Olympus PEN – The Ultimate Camera For Travel

What’s the characteristic of a digital camera best suited for travel? Lightweight and compact so it’s easy to carry along travel? Largest image sensor size possible so it can capture best possible travel photos? Versatile features so it can make composition fast and accurate? Flexible enough so lenses could be exchangeable with options to use either  long zoom or fast lense? “Bingo! You’ve got it all right!” All the above’s are ‘must-have’ characteristics of a true digital camera for travel.

Can you get one in the current market? Before this, we have to sacrifice certain features for another features. We have to sacrifice image quality for portability. We have to sacrifice our luggage space for best photo quality. Not anymore! Now we have the best camera for travel. It’s the Olympus PEN E-P1! Why I say so eventhough I didn’t own one in actual fact? After reading its specs and looking at its sample photos, you would agree with me. Before that, I need to clarify that I’m not paid for this post. I got to know this camera from advertisement recently and this post is only my opinion to this PEN. However, if you think it’s the camera you need, you may support this travel blog by buying it online from Amazon so I could earn some commission 🙂

Olympus PEN E-P1 weighs only 335gm (body only), as light as many other ordinary compact cameras. Its dimension of 120mm x 70mm x 35mm is just as small as any other compact’s. It has the Micro Four Third system which deploys a half frame (crop-factor-2) sized Live-MOS image sensor with 12.3 million pixels that is as big as many other DSLR. As I said before, your captured image quality is affected mainly by digital camera image sensor size (What is image sensor? It’s basically acts like film in old days to capture light signal). The bigger the sensor, the larger the area to receive lights, and the higher the photo quality would be. That’s what the compact cameras always lack except this amazingly designed Olympus PEN E-P1! It has the image quality of DSLR with the size of compact cameras!

I’ve checked this sample photos from Olympus PEN official website. Though I’ve reduced its file size from 7MB to 1.2MB for blog purposes, quality of the photo is still good. Off course we can’t compare it with other top DSLR camera or Full-Frame digital camera, the image is way sharper and more defined than any other compact cameras. Noise level at ISO200 is very minimum which is comparable with DSLR quality already! Not only that, it still has the versatility of compact camera like Live View, filter effects,multi scenes selection, sensor auto cleaning and video recording features are all available in this Olympus PEN E-P1 camera.

Olympus Pen EP1 is one single camera combining both DSLR and compact camerass’ feature and advantages. However, its list price is also combining both DSLR and compact camera’s price! (Its hefty price tag of USD799 is even more expensive than my Nikon D60! 🙁 ). I believe it still will have its market especially for those travellers like me who prefers to carry light with only one camera waist bag rather than luggages full of lenses, flash light, tripod and so on… – Travel Feeder.

About The Author

Cecil Lee

The author is an avid traveler and photography hobbyist who loves to share with others his travel and photo-taking experience in many popular tourist destinations around Europe, Asia and Australasia. Read the exciting stories with many photos captured on his journeys.