OM System dashes rumours of new compact PEN M43 camera in development

We recently reported on rumours that OM System was working on a modern iteration of the legendary Olympus Pen series, a camera series that packed a Micro Four Thirds sensor into a compact camera footprint. The source of those rumours was an interview at Japan's CP+ camera show, but it appears as though a new interview, this time conducted by DPReview, has shed some more light on exactly what the OM System executives meant when they said that they had discussed the future of the Pen camera brand. 

For starters, OM System executives confirmed that a lot of thought and planning has gone into a potential Pen line-up refresh, although fans of the series should temper expectations, with OM System executives clarifying that a new Pen camera had not even made it to the drawing board yet. 

“We think the camera's design must realize the concept of the product, so we don't start to decide the camera design before deciding the camera's concept: the product concept must come first. Therefore, we haven't yet decided if the product design for a new Pen will look like the Pen-F or similar to the E-P7 because we haven't decided on the product concept.”

OM System director of product planning, Hiroki Koyama and VP for brand strategy and product planning, Kazuhiro Togashi, were clear that the recently released OM-3 would not be a replacement for the Pen series, stating plainly that the OM-3 and Pen cameras serve different purposes. According to the executives, the Pen is about  “ultimate beauty and the ultimate craftsmanship,” while the “OM-3's core concept is to take authentic and great creative photos.”

This dichotomy is much like the difference between the Fujifilm's X-Pro line-up and the Fujifilm X-T series in that they feature similar capabilities but different goals. 

"There's a different concept between OM-3 and Pen-F series," he explains: "basically the Pen-F series is about ultimate beauty and the ultimate craftsmanship. Whereas OM-3's core concept is to take authentic and great creative photos."

The good news is that OM System does plan to introduce a new Pen camera at some point in the future, and it seems as though the company will respect the original compact design that made the Pen series so loved by enthusiasts. 

The pair of OM System higher-ups also addressed the challenges posed by increasingly powerful smartphone cameras, suggesting that there is still demand for dedicated cameras from those photographers looking for a specific shooting experience and those who want better performance than a smartphone can offer. 

Given that the OM System Pen camera is in the early stages of development, it could easily be two to three years before the compact Micro Four Thirds camera launches. By that time, Canon will have likely launched a slew of new cameras based on the PowerShot V1, and other companies, like Panasonic, may have introduced updated versions of the likes of the Lumix GX series. Until such a time, though, fans of the Micro Four Thirds system and compact retro-styled cameras are stuck with cameras like the Olympus OM-D E-M10 IV (curr. $699.99 on Amazon with a kit lens) and OM System OM-5 (curr. $999.99 on Amazon).