Micro 4/3 Olympus PEN-F shutter issue

pniev

Student for life
I really like my PEN-F that I bought a few months ago. However, I do have a serious issue. The shutter "locks" in a random manner. At first, I thought it had to do with the 25mm 1.2 lens. However, last week I experienced the same issue with the 17mm mounted last week during a trip.

What happens? When I take a photo, I see a black screen in the viewfinder and I am not able to press the shutter. Turning off and on does not help. Only when I remove the battery and re-insert it, I hear somewhat of a click and it works again. I've installed the most recent camera firmware and use filly charged batteries. I also did a reset. Nothing works.
Before sending it in for service, I thought to ask here if anyone of you has experienced similar issues and, if so, what you did to solve it?

Your help will be greatly appreciated! I do have an upcoming street photography event on June 10, so when I send it in for service, I will not have it back in time.

BTW: I will post some photos of last week's trip as soon as I processed them and reconfigured my upload process (which got lost when the LR DB got corrupted a while ago and I had to reinstall LR)
 
See a thread on the sister site MU43 on issues with the latest firmware. It seems to cause the freezing of the camera that only a battery removal cures. I don't know if your problem is related. Did it occur after the upgrade? Downgrading to firmware 1.1 cured the issue for some.

Link to thread on mu43
 
Thank you!! That is very helpful. Apparently I did not use the right settings. I already thought it had something to do with the firmware upgrade. I downgraded to 1.1 and everything seems to work fine again. Time will tell.
I also read about the LCD turned inwards and that is indeed my preferred way of shooting.
I will wait with upgrading until a new firmware upgrade comes out.
Thanks again!
 
See a thread on the sister site MU43 on issues with the latest firmware. It seems to cause the freezing of the camera that only a battery removal cures. I don't know if your problem is related. Did it occur after the upgrade? Downgrading to firmware 1.1 cured the issue for some.

Link to thread on mu43

After testing I can confirm that downgrading firmware solved the problem. Thanks again for your help.
 
Mine too is suffering from similar problems but also I have reset it back to 'factory' specs and it still is happening. I can get it to work by removing and reinserting the battery and doing similar with a lens but then the screen goes black but shows the settings in the bar display at the bottom of the scree. I've returned it to Olympus UK to sort it out.
 
As far as I knoe there is no software solution yet so my best guess is that a software downgrade solves the problem. I haven't had the problem ever since I did that.
I hope your PEN will work appropriately soon. It is a beautiful and capable camera! I am now in Scotland and love its versatility.
 
As far as I knoe there is no software solution yet so my best guess is that a software downgrade solves the problem. I haven't had the problem ever since I did that.
I hope your PEN will work appropriately soon. It is a beautiful and capable camera! I am now in Scotland and love its versatility.

So far there is no fix...as Olympus is still dragging their feet on it. I'm going to let them know again and get on their case about it. I opened a ticket with them originally when 2.0 came out. I have not done so again since 2.1. Best we can do is give them grief from all sides until they fix it properly. I really wanted the ability to save the mysets, which the 2.x versions of the firmware add, but it is not important enough to brick my camera over.

I lost a month of use from the camera last time this happened, so I'm not going to take the chance again until I know it is completely fixed.
 
I did upgrade to 2.1 and didn't encounter this issue. I though it was solved?

It was supposed to be resolved...and I went from 2.0 to 2.1. Problem was not as bad...but still there - I reverted back to 1.1 and have had zero issues. Others have had issues too. Some people are running 2.0 and 2.1 with no issues. Not sure if it is a hardware issue from different batches. As per usual, the camera makers won't be honest and tell you what the issue is.
 
I was thinking of this Pen F or this Panasonic GX8. I am leaning towards the GX8 because it has that nice eye piece. What are your views? Anyone try either? I never used either one so...
 
Update:. After downgrading to 1.1 when 2.1 was still giving me issue, Olympus told me to send the camera in to look at the 2.1 issue I was having. So I upgraded the camera back to 2.1... Ran some tests and the issue is gone.

My only thought is that something was not cleared out properly in going from 2.0 to 2.1. Going from1.1to 2.1 directly has been working fine for me now for weeks.
 
I was thinking of this Pen F or this Panasonic GX8. I am leaning towards the GX8 because it has that nice eye piece. What are your views? Anyone try either? I never used either one so...

To me they are comparable. My wife uses a GX7. The tiltable eye piece is a nice feature but personally I prefer the looks of the pen-f. I woudl say: follow your heart.
There are some rumors a model will be launched soon. A friend got a good deal: a 25mm 1.8 lens for free with a penf plus 17mm 1.8.
 
Update:. After downgrading to 1.1 when 2.1 was still giving me issue, Olympus told me to send the camera in to look at the 2.1 issue I was having. So I upgraded the camera back to 2.1... Ran some tests and the issue is gone.

My only thought is that something was not cleared out properly in going from 2.0 to 2.1. Going from1.1to 2.1 directly has been working fine for me now for weeks.

Thank you. I will do the update!
 
I bought my Pen F a few weeks ago and it already had 2.1 update, and so far after extensive use, I have not had any issues. I really like this camera and results speak for themselves. :)
 
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