Camera Review · Olympus Pen F
Olympus Pen F; the SLR system that fits in a shoe
Produced from 1963 to 1966 by Maitani Yoshihisa, the Pen F is the first and only true half frame SLR in existence. It has 3 iterations; the original Pen F, the Pen FT (1966 to 1972) and the Pen FV (1967-1970). Essentially they are the same camera but with a few differences. The F had a double-stroke advance leaver and the gothic F on the front of the camera. The FT introduced single-stroke advance, a self timer where the gothic F would be on the original, and a TTL light meter (requiring a battery) which diverts some of the light coming through the lens to the meter, rendering the viewfinder noticeably darker than the original F. Finally, the FV, which retains the same single-stroke advance lever and self timer as the FT but drops the light meter, so the viewfinder is brighter once more.
The high quality lenses are usable over all three models, ranging from 20mm all the way up to 800mm with varying aperture sizes of the same lenses, and even a couple (literally) of zooms, a pancake and a macro! There are 18 to choose from, so really is a comprehensive system.
We will be talking about the original Pen F today as this is the one I own and have experience with. I will cover the pros and cons of this camera, a few thoughts about the camera and the 2 lenses I have for it, and I’ll throw some fun facts in at the end!
About the camera
Camera
Olympus Pen F
Lens used
38mm f1.8 Auto-S and 100mm f3.5 Auto-T
Production period
1963-1966
The camera
Using it
I guess we will start with the good bits.
The camera is SIMPLE and fully mechanical. The camera body itself only has one dial on it, the shutter speed dial. This is placed/on the face of the camera, making it easier to twist with one finger without taking the camera away from your eye. Of course this means that you need to know which way the shutter speeds are marked, but its very intuitive to get used to. Because of the dial being where it is, it aesthetically makes the top of the camera very clean.
As well as being simple, it is very small, making it perfect for taking everywhere with you. You can chuck it in most bags without taking up much room, and even with my bigger hands, the ergonomics are perfectly acceptable. But more about its size in the facts section later.
A pro for me for a long time was that the viewfinder of this camera is vertical, rather than horizontal like a usual SLR. Personally I liked this because that’s how I framed most of my images. With the Pen F you get the vertical finder whilst still having the ergonomics of focusing and aperture/shutter speed controls in the usual orientation. I have noticed recently that I am leaning more towards horizontal images again, but even so, using this camera that way around isn’t an issue either as there’s not really any dials or buttons to lose track of!
Now the biggest pro in my opinion, is the build quality. This camera is dense and weighty for its size, but in that confidence inducing way. It feels like it would shrug off a drop from a reasonable height. There’s no rattling parts or loose components and everything moves smoothly, so the tolerances are just right! This sentiment follows through to the lenses as well. In all honesty, It is the closest none Leica camera that I have held that has that same Leica build quality. Even more so than other offerings from Olympus.
Onto the negatives, as there is a couple. My biggest gripe is the focusing screen. There is no split prism, just a central micro prism, so your really focusing by waiting to visually see what part of the image is in focus or not. It’s not too much of an issue at narrower F stops, but when your at f2 and need to critical focus then it can be tricky, especially when the lighting isn’t great. I have heard of people cutting Olympus OM focusing screens to fit however I’m not entirely sure if that’s feasible for most users. You could mitigate this issue by zone focusing though as the lenses are distance and aperture marked.
If you wish to use flash, there is a sync port for a cable, but no hot or cold shoe, so you either need a bracket that fits into the tripod socket with a cold shoe attached, or Olympus made a cold shoe that sits on top of the camera which slides around the viewfinder window to secure itself.
Something that doesn’t bother me, but I can see how it could bother someone else, is that the shutter button is perfectly flush with the top of the camera (and rectangular) and depresses into the body, as apposed to most other cameras which has the shutter button protruding out of the camera and pushes down to meet the top of the camera. This can mean that if you don’t already have your finger in the right position as your about to take a picture, you can fumble trying to search for it without an obvious protrusion to bump up against. I’m not sure if soft release buttons would be usable because it may bump into the top of the camera on the way down? I don’t use them so I haven’t tested this out.
The last negative I can think of has only happened to me once, and it was entirely my fault. As it is a double stroke advance, I tend to really rip it to advance quickly. Not a problem for 99% of the roll, but I wasn’t paying attention to the frame counter (72 photos is a lot and you can get lost in the seemingly endless shots) and didn’t realise I was on my last frame. As usual I whipped the advance leaver once, twice and *CLICK*… I ripped the film right out of the canister. Now I knew what had happened, but word to the wise, if something happens or feels off whilst your shooting, absolutely DO NOT open the camera. You may ruin your entire roll. Instead, just take it to Picture This Film Lab, explain your predicament and they will help you out. In this situation, I took the whole camera in, said that the film had got pulled out of the canister and Paul took it into the back, stuck it in a dark bag, transferred my roll onto a real, put it into a Paterson tank, and Bobs your uncle, my film was safe and sound ready to be developed. Of course, this is something that could happen on any camera if you are determined enough, but just something to be extra wary of near the end of a roll.
Personally, I love this little machine. It’s form factor, build quality and high performing smooooooth focusing lenses make it a joy to use. It just gets out of the way, and once you have got used to the dial locations, you just don’t have to think about the camera itself whilst using it (unless its getting dark, then you have to really concentrate on focusing).
Conclusion
A few words about the lenses. You may think that because of the medium of this camera, the image quality would be lower, however these lenses are so sharp, and to be fair, Picture This Film Lab’s scans are so good, that the difference between half frame and full 35mm is negligible. Yes the grain is more pronounced, but is that a bad thing? I found out recently through adapting the 2 lenses I have onto my *shock horror* full frame digital camera, that the image circle on both of them is just about big enough to cover the whole frame. Of course the focal length changes due to the sensor size change, so there is some vignetting and softness in the corners of the images, but it is because of this that the lenses are so sharp on half frame.
Let me explain.
Due to the image circle of these lenses being almost full frame sized, on half frame you are shooting through the centre portion of the lens, which is the sharpest bit! Meaning you don’t have to worry about the soft corners or vignetting.
The lenses I have are the 38mm f1.8 Auto-S and the 100mm f3.5 Auto-T. The crop factor of half frame to full frame is around 1.4x, which makes these the equivalent focal lengths of 53.2mm and 140mm. I find this to be a very good combination, the 38mm for normal scene setting shots and the 100mm for more detailed story adding shots. A wider lens would be quite nice however they start getting pretty expensive. The 38mm came with the camera when I bought it from West Yorkshire Cameras (RIP) and the 100mm was from eBay fooooor… £47, in perfect condition!
For the price of this camera and some of the lenses, you really can’t go wrong.
I will finish this by saying that my favourite part about the Olympus Pen F is that it is fully mechanical, no batteries, no fuss. I dread to think about the amount of times I’ve reached for a camera and then had to rush around searching for batteries or a charger last minute before a shoot. This thing, just grab it and off you go. It really is that simple.
Finally, I promised you some facts, so here you go.
The designer of this camera, Maitani Yoshihisa, was known for making cameras as small as possible. He and his team were responsible for the OM systems, XA, Trip, Stylus (often known as MJU), the original Pens and of course the Pen F series. All brilliant cameras in there own right, and all very small and compact. In fact, the Pen F is so small for an SLR system, that one of its adverts depicted W. Eugene Smith’s entire Pen F kit neatly housed in a single shoe.
Maitani was also responsible for the unique 0.003mm titanium rotary shutter plane. It is a spinning disc with a hole in it that spins at the allocated shutter speeds. So no shutter curtains, and because of this, you can sync the flash at all shutter speeds, similar to a leaf shutter.
I did hear or read YEARS ago, that this style of shutter plane only works because of the exact format and size of the camera. If it was full frame, the rotary shutter would have to be the size of a washing machine! But as I said, I heard it a long time ago and can’t remember the source, so take that with a grain of salt.
You may notice that although this is an SLR, it doesn’t sport the usual prism hump on top. This is due to the viewfinders vertical orientation and clever sideways flipping mirror, further adding to the cameras small size.
As stated above, W. Eugene Smith used this camera. It appeared to be used for his personal work as he used Leica’s for his assignment work, but was also adopted by many photographers in the early 60’s due to its comparative size to the Barnack Leica’s.
Alongside the 18 lenses manufactured by Olympus, there was also an elusive Carl Zeiss Jena 54mm f2 with a Sonnar design. Not much is known about it though as it may have been a prototype.
That’s all the facts I can think of! Some interesting stuff in there.
Compact, comprehensive, robust and visually timeless, what more could you ask from a camera?
Clarkestreet, out.
Photographs made with the camera © Clarkestreet. Copyright remains with the photographer. Camera photograph © Conor Clarke.
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