Olympus Pen EE-3: The Pen-o-tastic Half-Frame Camera

A picture tells more than a thousand words, they say. At its best, it tells a whole story. But what if one frame at a time is not enough to tell the whole story? That’s where half-frame photography really excels. The 1973-built Olympus Pen EE-3 is my weapon of choice when it comes to half frame.

The Pen EE-3 is a rugged little half-frame camera. Like all half-frame cameras, you get two pictures on a single 24 × 36 mm frame or, if your lab is generous, even two pictures on your print. The EE-3 is equipped with a fully-automatic exposure feature and the EE stands for Electronic Eye. It measures the available light with its selenium cell meter around the lens and chooses between two shutter speeds: 1/125th and 1/30th of a second. The aperture is fixed via the ISO/ASA rating of the film. For flash photography, the aperture can be set manually.

Upon depressing the shutter button halfway, the meter measures if there is enough light. If there is, the exposure is taken by pressing it fully and if there isn't, the viewfinder turns red. This technique gives you an AE lock too, even though I don’t know if it’s intended to be this way. How it works can be seen in the following picture. The first one I took by pointing the Pen at the building. On the second one, I pointed the camera a little downwards on the dark area on the building, pressing the shutter button halfway. This framed the picture and I continued with pressing the button fully to take the shot.

One really great thing about the Pen EE-3 is that it´s not only fully automatic and is also a fixed focus camera. There is no fiddling around with controls, you just take a picture. That makes it a really Lomographic camera. When shooting with my Pen, I rarely just take one picture at a time. When I would take just one with a full frame camera, I take two with the Pen. I don´t feel like there's 72 exposures on a roll of film but 36 double exposures.

Half-frame gives you a lot of creative possibilities. Here are just a few techniques I used:

Turn-a-Round

Take a shot. Turn the camera any angle you like and then take a second shot of the same subject. Works great with geometrical shapes.

The Pen-o-Rama

Line up your first shot. Important: Start from the left! Memorize what´s at the right side in the viewfinder. Take the shot. Wind and then frame the second shot according to what you memorized in the first. Repeat until satisfied.

The Pair

Take two shots of the same subject. One from away, on close-up. Or one from every side. You get the point.

Storytelling

Tell a story within two or three pictures.

The possibilities are endless! If you want to try out half-frame photography, the Olympus Pen EE-3 is a sure choice.

This is a review submitted by Community Member zark.

geschrieben von zark am 2011-05-30 in #Ausrüstung #Menschen #review #panorama #olympus #half-frame #lomography #techniques #zark #film-camera #user-review #2011 #pen-ee-3