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The Olympus PEN E-P3 Micro Four Thirds camera offers a pleasing mix of a smaller-than-SLR body, fast performance, and beautiful images, but for the best pictures possible you still need a true D-SLR.

Although its price ranks as one of the highest in its class, the Olympus Pen E-P3 offers a number of improvements...most notably performance. In fact, other than a rather paltry 3 frames-per-second burst speed, it’s one of the fastest...mirrorless cameras on the market to date.

While the Olympus PEN E-P3 shoots out in front of its class for performance and holds its own on features and design, it's a bit expensive and you'll need to tweak its JPEG settings to get the most out of its images.

It’s a great camera to use...and produces among the best pictures of any Micro Four Thirds camera...the price and low shots per battery charge may be its comeuppance, and with the...launch of the smaller, cheaper and almost-as-well-equipped...models there’s a chance the E-P3 may be overlooked.

This camera is the flagship of the Olympus interchangeable lens cameras. It's styled in a similar, retro-tastic fashion to previous iterations like the E-P1 and the E-P2, and makes a few improvements to ergonomics, shooting design and the graphical interfaces.

It’s definitely the best Micro Four Thirds camera from Olympus yet, but those looking for the best low light, noise, and dynamic range performance are going to be a bit disappointed.

There is plenty to like about the Olympus PEN E-P3...All this means that while inexperienced users should be able to pick up the camera and start shooting straight away, enthusiasts have all the control they want and can set-up it up to suit their style.

The Olympus PEN EP-3 compact system camera builds considerably on the strengths of its predecessors. As such, it’s a generously featured enthusiast-level digital camera that offers a good degree of user customisation while remaining easy enough for the novice user to get to grips with too.

A strong '4.5 out of 5' then and a Photography Blog recommendation for the Olympus E-P3, by some distance the best Pen yet. Until that is, probably, we take a look at the E-PL3 Pen 'Lite' and E-PM1 'Mini'.