The Olympus Pen is more than a camera, it is a line of cameras which have become iconic, and have even spawned a line of digital based on them. This is mine. It is a very small, compact camera but is is built of solid, heavy metal. It really feels strong and solid in the hands, a little beast.
The controls, those that exist at all, are around the lens and they are very simple, providing automatic exposure based on a very limited range of ISO choices.
It's a beautiful little camera, the design is delightful, but how does it shoot? Well first of all, it's a half frame camera, so the orientation is portrait and takes exactly half of the frame of a 35mm, that is to say 18mmx 24mm.
Being half frame means that a regular 36 roll of film will give you at least 72 exposures, which is an advantage and a disadvantage at the same time. It can take some time to expose 72 frames and the negative is really small, actually pretty much like an APS-C sensor really.
Being auto exposure, it has a novel system for preventing you from shooting if there is too much or too little light. A red flag pops up in the viewfinder if the light levels are bad, although on my model if I keep pressing, the shutter will release anyway.
This camera is seriously unobtrusive, although it is pretty so people may notice you simply because of that. This camera could lend itself well to street photography but you must remember that the orientation is portrait. A very common thing people do with half frame cameras is to shoot 2 images which work together as a dyptych, a little bit cliche but fun, you could go for similar images or even images which contrast each other.
Light and Darkness.
Stairs up and down.
One high contrast shot bleeding into a dark frame.
In all honesty, I don't even remember if the dark frame was intentional. Making dyptychs, almost as pretentious as Lomography (I have four Lomography cameras, so I really don't hate them).
Seriously though, this is one of the cool things for me. Having to think about how to set up shots to work like this forces you to be intentional, this is a really good thing. You do not need to stop at two, you could actually shoot a whole series of images, you could make a narrative from frame one to frame seventy-two. That does sound quite involved, but I think there is the kernel of a good idea in there.
Like all analogue photography, the aesthetic choices start before you even shoot, with the choice of film, this was Ilford Pan F. I like this. Then you shoot to your own brief, intentional, deliberate. I like this too. Then you make choices of how to develop, in this case HC110 dilution B to temper the contrast slightly, I imagine to myself that that is correct.
Just being experimental does not mean that your results are guaranteed to be good of course. Intentionality is great, but there are no guarantees. The top frame of these two is two frames next to each other which were like that in real life as well, not as neat as I thought it might be.
In conclusion, I think the strength of this camera is that it is a small, stylish camera that you really can have with you all the time. It is solid and has no electrics, both great points for a street camera and it does give you a lot of frames per roll of film. I feel there are two many frames for my part, but maybe that's just me. The negs are small, but that doesn't really need to matter that much, just don't expect to enlarge to wall sized prints, although with the right subject matter maybe even that could look good?
It's truly a neat camera, possibly not an allrounder of course, but which camera really is?
I would say if you want a film street camera and you see one of these at a good price, go for it, might be tough to find filters for it though. It does take either 22.5mm which does not cover the light meter or 43.5mm which does. Neat!
The meter on mine does meter a bit hot, so I have to scan the images and adjust slightly, or use ISO 100 film and meter at 200. This works quite well, after this many years the meter in mine is not totally accurate, but this gives me nicely exposed shots outdoors most of the time. Only most of the time because the meter only meters up to EV 17, I feel sometimes it's brighter than that here. I should mention as well that the ISO scale only goes up to 200 which is a shame as it largely rules out lowlight work, or even indoor shots.
So is it worth it? Sure it is. If you could find one for the right price that is, I probably wouldn't pay a hundred dollars for one, fifty would also have me thinking but forty or less for a working copy would work for me. As they say on three blind men and an elephant, your mileage may vary.
Lucien Grey
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