pen e-pm1

Road-tripping with the Olympus PEN E-PM1

You are slightly less likely to be given a free Olympus camera by a stranger these days as the Olympus PEN Ready Project giveaway is in the books. Now, it's time to see the photographic results.

Olympus rolled out its $500 PEN E-PM1 camera earlier this year by giving more than 1,000 free cams to random people around North America. The recipients were asked to take pictures wherever they went. Olympus continues to collect those shots for display online.

I was asked to play along with the big promotion by testing the PEN Ready E-PM1's capabilities along with those 1,000 fortunate winners. I couldn't ask for a better way to review a camera than to take it on the freelance-journalism road from a Harley-Davidson event in Milwaukee, to a NASCAR race in Charlotte, N.C., to a Yamaha scooter ride in San Francisco. … Read more

Olympus debuts PEN E-PM1 with lots of free cams

Olympus is rolling out its new PEN E-PM1 camera by asking random consumers to demonstrate how easy the latest PEN Ready camera is to use.

The PEN Ready Project looks to give more than 1,000 free PEN Ready E-PM1 cams to random people around North America. Those fortunate folks in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, Miami, and Lehigh Valley, Penn., (Olympus' hometown) can go anywhere they like and take any pictures or HD videos they like (Olympus is asking them to shoot at least 20 still images or vids; those who do will be entered in a sweepstakes).

Olympus is collecting those works of would-be art for showcasing on a new custom-designed Tumblr blog. The company's hope is that people around the world will visit the PEN Ready site to see what the E-PM1 can do, thus wanting one for themselves. … Read more