Olympus Pen E-P3: Pricey, light, lots of controls

I've spent the last three weeks with the soon-to-be released Olympus Pen E-P3, the $899- with-lens successor to previous Pen digital cameras, which originally launched in 2009. The Pen offers Digital SLR-like controls (manual features, no shutter lag, inter-changeable lenses) in a smaller point-and-shoot-size body.

The camera is light, cute and fun to tote around. It's also pricey — a Canon Rebel T3i, with a larger imaging chip and amazing video quality, also sells for $899, with a more extensive array of accessories and available lenses. The Sony NEX line of cameras — which are just as small and cute as the Pen — sell for $500 to $650. Both the Pen and NEX cams are more fun to tote on vacation than the heavier Rebel. (I've illustrated this piece with Pen images from a recent trip to British Columbia.)

What's new with the E-P3? The three big new features are a teeny, but powerful flash, 1080i HD video and touchscreen capability to its 3.5 inch LCD screen.

Olympus boasts in its ads that the Pen is the "world's fastest auto focusing" camera. While we could only compare to the handful of Canons we have lying around the home office, the focus seemed to respond very well. I can't vouch for whether or not it felt like a world class title winner, but it did find the focus point very well.

The Pen series is aimed at point-and-shooters who want more control of their images and better quality, and they'll certainly get that with the Pen. Images are way sharper, and you get great manual controls such as the ability to under- or over- expose and choices of shutter speeds and F stops.

Adding the flash is a help — previous models didn't have one — but the new built-in flash feels more like the overbearing point-and-shoot style. My initial images of my wife had her looking like a ghost until I tweaked the flash setting (this is a nice touch, Olympus!) down to ¼ power.

Olympus has boosted the ability to shoot in low light, increasing the ISO settings all the way up to 12,600. While the manufacturer says you'll get your best results at under 800 ISO, I shot some perfectly acceptable images at 2400 and 3200.
However, getting to the ISO settings is a pain. It's stuck in the menu settings, accessible by clicking the OK tab on the back of the camera several times. I wish this vital setting wasn't so hidden. This process slowed me down.

The lens selection for Olympus's Pen series still falls short compared with Canon and Nikon, but Olympus is adding more all the time.

If you're looking for a cute, light camera that will take dramatically better images than your point- and-shoot, the Pen is a good option. At $900, I wouldn't part with that kind of change for this camera, but that's me. But if you've got it, you'll get a very nice camera.