Olympus PEN F is the gorgeous retro digital camera you've been waiting for
There's no company that knows how to build retro cameras the way Olympus does.
The new PEN F is quite possibly the most retro mirrorless digital camera the company has ever created. I dare say it's even more retro than the company's high-end OM-D mirrorless cameras. It's not just old-school aesthetics — the camera's got a dial on the front for quickly switching between different color modes to emulate the look of film.
The digital PEN F's design pays homage to the original PEN F film camera released in 1963. The resemblance is obvious when the cameras are next to each other. You can tell just by looking at it that the engineers and designers sweated all of the details from the font to the knurled metal dials.
Like Olympus's other Micro Four-Thirds format mirrorless cameras, the PEN F's top is covered with dials and the backside has buttons crammed into every piece of its body. In the era of touchscreens, the dial and button overload may feel a bit much, but I love it.
The OM-D E-M5 Mark II introduced the ability to take several images and stitch them together into a 40-megapixel shot. The PEN F, with its higher resolution images, takes eight photos and composites them together into a 50-megapixel picture.
New for an Olympus camera is the ability to register information (lens name, focal length, aperture) for old Olympus lenses, for inclusion in your images's EXIF data.
As mentioned earlier, there's a Color Profile Control dial on the front of the camera that applies live filters during shooting to help recreate a film-like aesthetic in images. Twist it and you can switch between several modes (Monochrome Profile Control, Color Profile Control, Art Filters and Color Creator).
For the first time on a PEN digital camera, there's a built-in electronic viewfinder (EVF). You can buy an external EVF and clip it on via the hot shoe on Olympus's existing PEN digital cameras, but it's an extra cost, not to mention it looks ugly. The OLED EVF on the PEN F has the same clarity and resolution as the E-M10 Mark II with 2.36 million dots. It also has the same simulated optical-viewfinder (S-OVF) mode that recreates the feeling of looking through an optical viewfinder (i.e. larger dynamic range) on a DSLR. The EVF is positioned to the left side of the camera, just like a rangefinder, and as such, it makes it a versatile camera for street photography.
IMAGE: OLYMPUS""
On the backside of the camera, there's a 3-inch touchscreen that flips out with its vari-angle hinge. The hinge is useful for taking photos from different heights and squeezing the camera into tight places. Flipping the LCD screen also protects it from getting scratched up.
Once again, Olympus has chosen not to include any 4K video recording. The PEN F records video at up to 1080p full HD resolution and also shoots 4K timelapses (which are composited together into a video clip)— same as the OM-D E-M10 Mark II.
IMAGE: OLYMPUS
There's no denying the fact Olympus has built a gorgeous camera that's packed chock-full of technology and features. As you'd expect, a premium camera comes with an equally premium price. The camera body alone will cost $1,199.99 when it's released in March. The company says it has no plans to sell any bundles with lenses.
That's $100 more than Olympus's OM-D E-M5 Mark II and $550 more than the OM-D E-M10 Mark II, so do your homework before making any buying decisions.