5 Dyptichs with an Olympus Pen EF

For your consideration, an Olympus Pen EF. Released in 1981 this little camera makes me happy, let me tell you about its best qualities! The Pen EF has a nice little 28mm lens. It is fastest in bright sunlight, and with the flash!

The Pen EF comes potentially loaded with any of Fujifilm’s original film emulsions built into removable film rolls with 24 or 36 exposures!

The Pen EF fits in your pocket!

The Pen EF is easy to use! Simply frame your subject and depress the shutter button above the film advance or thread on a cable released and take a selfie.

Now the down sides to the Pen EF; The focus is only good for everything past about 1 meter, and the pictures speak to this limitation, but honestly…who needs to focus nowadays with AI?. The low light flag pops up all the time even in well lit rooms, and forces you to use the flash or cheat and take a blurry 1/30 shot before the capacitor finishes buzzing up to power the flash. At the start of a new roll of film I routinely forget to change the ISO setting to match.

Even with these minor issues, the Pen EF is one of my favorite cameras. It is so sweet and simple. It’s purely a point and shoot camera with auto exposure. It’s my best half frame camera, because it works and lets me snap photos when I might otherwise be changing the shutter speeds, lenses, or trying to focus an SLR or rangefinder. I have other half frames but they are inferior; I’d use my Kyocera Samurai but the lens is oily. I’d gladly take the Konica AA-35 but the battery compartment keeps falling off, and frankly it doesn’t focus on anything correctly. My second Bell-Howell dial 35 works but is clumsy to use now that the sensor is broken, just like the first one. So for now my half-frame needs are met by the Olympus Pen EF, truly my gem in the rough…well… because my other cameras are broken….

I decided to write this post on the wings of two newly released/ announced half-frame cameras. The future is bright for half-frame film photography, but I’ll probably keep using my Pen EF until I break down and buy a refurbished Pen FT.

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