From right: Mr. Yoshimoto Nagashima, GM for Olympus SLR Marketing; Mr. Masaomi Tomizawa, Section Manager, Electronic Device Dept.; and Mr. Antonio Lei, Marketing Director, Olympus Imaging Singapore.

VIEWPOINT: The team behind HardwareMAG.com will put up videos related to trends, technologies and companies with a focus on the South-east Asian region regularly.

Here, in our very first episode from the HWM ViewPoint series, we bring you a 5-minute segment where we met up with senior executives from Olympus and  had them demo to us the new PEN E-P1 Micro Four Thirds camera.

In a written interview which will appear in an upcoming issue of HWM magazine, Tomizawa-san said that the priority is to make the body of the E-P1 smaller. To compensate for the lack of flash, the company also developed a new engine called TruePic 5, which can take photos up to ISO 6400. Of course, the E-P1 also comes with a flash attachment as an option.

“We believe we have a new concept here; the E-P1 is neither a DSLR nor a compact. It’s a new generation kind of camera,” said Nagashima-san, during the interview.

On price:

The Olympus PEN E-P1 pancake lens kit (M. ZUIKO DIGITAL 17mm f2.8) will cost S$1,448 (US$994); the standard lens kit (14-42mm f3.5-5.6) costs S$1,298 (US$891) while the twin lens kit (14-42mm f3.5-5.6 and 17mm f2.8) costs S$1,598 (US$1097). The camera comes in either Black or White.

Anyway, here’s the exclusive ViewPoint video. Enjoy.

This video comes with English captions. To change caption language, click on Translate in the bottom corner option of the video.