This clean collectible pre-owned Olympus PEN Half Frame 35mm Film Compact S/N – 144309 (Collectable) was the first in October 1959. From our research, this Pen seems to come from the first year or so of production. The rarest of these are early “single-lug” Pens like this one.

The Olympus Pen is a very simple, very compact, solidly built, half-frame camera that’s a real pleasure to use. Although it lacks a light meter and focusing rangefinder, it’s still easy to take pictures with. 
Focusing is by guestimation, and this is where the genius of the lens design becomes apparent. The 4-element lens’s focal length is only 28mm, which is the “normal” focal length for the half-frame format. But that focal length also yields a generous depth of field, which makes achieving sharp focus relatively easy, even if your distance estimates are slightly off. The maximum aperture is only f/3.5, again making focusing less stringent.

The shutter speeds run from bulb only to 1/200, so use ISO 100 or 200 film most of the time in the summer months and 400 ISO in winter. The camera’s Copal shutter is very quiet and produces essentially no vibration. The camera focuses down to less than 2 feet.

The camera is fitted with an even rarer genuine Olympus 22.5mm Skylight filter that has protected the lens since it was new.

The film counter is also manual, and you must set it to suit the film size fitted. A 24-exposure film is set to 48, and the camera counts down as you take photos.

A lot of the above information was gathered from the author Gary Seronik  https://filmadvance.com/2012/09/favourite-cameras-olympus-pen/

A little history from the above article is that the Pen was the debut effort from designer Yoshihisa Maitani, the same guy who was eventually responsible for just about every important Olympus film camera, including the Pen F, the magnificent OM series of SLRs, and the ultra-compact XAs. He was tasked with coming up with a budget model, but as is typical for cameras of this era, the resulting product was made to a level of quality and ruggedness that we seldom see today, even in premium offerings.

Key Features of the Olympus PEN Half Frame 35mm Film Compact S/N – 144309 (Collectable)

• Compact Size and solidly built.
• 28mm Lens
• Ideal for everyday street photography
• Half frame cameras give you twice the number of photos

• MPN – TBA
• GTIN – TBA