new Olympus Pen series

[Sarasocke]

Not sure where this should go - it's not a DSLR but it is small.
I've been looking at the new Olympus Pen cameras - E-P3, E-PL3 and E-PM1.

My D700 is a wonderful piece of equipment but is really big and heavy to be carrying around and about. With its "best" lense (the 24-70mm) it weighs in at nearly 2kg.
I bought a little Panasonic compact last year, but it doesn't quite meet what I'm after.
The quality of the Panasonic photos isn't bad, as long as the subject is not moving around too much, but I'd like just that little bit more. The new Pens are supposed to have one of the fastest AF around.

Do any of you have any experience with the Pen cameras?

[Hinfrance]

No idea about the cameras, but I do know that Olympus is in some serious financial trouble - more than $670m missing from the balance sheet, whistle blower fired, fraud investigators rummaging through the books, share price collapsed by $2bn . .

[Sarasocke]

Nobody got anything to say about the cameras? Good, bad, rubbish? 

[ABERS]

I think Jinky won one in a competition, and then he sold it.

[Graham]

Sorry i know nothing about the PEN Series, but I also have a D700 and recently bought an Olympus xz1 for the pocket and I can't really fault it.
                     Graham.

[greypoint]

I can't comment on this particular type or model [except to say are'nt some of these type of cameras expensive!] but the one thing Olympus have always had going for them is the quality of even their kit lenses. I know there are people on birdforum who have the similar Panasonic set ups as lightweight alternatives and they seem to get acceptable results. Does the camera have to be really tiny? The D3100 is small and very lightweight and gives very good results - of course you can't af with most primes but they are brining their range up to date with af-s models.

[Malcolm1938]

I only have experience of the olympus E series DSLR cameras and have found their kit lenses and sensor cleaning system to be the best I've used. I do however have 2 friends with Panasonic G1 cameras and they both thing they are great. They went for the Panny because it has a viewfinder (EVF) while the Pen only has a screen on the back.

[Markulous]

Know nothing about the Pen series but when I looked for a suitable P&S for taking out with Dog, I went for the Canon G11 - only other I considered was the Panasonic LX-3 (G12/LX-5 wasn't out then). But I wanted total control in a small package (and thought I wanted a viewfinder - which I never use!!). My On Reflection and Ground Level shots (like most out and about pics I take) are G11 as is the one in the chat of Day in the life of (arguably, much the best shot of those three examples!). Yes, there's shutter lag but it's controllable to an extent and I've taken plenty of action shots with the camera

[Sarasocke]

Thanks for your comments guys!

I like the small compact size and that it doesn't look like a DSLR. Might sound a bit daft, but ... 

From what I've read so far, it seems to be a bit of a battle between the new Pens and the G3 Panasonics, probably similar to the D700/5DMkII or whatever.

If I did buy a Pen I would probably go for the E-PL3 - the medium sized version. As far as I can see the only difference to the E-P3 is 300€ for a built in flash and more art filters, neither of which I really need. The flash can be added on later. The camera can also be fitted with a viewfinder which costs around 100€

The Pen E-PL3 incl. a 14-42 + a 40-150 lense would cost 649€ + viewfinder = 749€. For the camera including two lenses, I don't find this too bad at all.

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-G3KEG-K with a 14-42 lense would cost 602€, incl. a built in flash and a viewfinder. I can't find an equivalent lense to the Oly 40-150, a Panny 45-200 from Amazon would be 315€.

The Nikon 3100 is certainly cheaper at 350€ from Amazon, but then I would be using the lenses I already have .... and they're heavy! The E-PL3 + larger lense weighs about 500gr.

I guess I was hoping that someone would say "I've got the new Pen and it's brilliant" 

I'll have another think 

[Jonathan]

The Olympus PEN (or rather the very similar Trip) was one of "my" first cameras.  My Dad had a couple and I occasionally got to play with them.  For all sorts of reasons I wanted to love the digital PEN when it came out.

Tried it - hated it.  They were close but the Pana was by far the better camera in looks, feel and performance.  And I wanted to want an Olympus

Not seen the v3 but I suspect I'll take a look for old time's sake.  But the Fuji X100 does a great job of satisfying retro camera lust.

[Mick]

But the Fuji X100 does a great job of satisfying retro camera lust.

That does look nice Jonathan http://www.finepix-x100.com/  bet it's got a nice price tag to go with it. (I haven't looked at that yet).

[Sarasocke]

The Fuji seems to cost around 1000€ (Amazon http://www.amazon.de/Fuji-P10NC04120A-Finepix-X100-EU-Ware/dp/B004LWZ88W/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1320054977&sr=8-2), not found much Info about the lense(s) though.

[Oldboy]

But the Fuji X100 does a great job of satisfying retro camera lust.

That does look nice Jonathan http://www.finepix-x100.com/  bet it's got a nice price tag to go with it. (I haven't looked at that yet).

It seems to be around £849. 

Review here: http://www.whatdigitalcamera.com/equipment/reviews/compactcameras/128880/1/fujifilm-finepix-x100-review.html

[Markulous]

Another excellent review here: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/FujifilmX100/

Personally, think it looks a lovely little camera (amd love it's quirkiness) - and that hybrid viewfinder looks the bee's knees! Somewhat put off by the slow 'fly by wire' manual focus and the suggestion that it needs to be two-handed (as main use would be dog-camera this isn't always easy!) - and no reticulating LCD (something I've grown to love!). But then it is 3x what I paid for my G11

[greypoint]

Looking at a couple of dealers second hand stuff there are quite a lot of the earlier version Olympus models for sale. Of course it could just be that people have upgraded to the newer, better, model - or it could be that they just did'nt like them.