Early February 2016 I was sent the new Olympus Pen-F by my dear friends at Olympus. I’m an E-M5 Mark II user and absolutely love that camera with nearly nothing to complain about. Yet the Pen-F still has a lot to offer on a different level.
It’s a true street photography camera and the more I use it the more I’m falling for it.
(oops... crappy phone photo)
Here are the main reasons why:
- It’s a tad smaller than the E-M5 Mark II, and in street… smaller definitely is better. It fits in a big winter jacket’s pocket.
- Love the shutter sound, or rather the lack of noise. Having used the Sony A7RII, I was shocked how loud it is making it not really great for street photography. It actually put me off that camera all-together.
- The Mono mode is excellent. It's fully customisable (level of grain, level of vignette, colour filters and intensity of these, contrast, sharpness, highlights, shadows, mid-tones). This means that you can really achieve a quite unique look from having so many variants. A black and white photographer’s dream really!
- The colour mode is also equally as customisable, I particularly like how each colour can individually be tweaked, more saturation… less saturation…
- The two previous benefits lead to a last one… Less time in Lightroom or Photoshop, more time out there shooting.
The only two things I think need to be addressed/considered in the future by Olympus to make a better street photography camera are (and were on the E-M5 Mark II as well):
- The camera is too slow to wake up from sleep mode… I’ve lost shots because of that. Then if you disable sleep mode the battery just won’t last.
- The flip screen needs to revert to how it was for the E-M1 or E-M10… it needs to flip up/down only. There is no need for a fully articulate 360 degrees screen which makes for very awkward use with the screen hanging out from the side of the camera. It’s a video type of screen which the Pen-F isn’t.
It doesn’t have weather sealing but I never have really felt the need for that. I rarely shoot under torrential rain.
So overall, I love that camera and will be shooting lots in the coming weeks.
Nico