Olympus E-PL3 to ship in September for $700

Olympus on Wednesday set out pricing and launch dates for some of the extra photography hardware from its PEN line remake. The middle tier of the cameras, the E-PL3 or PEN Lite, will ship for $700 when mated to either the 14-42mm zoom lens or the 17mm pancake. It won't arrive body-only but will have choices of black, red, silver, and white colors when it ships in September.

The Olympus E-PL3 has many of the features of the E-P3 but trades the OLED touchscreen for a tilting LCD and has fewer control dials. In exchange, it's the fastest-shooting of the three with between 4-5.5FPS at full quality depending on whether or not image stabilization is on. A flash isn't built-in, but a hot-shoe model with basic bounce flash comes in the box.

One new PEN accessory, the VF-3 viewfinder, is getting its debut at the same time. The electronic eyepiece gives a complete field of view and can pivot up to 90 degrees up, with options for tweaking brightness and color.

The VF-3 should cost $180 in stores.

Electronista