Olympus PEN E-P1

After a carefully constructed teaser campaign Olympus officially launched the E-P1, its first Micro Four Thirds camera in June 2009.The E-P1 is a compact mirrorless interchangeable lens camera that mimics the styling of the company's Pen range that was popular in the 1960s and 70s. The camera is built around an image-stabilized 12 megapixel sensor and incorporates a 3.0"" LCD, but lacks a built-in viewfinder of any sort, or a flash. Arguments will continue to rage about the E-P1's relatively conservative feature set and performance but few could find any serious fault with its image quality, which is easily as good as most SLRs at a similar price point. Yes, it's fractionally noisier than the best APS-C models (particularly if you turn the noise filter off to get the maximum detail), and yes, the dynamic range isn't as good as the very best-in-class cameras, but honestly we're splitting hairs here. Our overall impression of the E-P1's image quality was and remains overwhelmingly positive.