Electronic Viewfinder VF-3 (Silver)

Bought this a year or so ago and it works great on my PL1. Plugged it in and no issues. It really address's using the Pen out in the sun where I found I could just not use the screen on the back. With this it allows me to use it for wildlife but take a much lighter package. Great addition to my camera collection.

This view finder is an excellent value and provides a 100% field of view in those situations when the LCD isn't optimal(bright light, fast moving action etc...)
My E-PL1 needed a firmware upgrade for this work but after that, it has been great.

Isn't as high a resolution as the VF-2 but I don't use it to show of my pics! :-) Plent of resolution to frame hyour shot and verify the focus is correct. Highly recommend.

All the tests of the VF-3 I've read have been done on the E-PL3 and maybe therein lies the problem. I haven't seen any done on the E-PL1, which is the camera that I've got. That may account for the awful performance. I used the menu setting for brightness and color that activates when the viewfinder is attached and bumped up both setting as far as they would go, Despite that, it was impossible to see anything clearly enough to tell what color it really was OR whether or not I was in focus. Which made the viewfinder useless.

There are two possible explanations: (1) the unit I had was defective (always possible); (2) VF-3 doesn't work properly with PL1.

I have no way to know whether either or both of these are true. I know that I tried using it in light ranging from bright outdoors, to flash indoors and it was useless no matter what I did. I really wanted it to work. Now that I've returned it, I bought the VF-2 which I know was made for the PL1.

I hope to hear from Olympus about this. It's possible that Olympus did only minimal testing on VF-3 in conjunction with PL1. Perhaps not enough to notice that there's an incompatibility issue. Ironic that I'm making excuses for Olympus, but I love my Olympus camera and have been loving Olympus cameras since the 1960s. I want to give them the benefit of a doubt. I hope they will check to see if this viewfinder can be made to work correctly on the older model PENs. If not, tell us and save everyone unnecessary angst.

No one is sorrier than I am that this worked out so badly.