Olympus PEN E-P3

I've been using the E-P3 for only a month or so, and after a gap of 25 years from my wonderful Canon A-1. Moving from film to digital has been made very easy by Olympus, and I'm getting back to looking for shots and simply taking them, rather than worrying about how to use the camera. It's a great piece of kit, and both lenses will give me what I want from a shot. I'm looking forward to expanding the capabilities with other lenses and accessories over the next year. Highly recommended.

Love the new camera, particularly the touch screen as it saves having to go into the menu all the time. Bought 2 lenses so I am covered for everything that I want to do.

Love it. Taking so many more photos as I was leaving my bulky SLR as home as it was a sometimes a "hassle" Really easy to use and the options of going manual and having a variety of lens choices is great. It fits into almost any handbag! I just found sometimes the colour seems to be too saturated on skin tones but can be fixed. Hope this is the now the start to a long future of high quality smaller DLSR....

Very easy to use and very high quality pictures. Love my Olympus Pen

I am very impressed with the Olympus PenE-EP3. The large touch screen responds very fast. The controls are easy to operate without Having to resort to the menus. I have used it in taking low light shots and it is stunning. Slower shots of waterfalls etc produce smooth silly water even without a tripod or polarizer. I am very happy with my portraits they are sharp and the touch focus is very quick and accurate. The lenses are amazing giving a wide range of possibilities. I am enjoying using the creative modes getting some amazing shots. This is a very goos camera. I love it!

I bought the PEN3 for a very specific purpose, namely a high quality camera without the weight of my full size camera and lenses. Extreme high altitude is not a place for 3kg worth of gear! The quality is excellent, the HD video brilliant, and with practise it's easy to use. Took a while to get the hang of the settings and using a screen rather than a viewfinder. Glare on the screen can be an issue but that's about all.

My first DSLR camera (although when shopping about the term Hybrid was used regularly) Made the leap forward when my trusty Canon ixus 870 died.

I've had the PEN EP3 on a vacation and the Image quality is fantastic, colours are vibrant without lacking depth in the darker tones. photo's look great on the iMac. The EP-3's menu's are relatively intuitive.. the point and shoot novelty on the touch screen panel isn't as practical as they would have you believe, but the fast focusing on the panel and via the button is fantastic. the build quality feels solid and lightweight at the same time. the biggest attractions where the size for a dslr, focus and image quality. The touch screen is far from iPod quality re scrolling through pics, but the image is fantastic. Continue to be happy with those features. it's a stylish bit of kit.

the item i'm not so fond of, is the video. very sad to say that the ixus had better quality video.. the shutter roll, leaving a warping effect on the footage is very noticeable and after multiple attempts I can't get a decent converter for AVHCD, so the 1080i is fairly useless. this is very disappointing for a camera of this price range... but hey, could be the monkey on the other end not working the controls properly...

if you want something you can carry about comfortably for dslr quality photo's (without the size of a dslr), with the benefits above.. then def worth a look. the price and video quality are the two things to be mindful.

I'm not sure if it's a pro or a con but people notice this camera. It's retrostyling never fails to attract attention. But I love that it takes images equal to a similarly priced DSLR but I can still fit it in my pocket. It's operation is simple enough to be a point and shoot, but has all the features and control you could hope for in a professional camera.
I'm loving my PEN

I bought this camera (a twin lens kit) to replace a Nikon D80. As an enthusiastic bushwalker and photographer who likes to combine the two, I found the DLSR system simply too heavy and bulky to carry for long distances through the bush. A point and shoot camera was too limiting, so I decided to try the E-P3, seeing it as a solid and well built camera able to stand up to a few knocks. After using it in a variety of conditions for more than two months, I feel able to make a judgement of it capabilities.
First handling. The camera is small and has quite a few buttons on the back where I like to rest my right thumb, making it difficult to avoid inadvertently pressing a button that I didn't mean to, though I'm getting used to this now. Apart from that, it's light, and with the optional and excellent electronic viewfinder, very satisfying to use in bright daylight. The menus are complex, but no more so than most modern cameras, and with familiarity, are easy to navigate. I don't use the touch screen as I find that if I carry the camera around my neck and leave it turned on, the camera is constantly focusing and often shooting just from touching my side. This quickly flattens the battery and fills the card. But it's pretty handy when using the camera on a tripod to be easily able to select the focus point. The auto focus is as good as Olympus claims, very quick and accurate in almost all conditions, even when grabbing a quick shot of something like a flying bird with a telephoto lens.
Image quality is very good, at least as good as my D80 as long as you don't set it to more than ISO 800 when noise becomes a problem. Detail is well rendered, the exposure metering is amazingly accurate and seems to be able to handle the extreme dynamic range of Australian light. Highlights are rarely blown and detail is maintained in the shadows. (I shoot RAW, so I can't comment on in camera processed JPEGS.) The image stabilisation system is useful, but a tripod is essential for longer lenses to avoid what appears to be a double image.
The kit lenses are decent if not outstanding. They display considerable chromatic aberrations on the edges, though these are at least easily fixed in software. Otherwise they are respectably sharp, show good contrast and seem to be almost immune to flaring, even shooting into the light, though they do loose a bit of contrast.
Overall I'm impressed and happy with the E-P3.

A great camera for the every day person which takes beautiful photos as a point and shoot, but has the options of many manual settings and interchangable lenses should you wish to get more interested in photography as a hobby.

I have just spent a month travelling around northern Italy. I bought this camera specifically because of its light weight, option of good interchangeable lenses, and having the option of a viewfinder. The light weight factor was a godsend, the viewfinder was fantastic except I had one occasion when it jammed in the up position. This was rectified by the good fortune of someone having a magnifying glass enabling them to see what had happened. I tend to use aperture priority most of the time. My biggest frustration was the response of the Sub dial, when wanting to change the aperture quickly. At times it would NOT respond, and I would miss the shot I wanted. I did miss not having more controls at my finger tips as with my big DSLR, but adjusted to this without too much difficulty. Battery life is limited-if one was out from dawn until dusk, photographing all day, 2 batteries were not enough. My other complaint was not with the camera but the CONCISE instruction manual. Why isn't a full manual provided?? It was annoying reading the Concise manual and references made to certainly page numbers, but this did NOT relate to the Concise manual, it was assumed one had a FULL version in front of them, I did not.

Pros : Easy to use. Build quality ( neat package).Enjoyable large LCD screen. Cantelever side flash arrangement. Compact.

Cons: Plastic rims ( on Twin lens kit). Slightly Bulky for a compact high end camera( width as long as the DSLR;s)

After approx 1500 photos i can say that this camera ticks all the boxes, compact for the quality of the performance which is right up with the full DSLR models & far superior to the smaller compacts. Easy to use , extremely fast operational speed....from the press of the go button ,it will focus,set exposurespeed & aperture & take the picture in less than a second.
A thought for improvement would be a better warning system that the battery is getting very low.While the battery life is good, twice it stopped dead on me out in the field without my noticing the battery indicator was low..
The compact 14/42 lens covered 80% of requirements & the 40/150 covered the rest. However a 4 to 5 times lens say 16 to 75 would cover 95% & save a number of lens changes. Hopefully this in between lens may become available in the future.
My only other issue was that the touch screen which I did not use kept overriding the off control & taking pictures when i inadvertantly touched the screen. Simply deleted later but annoying.

Let's skip the technical bits as you can read all about the specs elsewhere.

Bought it because I have reached the limitation of what my LX5 can do, yet I don't want too lug arounf my DSLR all the time.

It certainly does very well regarding picture quality, very close to any budget-mid range APS-C sized sensor DSLRs. Operation is quick, in fact one of the fastest cameras I've used.

I have heard complaints against the styling, saying it's trying too hard to look retro, I disagreed, it looks great, no matter which way you look at it.

My only complaint would be that with a larger lens on (e.g. the new Panasonic Leica DG 25mm f1.4), the whole setup becomes a little unbalanced in the hands, but then the Image Quality more than compensates any flaws such as this.

Regarding the viewfinder, I do wish it had a built in one, I don't agree with the one that fits onto the hot shoe as it destroys the proportion of the package. However I wouldn't dismiss this camera due to the lack of a built-in viewfinder, as you'll find the LCD screen is more than excellent. Regarding losing a bit of stability if you hold your camera too far away from yourself, believe me, you'll soon adjust.

This small camera is a delight to use.
Prime lenses produce good results.

The Canon 5D Mark II has not been used much since the arrival of the Olympus Pen E-P3.