
Hi Simon, thanks for the nice contribution. I agree with you, it becomes comical to compare what we used to shoot with and what we have today, especially if we take into consideration all the popular complaining and expectations. I never thought much about camera shake when I used to shoot film — my main concern was to meter right, expose the film decently, nail the focus and in meantime capture something in line with my idea. Right now we have so much, it’s easy to forget where we come from and the amazing photography that has been created with much simpler tools.
In my opinion, stabilisation becomes useful when dealing with very high resolution sensors — on my D850 when using not stabilised lenses I can see some camera shake even if I am very careful and I choose appropriate shutter speeds, while that was not the problem with my previous Nikon DSLR cameras. When it comes to the PEN-F, the stabilisation comes handy when the scene is static and I get to use a lower ISO, maximising image quality. But really, nothing essential. The essential things in photography are definitely on a different level.
Oh and don’t get me started with the bokeh fetish 🙂 I simply can’t understand where this fascination comes from. I can understand some planes separation can be desirable in some situations, but the obsession with the shape, definition, feathering, orientation etc of bokeh seems to me borderline ridiculous. I think energies could be better spent on composition and technique than on running after some ideal bokeh balls. I personally like to have a lot in focus, and I rarely choose to deliberately hide something using depth of field. Most of the times I struggle choosing the aperture, because I need more light but at the same time I want a lot in focus, and the quality of the bokeh is the last of my concerns. One of the good sides of MFT cameras is that they have double the depth of field, and I am very sorry to see Olympus starting a dangerous path that could in the long run damage this interesting camera system. We will see.
Thanks again for you comment! I hope I’ll soon find the time to post all the articles I started writing, see you around!
A very well written and insightful article that reminds one that photography should be above all else a craft and a passion. I read it all the way to the end as well. It is refreshing to dive into a well written essay as opposed to a lengthy and superficial YouTube shilling for this or that.
I own a Pen-F along with a few other cameras such as the Lumix G9 and Sony A7R3. The Pen-F is the one that I prefer most for creative shooting, especially street photography. It is the only camera where I turn on the JPG engine, especially for the B&W modes. I would rather take the Pen-F to the streets with a few primes as opposed to my other cameras and lenses. That small system works with me and not against me. Recently I shot a bunch of night time photos in Halifax, Nova Scotia with the Pen-F and was quite happy with the results. I used the Olympus 17mm Pro f/1.2 shot wide open for most of the images and that 2x crop factor really helps get the shot without excessive background blur. Moreover, the excellent IBIS makes it possible to get low light shots without cranking the ISO past 2000. I shot everything in Mono Profile 2 and I love how the camera renders the images. When I show the photos to other people, they either like or dislike what they see without a care to sensor size or technical jargon. Thankfully, nearly everyone likes the B&W images from the Pen-F.
Hi Rob, thanks for your comment! I agree with pretty much everything you said. There are many situations where I am also naturally inclined to pick up the Pen-F instead of other cameras, I guess it is a combination of ergonomics and out of camera images. The last sentence in your post is absolutely spot on: what matters is what’s inside the photo! (unless clients requests are factored in, of course). Take care and enjoy your Pen-F!
Excellent post Andrea!
I don’t own an PEN-F but I have a GX9 and I have the same thoughts with you on MFT. People who go ballistic about sensor size, vignetting, sharpness etc don’t understand that except from sensor and lens, camera size and weight critically influence image quality. (small rule that I have: the more a guy (because it’s 98,3% males who do that) obsesses about sensor size and bokeh, the worst the photos he posts).
Everyday I go out, I just throw my GX9 with the zuiko 45mm 1.8 in my bag and do street photography with a 90mm ff tele. This is something I never did before systematically because my ff systems with 85mm lenses were big and heavy, so this opened new possibilities for me.
It is also psychological, I think: running around with the huge 24-105mm/2.8 or 85mm/1.4 ff bazookas I feel like some kind of idiot tourist or amateur who tries to prove something, and that influences my shooting negatively, whereas with the small, compact and light m43 I feel more comfortable, confident and agile. As a photographer, I want to blend with my environment, not stand out like a safari hunter.
I really hope that they will continue to improve the system because the lens choise is excellent and there is a lot of potential.
I find the direction photography is now taking, with these huge €2000 new panzers, very bad. I know that they have stellar image quality but actually they are useless: you can’t take them out on the street without a butler carrying them for you, and in the studio most of their insanely expensive features (like crazy autofocus capabilities, f1.4, bokeh) make little sense.
Keep up the good work, excellent photos…
Hello Nico! I agree with with your words. I think we are in the middle of a transitioning era when it comes to photography and photography gear. There was a time where photographers were shooting professionally with small Leica M or Nikon F systems, while now the trend is to have huge bright lenses, which are indeed not very practical, and use them for shooting what is currently popular on Instagram. I don’t completely dismiss these lenses of course, as they do make sense in special situations. Think of Lindberg and his stellar use of the Nikkor 70-200 2.8, which I own and is not a small lens at all. In the end it all comes to use case. Most of the times, a system like m43 makes more sense than a huge FF system. Let’s see what the future will bring us! Smartphones are eroding a big part of the market, the one that belonged to disposable film cameras, small digital point and shoot cameras and lower end cameras. Which is fine — and unless some alien technology will be discovered, super small sensors and low quality plastic lenses won’t provide the same quality as a bigger sensor with bigger and better glass in front of it, no matter how much “AI” they put into that. There will always be space for dedicated cameras, if companies can produce something that makes people want to buy it. M43 is few steps from being ideal for most of the people and a big part of professionals… but these steps have to be walked! We will see! Thanks for visiting and commenting 🙂
Hi Andrea,
Rather long post but well worth reading! I first arrived at your blog after googling about issues with the Ricoh GR III, which was my next target camera before I read your blog about it. I became more interested with your other articles when knowing you also own the Pen F like I do.
Your post about the Pen F (and the Ricoh GRIII) was one of the most honest reviews I rarely found on the web. I like the way that you put photography first and gears second, while at the same time made an honest review of the camera you know is not perfect but love it anyway.
The Pen F I have is accompanied by 4 lenses: the M Zuiko 17/1.8, M Zuiko 14-150/4-5.56 II, Lumix G 25/1.7 and Lumix 14/2.5. The setup is awesome, so compact and covers most photographic purpose imho.
But like you, I also owned the predecessor of the Ricoh GR III (but mine was a GRI) that I carried with myself far more often than I did with the Pen F, due to it being more compact but with great picture quality for its size. I love it so much that I considered acquiring the GR III. Fortunately I discovered your blog, so you have saved me from taking that route and stick with my beautiful Pen F and back to photography first. For this I thank you so much!
By the way your photos look great 👍🏼
Hello Nanung! Thanks so much for your kind words. It’s good to know that others find my approach interesting. I am finishing the next post, which will be a little comparison of the Ricoh GR II and a Pen-F with the Panasonic 14/2.5 — I hope you will find that to be also interesting! Thanks again for visiting the blog and for commenting!
Hi, Andrea! Have you already made this post? I can’t find it. It sounds amazingly interesting. Because I’m still choosing between these two wonderful cameras!
Hi Hujinn! I am changing the post a bit, because I understood I don’t want to make a technical comparison. I will do something more practical instead! The text is done, I just need to shoot a couple more photos for it 🙂
Andrea – Great post on using the Pen-f.
When I made the switch from Canon in December of 2015 after having shot it since the late 80’s, it was per the advice of a colleague, mentor and friend who was an Olympus Visionary at that time. I first went with first generation Em5’s and once I got use to how they operate, I began to find the freedom of shooting m43.
My background is in photojournalism with an emphasis now on documentary, street, travel and also shooting family and weddings in a documentary style.
I wanted the Pen-f so much, I purchased and started working with 3 of them in July of 2019 along with all my compact primes from the 12mm f/2 to the outstanding 75mm f/1.8 that I had acquired since getting the EM5’s. I can carry all three cameras and lenses in my Domke J-803 Digital Satchel and modified 4 compartment insert. Even though they are discontinued and becoming a sought after camera by enthusiasts, I use them because they are the best compromise for size and IQ. I shoot in marginal lighting conditions many times and will say that ISO 1600 is my default maximum although in a pinch I will go to 3200. The one thing my subjects say about my cameras & lenses is they don’t look intimidating – and that has shown itself in many of my favorite images. Recently I have flirted with moving to Fuji Xpro/XE series cameras and lenses but I’m not all that impressed with What Fuji has been doing even though they seem to be the darling of many of my colleagues for the genre’s I shoot. At the end of the day, I go right back to my Pen-f’s (along with my EM1’s and their pro zooms for more commercial work) and not worry about the all the pixel peeping fanboys on the inter webs.
Olympus Passion even interviewed me in July of 2020 about why I shoot with “outdated” Pen-f cameras (https://www.olympuspassion.com/2020/07/24/visual-storytelling-with-olympus-pen-f/). If the tool works for you – it doesn’t matter how old it is. I come from the days of shooting film (I went full time working photojournalist in 1987) – back then you spent money on glass and the body was a film holder for the most part. Things have changed since then but many iconic images were produced with more severe limitations then what the Pen-f imposes (ISO 200 Kodachrome was considered High speed color slide film)
At the end of the day – did one capture the moments as you intended? I think too many look to technology to make up for a lack of real creativity. Sterile, technically perfect images doesn’t make a compelling image.
Hello Cliff, thanks for sharing your story, it is always interesting to learn about other experiences.
At some point in the past I also considered Fuji, but after doing some comparisons with my m43 kit I understood there was no practical reason for switching. On the contrary, Olympus’ stabilization made the Pen-F much more versatile than the X/Pro / XE line that I was considering. Yes the Fuji do have a slightly better image quality, all exposure parameters being equal, but it is not nearly enough for justifying a change of system.
The Pen-F is one of my all time favorite cameras, especially when paired with a small and good lens like the Zuiko 25mm 1.8 or the Panasonic 15mm 1.7, or with some adapted vintage lens like the Helios 44M f2 or the Zeiss Planar 50mm f1.7.
I read your interview, thanks for the link! It is very interesting and the photos are a great example of what the Pen-F can produce if handled by a photographer with a vision and photographic culture.
Thanks again for reading and commenting, have a great time shooting!
Thank you for the article, Andrea. Truly enjoyed it and the photographs that duly accompanied. I am sure there are numerous schools of thought, but I agree that to enjoy a camera as an object in its own right encourages me to learn about it and use it. The Pen F strikes me as a thing of beauty! Happily I own one having invested in an Olympus EP 5 hence having a range of prime lenses, thence deciding to take the financial plunge of the f. These days, it appears feasible to pick up some sweet lenses at affordable prices. I wanted to take this moment to extol the lumix 25 mm 1.4 Leica derivative. It gives fabulous results straight out of camera to my eye. Again, thank you for taking the time to write so extensively and interestingly. I hope you, your family and friends are safe and well.
Hello Seymour, thank your for your comment. I think Pen-F stands indeed as one of the most beautiful digital cameras, it’s a pity Olympus could not evolve it into a proper line of cameras –– small, beautiful, versatile ones. Fuji did something similar, exploring the market for vintage looking designs, but I confess I have never been a fan of Fuji. Olympus could have done the same, building upon their excellent technology and heritage. We can luckily enjoy the Pen-F as it is, a wonderful little camera. that paired with high quality glass can produce marvellous images. I have been curious about the Panasonic 25mm 1.4 but never got one because I am quite happy with the Zuiko 25mm 1.8 –– but maybe one day I will get one and try it, I am curious! I had a Panasonic 12mm 1.4 (which I often regret selling, but 24mm focal length is a bit too wide for me) and I still have a Panasonic 15mm 1.7 which is almost always on the Pen-F, being with its 30mm as close as possible to a good quality 28mm equivalent lense for m43. I had the Panasonic 14mm 2.5 but I found it to be lacking in terms of image quality. Thanks again for commenting and reading, and for your kind wishes –– I also wish you and your family the best, especially during the crazy, difficult times we are witnessing and living.
Hi Andrea,
Thank you for such a wonderful and details article. I love the way you described the Pen F and how it works. I just got one recently with the 14-42 compact lens and loving the setup.
I am an amateur photographer whose normal gear is Pentax and then I got into m43 with the EM5 and then EM5II. After a year sold away as I wanted the Pentax K1 Full Frame camera and then in 2020, the m43 bug hit me again as I wanted something light for travel. Though it was just the beginning of the pandemic, I bought the Panasonic GX8 with the 12-35/2.8. I now have 2 20megapixel cameras from 2015 & 2016.
I shoot different genres for fun with some buddies and use whichever camera depending on what we shoot.
Thanks for your comment, Felix! I heard the GX8 is a very good camera, and the 12-35 2.8 is a wonderfully versatile lens. Combos like that are what makes the m43 system shine!
Hi Andrea,
Another fun post! Marketing departments have made camera purchasing extremely daunting for anyone who is just entering the fold. I’m always happy to see you preaching the merits of going with your heart, it’s a great way to choose gear -and just about anything else.
Cheers,
Brandon
Hi Brandon! I am glad you liked the post. How we feel while using a camera is a very important detail, especially because it happens far from marketing’s endeavours! Too bad it is often ignored in favor of numeric parameters, which are definitely easier to marker, but sometimes much less relevant. See you around!
Andrea, this post is still finding people, and you are still getting an important message across with it!
I really agree with so much of what you say with regards to approach to photography here, even if I am often one of the first sucked into marketing hype and obsessing over sharpness ratings in reviews.
I’m (still) looking for a digital camera that is as fun and inspiring to shoot as my favourite film cameras, and the Pen F looks like the next one to try. This article was a huge benefit to me.
With thanks
JP
Hi John, thank you very much for your nice comment! At the moment I sold all of my m43 lenses except the Olympus 25mm 1.8 and 45mm 1.8, with the 25mm always on the Pen-F — at some point I thought the Panasonic Leica 15mm 1.7 was the perfect lens for the Pen-F, so I bought it — but after using it for some time I realised I just didn’t fall in love with the lens, and I sold it. Something was just not right to my eyes. The Panasonic 15mm 1.7 is a very good lens, but it just didn’t work for me, which proved me that the qualities of a lens also go past the formal compliance to a bunch of parameters: I do love 28mm as focal length on full frame, and the Panasonic 15mm becomes a 30mm on m43, and it was super sharp and bright, small, well built, with a nice pseudo-Leica design, but I just found out myself using the Olympus 25mm 1.8 and 45mm 1.8 much more often. So my current point of view on the Pen-F is that it’s a camera really built for the set of small Olympus 1.8 lenses. And for me it’s especially pleasant to use with the 25mm. Thanks again for reading and commenting! Have a great day!
As a poor to mediocre golfer, tennis player and photographer, I am aware that I am the chief source of income and the key target for companies peddling the latest golf clubs, tennis racquets and camera equipment. As with all marketing efforts, success depends on obtaining an accurate profile of the target consumer. Though I can find no reliable statistics, I think it reasonable to assume that people like me are permanently tempted by the promise of new technology: we are suckers for the ‘magic bullet’. The professionals surely find the whole discussion faintly amusing. (Most of the pros I know still swear by the Nikon 850.) In our heart of hearts, we know it’s the singer not the song but we feel obliged to talk the talk rather than get out and capture images. This is not to deny utility of technical innovation in helping us capture the image -especially in niche areas like sports and wildlife photography- but the heated debates about sensor size, DOF, dynamic range etc. are food and drink to the executives at Canon, Sony, Nikon etc. Sadly, I have the lovely PEN-F in a dry cabinet begging for a worthy subject.
Thanks for your comment, Kevin! It’s beautifully written and inspiring. I always thought the search for subjects is really at the center of the whole photography matter — and yet I confess I have been lost in the search for that impossible camera/lens holy grail, for so long! Lately I started becoming less and less interested in cameras and lenses, and I’m truly glad for that! Other photographers ask me why didn’t I switch to a Z9 or Z8 yet, and the answer is that I just feel great with the D850, it does all I need and it delivers more quality than most of my clients need or expect. It seems I escaped marketing’s seduction — and I hope it stays that way! 🙂
Thanks for the wonderful article! I’m using my 7 years old PenF. I sometimes found the image not very clear. Yesterday I was taking photo of my piano tuner at home and I didn’t want to interrupt him so I used the silent shutter. Then I noticed that electronic shutter is surprisingly sharper. Tested with mechanic shutter and it was bad. I bought 12-40 Pro before and I found it not as sharp as advertised so I sold it. I also wonder if the loss of quality is caused by the damage to my PenF years ago, when I placed it on top of my dad’s car and forgot it and we drove away on the high way and it fell from the car to hit the road. (Yes I’m so proud my PenF is still strong after the horrible accident). After I noticed the difference between electric and mechanic shutter. I took 3 lenses out yesterday to take pictures and test mechanic, anti-shock and silent shutters. The truth is as you wrote here, around S 1/100 to 1/80 the shutter shake was horrible. It’s worse on telephoto lens like 45mm. And placing the camera on a surface only reduces the effect. I didn’t know this but I have been using it for 7 years! Did I also sold my 12-40 because I didn’t realize this! Wish I could learn this earlier. I will start to shoot anti-shock from now on.
PenF is a great camera I wish they can update a PenF II soon.
Hi Donnie! I am glad you found helpful info in the article. I remember being disappointed because of all the blurred photos I was getting out of the camera, and discovering the shutter shock issue and how to fix it was what saved my love story with the Pen-F 🙂 I actually found the shutter shock to appear around 1/60 and stay until 1/120 or something like that. It’s good they included a system for dealing with this problem. Have a good time with your Pen-F! 🙂