My first serious digital camera was an Olympus E500. Launched in 2005, it had an 8 megapixel CCD sensor that produced beautiful film-like colours. Like all CCD cameras however, the dynamic range we severely limited, and noise quickly started to become an issue when you went above 400 ISO. I loved that camera, and when I briefly replaced it with an E620, I found the E620 a big disappointment.

The 12 megapixel sensor of the E620 was, on paper, a big improvement. But the colours lacked that Olympus magic. And crucially by this time, the writing was on the wall for Olympus DSLRs. Olympus was ready to abandon the Four Thirds format and replace it with Micro Four Thirds – essentially very similar cameras using the same sensors. but in a smaller rangefinder-style mirrorless body.

Disenchanted, I abandoned Olympus and spent the next few years shooting a succession of Canon bridge cameras and Sony compacts.

Years later – and now an Olympus shooter again thanks to the OM-D EM10 Mark II – I decided to dip my toes back into some of those old rangefinder-style Pen series cameras. It was a frustrating journey, leavened thankfully by the fact that early Olympus mirrorless cameras were cheap to buy on the second hand market. It was easy to buy an old Olympus, shoot with it for a few months, and sell it on for the same price as I had paid for it. I quickly established my likes and preferences among the early Pen cameras.

• Olympus Pen E-P1 (2009) – Oh, those Olympus colours. Beautiful. But that low-resolution rear screen made shooting in bright sunlight very difficult.
• Olympus Pen E-P2 (2010) – Essentially a P1 with the ability to add an external viewfinder. I still have one, adapted to infrared, but I don’t recommend it unless you’re willing to splash out on the optional electronic viewfinder, which makes it a much more pleasant shooting experience.
• Olympus Pen Mini E-PM1 (2011) – A very nice wee camera, highly recommended if you’re looking for something pocketable. But the lack of dials and buttons make it more of a point and shoot than a serious enthusiasts camera.
• Olympus Pen E-P3 (2011) – This was a major refresh of the Pen range. An updated processor (TruePic VI) made noticeable improvements to noise performance and focus speed. And – ignored by many reviewers – the speed of navigating through menus became noticeably snappier. A nice camera, and the only 12 megapixel Olympus that I would happily use today as a regular-carry camera.

But what about those Olympus colours? The Panasonic 12 megapixel sensor may beat the Kodak CCD for noise and dynamic range, but it can’t match it for colour renditions, surely? Well, no. It can’t. But using the Vivid colour mode, and slightly increasing the contrast, it gets pretty close.