The timing of the new Olympus Pen E-P1 isn't a coincidence. It's 50 years since Olympus launched the original Pen, a revolutionary 'half-frame' camera that was eventually developed into an SLR with a 'porro-finder' rather than a conventional pentaprism, a design which resurfaced in the Olympus E-300 and E-330.

There's another non-coincidence here, too – the original Pen was a half-frame format (half a 35mm frame), and the Four Thirds/Micro Four Thirds format is half-frame too.

Olympus cameras have quite a heritage, and the company has exploited it to the full in the design of the E-P1, its first Micro Four Thirds camera. The styling echoes the old chrome-and-leather look of the original Pen cameras, but the technology inside is pure 21st century.

Design and handling

The pre-production mock-up first shown by Olympus at Photokina in 2008 was very different to this, with a classical square shape, but modern, minimalist lines. If you were hoping the finished camera would look like that one, then the E-P1 could be a mild disappointment.

The body itself does have the broad feel of the original Pen series, except for the controls, but the 14-42mm kit lens seems quite out of place. It's not the same as the 14-42mm lens supplied with Olympus's E-series DSLRs. This one is a Micro Four Thirds version with a much shorter back-focus – and also a much more complicated mechanism.

To keep the design compact Olympus has introduced a 'parking' system for closing the lens down to more portable size. That's all very well, but it's a bit of a nuisance having to remember to 'unpark' it before you can use it.

And once it's extended it looks every bit as long as the standard Four Thirds kit zoom, and a good deal less pretty, with a double-barrelled extension and a small front element which rotates during focusing, so filters could be tricky.

Olympus e-p1 top

The alternative to this is Olympus's fixed focal length 14mm f/2.8 'pancake' lens, and this will look more in keeping with the camera's design, even if it is more limited. The other advantage of the pancake lens is that you can get a clip-on optical viewfinder to go with it, though that does cost extra.

At the moment, these are the only two lenses for this camera. You can use conventional Four Thirds lenses via an adaptor, though this too is extra. As is the dedicated external flash, which you may well need because the E-P1 doesn't have one built in.

Now then, the controls. Those on Olympus DSLRs are excellent, but here the designers have gone for something very different. The main dial is a rotating ring around the outside of the navipad on the back of the camera – a design now common on Canon compacts, for example.

The trouble is that the amount of pressure needed to get a proper grip on the knurled edge with your thumb is more than enough to press the directional buttons by mistake instead. These controllers just aren't effective, and the sooner camera designers figure this out the better.

Olympus e-p1 controls

Fortunately, you'll soon work out that you can use the directional buttons instead, and that these do everything the spinning dial does anyway. Or you can use the secondary controller at the top right, a kind of knurled metal cylinder. It's not as easy to use as a conventional finger-operated control dial, but it's a lot better than the main dial.