Alex Wise Photography

Olym­pus have offi­cially announced they will be releas­ing the E-P1 cam­era which may be of inter­est to some. Nor­mally I don’t get that excited over releases by Olym­pus but this is one to watch. The spec­i­fi­ca­tions seem quite nice as you can read below but it’s mostly the styling that draws me in, beautiful.

Just an edit on this post as I missed it, Olym­pus are giv­ing 20 peo­ple the oppor­tu­nity to show off this cam­era and a lucky 3 top pho­tog­ra­phers will get to keep the cam­era! Enter here

From: Aki­habara News

“The E-P1, the New Micro FourThirds Cam­era from Olym­pus is now offi­cial. Our 12Mpix Canera with IS is packed in a quite ele­gant “retro” body, with a nice 3” LCD and offer with a 14-42mm kit lens.
Our Cam­era is capa­ble of record­ing 720/30p movie as well as offer­ing dif­fer­ent Art Fil­ters (Pop Art, Soft Focus…), and offer­ing an ISO Speed up to 6400 thanks to its TruePic V image proces­sor.

Ham­burg, 16 June 2009 – When Olym­pus launched the leg­endary Pen series of cam­eras in 1959, this bold and rev­o­lu­tion­ary achieve­ment rewrote the his­tory of pho­tog­ra­phy. Designed by renowned style guru Yoshi­hisa Mai­tani, the Pen rep­re­sented the per­fect mar­riage of sim­plic­ity, style and per­for­mance. Five decades later the Olym­pus pas­sion for inno­va­tion is still set­ting the pace.

With the release of the E-P1, the dig­i­tal era’s next gen­er­a­tion Olym­pus Pen has arrived: mir­rors are no longer a nec­es­sary com­po­nent for dig­i­tal cam­eras with inter­change­able lenses. The first ground­break­ing Olym­pus Micro Four Thirds model impresses with its incred­i­bly small size, retro style, and ease of use – with­out giv­ing up any of the ben­e­fits of D-SLR qual­ity. ??This new ultra-compact hybrid device can even record HD qual­ity movies with depth of field and Art Fil­ter effects famil­iar from still pho­tog­ra­phy. Nat­u­rally, the E-P1 packs all the advan­tages of Olym­pus imag­ing tech­nol­ogy e.g. image sta­bil­i­sa­tion, a dust reduc­tion sys­tem, and bright inter­change­able lenses. It will be avail­able for pur­chase in July 2009.

Tech­nol­ogy and design in per­fect har­mony
Com­bin­ing mod­ern tech­nol­ogy with the time­less style of the clas­sic Olym­pus Pen series, the removal of the mir­ror box allows the Olym­pus Pen E-P1 to be reduced to a remark­ably com­pact size. Such mirror-less con­struc­tion is also the foun­da­tion for a stun­ning new design.

A styl­ish metal fin­ish and the optional FL-14 flash give the cam­era a retro-look rem­i­nis­cent of the clas­sic Olym­pus Pen F. Through its com­pact­ness and usabil­ity this leg­endary cam­era became one of the most pop­u­lar and rev­o­lu­tion­ary prod­ucts in the his­tory of photography.

Not just a pretty face: D-SLR qual­ity in com­pact form
To match its high-end look, the E-P1 has been fit­ted with the lat­est inno­v­a­tive Olym­pus tech­nolo­gies to deliver D-SLR qual­ity images. In addi­tion to in-camera image sta­bil­i­sa­tion, it is accom­pa­nied by the first Olym­pus inter­change­able lenses spe­cially designed for the new Micro Four Thirds for­mat: the M. ZUIKO DIGITAL 17mm 1:2.8 Pan­cake (34mm*) and M. ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 14-42mm 1:3.5–5.6 (28-84mm*) lenses.

To guar­an­tee a wide range of shoot­ing styles, the new model is com­pat­i­ble with all Micro Four Thirds lenses and, via an adapter, the full range of exist­ing Four Thirds lenses. Adapters are also avail­able for OM lenses and those made by other man­u­fac­tur­ers. For unbeat­able pre­ci­sion, a 12.3 Megapixel Live MOS sen­sor and the Olym­pus Pen E-P1’s new TruePic V image proces­sor ensure all your pre­cious mem­o­ries are saved as crisp and clear images or movies.

The new pro­cess­ing engine guar­an­tees ultra-high pro­cess­ing speeds as well as pro­fes­sional image qual­ity at up to an incred­i­ble ISO 6400. It also enables the appli­ca­tion of Art Fil­ters to both movies and still images.

New modes for unlim­ited self-expression
The E-P1 boasts a vari­ety of cre­ative E-System fea­tures allow­ing pho­tog­ra­phers to explore new artis­tic pos­si­bil­i­ties. Inspired by the semi-professional E-30, a choice of six Art Fil­ters lends images a new flair. The Pop Art fil­ter, for exam­ple, infuses a pic­ture with colour in order to cre­ate a more intense, joy­ful feel. Fur­ther fan­tas­tic fil­ters include Pin Hole, Soft Focus, Pale & Light Colour, Light Tone and Grainy Film.

And so you’re never left won­der­ing what your party would have looked like through a kalei­do­scope, they can also be applied right in the cam­era after a pic­ture has been taken. Other effects can be cre­ated using the Multi Expo­sure mode, which allows sev­eral RAW images to be super­im­posed in real-time. Mul­ti­ple Expo­sure mas­ter­pieces can then be cre­ated on the fly in shoot­ing mode, or later in edit­ing mode. Cre­ativ­ity is fur­ther sup­ported with a choice of four aspect ratios. What’s more, the E-P1 truly breaks new ground with the option of video record­ings that were pre­vi­ously impossible.

Not only does the cutting-edge video func­tion allow the appli­ca­tion of Art Fil­ters, but it also includes the abil­ity to vary depth of field, angle of view, and aut­o­fo­cus dur­ing record­ing. And of course, this can be done with all lenses. It records up to an incred­i­ble 5 min­utes of high-resolution HD (1280x720p) at 30fps in one sin­gle shot. The result? You’ll never miss a cru­cial moment – from the high­light of the party to that flashed smile on the cat­walk. Movies can be recorded and played back in AVI for­mat, at both stan­dard 4:3 or wide screen 16:9 aspect ratios.

To take the guess­work out of achiev­ing sharp focus, shift­ing elec­tronic image sta­bil­i­sa­tion (Dig­i­tal IS) ensures per­fect pic­tures every time. Con­ve­nient trans­fer and view­ing on mod­ern dis­plays is no prob­lem since the Olym­pus Pen E-P1 is HDMI com­pat­i­ble. And since some mem­o­ries look par­tic­u­larly good framed on the wall, high-resolution still images can be shot at the touch of a but­ton while record­ing movies.

The E-P1’s high qual­ity stereo record­ing abil­ity will ensure your movies sound crisp and clear, whether you want to film your own music video or send a heart­felt mes­sage to a friend. It ben­e­fits from Olym­pus’ lat­est audio tech­nolo­gies, includ­ing high qual­ity PCM recording.

Effort­less han­dling and full con­trol
The newly devel­oped Live Con­trol inter­face ensures effort­less oper­a­tion: it is incred­i­bly easy to use and the effects of selected func­tions can be viewed imme­di­ately on the 7.6cm/3.0” Hyper­Crys­tal LCD. In addi­tion to easy focus­ing for sharp and crisp shots, an intel­li­gent i-Auto option also allows the cam­era to auto­mat­i­cally adjust to six com­mon scene modes such as por­trait, land­scape and night.

What’s more, sub­jects can be sure they will always look their best with e-Portrait – a prac­ti­cal option that smoothes away wrin­kles and elim­i­nates imper­fec­tions and blem­ishes. This way every­one can look like a top model, espe­cially when they appear on TV via the prac­ti­cal HDMI out­put. SD card com­pat­i­bil­ity elim­i­nates con­cerns about stor­age by pro­vid­ing ample space for recorded images and movies as well as con­ve­nient file stor­age and transfer.

A must have for style hounds and those seek­ing unbeat­able per­for­mance with­out the weight and clum­si­ness of tra­di­tional D-SLRs, the Olym­pus Pen E-P1 is avail­able in two styl­ish options: sil­ver or white. The new model and its two accom­pa­ny­ing Micro Four Thirds lenses will hit stores in July 2009.”