ROBIN WONG

I must confess an uncomfortable truth, I bought the Olympus PEN E-PL1 due to peer pressure back then, I was asked to join an Olympus PEN group to help out and I did. The qualification to become a member? You have to own an Olympus PEN camera. What a mistake I have done, and a hard lesson that I have learned. Of course, nothing good came out of caving into peer pressure and trying to please people around me, I know that now. Things did not go well, the group (well, the top leaders and founders) were at each other's necks and not long after the arrival of Olympus OM-D, the group disbanded and that was the short story of a short-lived photography group that was created out of personal ego and not for the love of photography. I got burned for being honest and staying true to myself, things got really ugly, and I am still traumatized by this incident until today. But hey, that is a story for another day. I did regret buying the Olympus PEN E-PL1, it was not ready, and Micro Four Thirds format needed more work, and I consider the first true camera to be ready from Olympus mirrorless system was the OM-D E-M5, which was indeed a WOW camera and took the imaging world by storm. I still kept the E-PL1 around, and I shared these set of images during my last week's Live Stream on YouTube. While I had no love for the E-PL1 (ugly design, slow AF, poor screen, nothing to shout about), I do love these set of images that I have taken about 4 years ago, some time after the pandemic lockdown was lifted.