I have already tried the Pen EE2 so when the opportunity came out to own an EE3, I snapped it up. I actually swapped a lens for this example. I had two lenses and the owner of the camera had two Pen EE3s, so a perfect deal for both of us.

As you can see, I added a flash to it as I fancied trying some shots on a night out. The flash synced perfectly. This camera from 1973 has an Electronic Eye around the lens, hence the EE in the name. The selenium cell measures the light and chooses between two shutter speeds. The speeds are 1/125th and 1/30th of a second. The camera chooses the aperture based on asa selected. It is a fixed-focus camera with a 28mm f/3.5 lens so you just point and shoot. Simple.

I loaded mine with a bulk roll of Exeter 400 and carried it with me for a couple of weeks. As it takes half-frame, I seemed to be using it forever and took it to a few different places, the same dull weather throughout as was the will of the summer gods this year.

Here are some of the results.

I was really impressed by the flash photos. There is a lot of drop-off in the lighting as it wasn’t actually that dark, but they look okay. The rest are fine, but did remind me of my initial dislike of half-frames. Maybe I would get to like it with more use with this camera.

But, then…I received a message from a good friend…Oh I have been looking for a half-frame camera, but I really want one that has been reskinned. OK, fine, if you buy the skin, I will recover this camera for you.

A few days later a package of skin choices from Milly’s Cameras arrived. After my friend made her choices, I got to reskinning it. During this process, I tried a new-to-me type of glue, which I won’t link to as it caused no end of problems.

The back of the camera has a little dimple in it, once I took off the original skin I found a disc covering the indentation on the other side.

This was the cause of the first problem, it curled when I removed the skin and it didn’t lie flat when I put on the new cover.

So I decided to take it off and try again…only to find the glue had set like cement. Trying to get the back off was a pain in the derriere. I ended up ripping it and having to scrape off the pieces. Finally, I managed it and the new back had barely any bumps.

I had already recovered the front in a complementary flower skin…with the same glue. So there was no taking that off now, so I left it.

It looked very nice, all done. I left it on my desk until the morning when I would mail it. BUT, in the morning I found the stupid glue had released some kind of gas which had become trapped under the skin causing it to become a bit squashy. It didn’t look too bad and the squishy parts acted like grips. As I knew the glue was now cement, I decided to leave it and hope my friend liked it as it was. The moral of the story…’stick’ to what you know.