OM System teases new PEN camera for September 9

It might not necessarily be the PEN-F revival a lot of people are hoping for, but OM System definitely has a new PEN camera coming next week.

Thanks in large part to the Fujifilm X half, half-frame cameras are having a bit of a revival at the moment, and so it makes perfect sense for OM System to reactivate one of the most famous brands associated with the format.

The company posted a 17-second teaser across its Japanese social channels last week that traced the PEN lineage from the original 1959 half-frame Pen through to the 2009 Digital Pen, when the company switched the line from half-frame to Micro Four Thirds. It then finished with a silhouetted new model, before confirming at the end a launch date of September 9. OM System is also curating a whole five-day live event/discussion program on its own website running up to the launch.

So, what’s it up to? Opinion is split into two camps. On the one hand there are those that reckon a successor to the PEN-F is on the way. This was a compact, rangefinder-styled camera from 2016 that's widely regarded by many as being one of the best-looking digital cameras ever made and directly inspired the design of the OM-3. Other people, however, see something a bit more mid-market coming.

Either way, OM System is billing it as the very first OM PEN camera, and since every predecessor was released under the Olympus name, that's technically accurate.

The video above gives some clues. There’s a notably thin body, an articulating rear screen, a viewfinder instead of a flash, and overall proportions that do seem similar to the PEN-F. That said, the camera shown in the latest video below is being talked about by 43 Rumors as more akin to the E-P7 than anything.

More clues look likely to drop over the next few days. Weather sealing looks to be a significant new addition. But, whatever form factor it ends up in, a competitively priced, well-specced PEN with decent video chops would be an interesting new entrant to the market, not to mention the welcome return of a famous name.