Center Valley, Pa. — Olympus celebrated the 50th anniversary of its Pen F camera with the introduction of the Pen E-P5 mirrorless digital compact system camera offering up to a 1/8,000-second shutter speed and built-in Wi-Fi support.
Olympus said it developed the Pen E-P5 to offer discerning photographers a range of advanced automatic and manual tools in a retro-look compact body.
Shipping in May, the Pen E-P5 will carry a $1,000 suggested retail for the body only, and will be offered in a choice of black and silver or white.
At the same time, Olympus will release a $1,450 suggested retail kit including the EP-5 body (in black and sliver) a 17mm f1.8 M.Zuiko digital lens and VF-4 electronic viewfinder.
The new optional high-definition VF-4 provides 1.48x magnification, a 2.36 million-dot LCD, and Eye Detect to turn it on at the right time.
Other features in the E-P5 include an all-metal casing; 16.5-megapixel Live MOS Micro Four Thirds sensor; TruPic VI image processing; built-in flash with an improved, faster 1/320th of a second synch speed; quick start-up; new short-release time lag AF mode, which reduces the time between shots to 0.044 seconds; and 9 fps sequential shooting.
The E-P5’s new Super Spot AF is said to deliver pin-point accurate focus even on extremely small subjects.
New focus peaking brings shots into focus, emphasizing the contours of the point of focus in white or black.
The camera’s in-body five-axis image stabilization mechanism corrects various kinds of camera shaking for both movies and still photos. Multi-motion IS used in combination with this mechanism produces correction performance, especially during movie recording.
A 2-by-2 dial control system on the back and top of the camera aids in manual shooting by providing a lever on the back to quickly move to one of two positions. In the first position, moving the dial at the front of the camera adjusts the aperture while the back dial affects exposure time. In the second position, the dials change the ISO value and white balance. Alternatively, you can use the lever on the back of the camera to assign a range of other functions.
Wi-Fi support is enhanced with quick synching for smart devices. A QR code on the camera’s screen can be scanned by a Smart device to establish the Wi-Fi link. Olympus’ free Olympus Image Share 2.0 smartphone app then synchronizes the smartphone’s and E-P5’s screens to effectively see the camera’s LCD on a phone and control it by touching the smartphone display.
A photo story mode enables capturing a scene from multiple viewpoints and then combines them into a single image to create unique collages inside the camera. New Photo Story+ has how many shots the camera will capture in a series (one to 99) during that time to create images that show the growth of a plant, the drifting of clouds, etc.
A time lapse movie feature converts a series of pictures taken using interval shooting into a movie inside the camera. Twelve available art filters add additional creativity to time-lapse movies as well as still images, and a live bulb mode has been improved by automatically reducing the monitor’s brightness to prevent glare and to display a histogram and the elapsed time of an exposure to more easily shoot stars, light painting and fireworks.
The Olympus Pen E-P5 is equipped with a 3-inch, 1.04 million-dot high-definition tilt-type touch-panel LCD that can be adjusted to face upward at an 80-degree angle and downward at a 50-degree angle.
