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2026-03-27 A broken Olympus PEN Mini E-PM2—a repair failure

I was given this Olympus PEN Mini E-PM2 because it is broken. It so happens I have a Olympus PEN Mini E-PL2 that came with battery and two zoom lenses. It was but a moments work to charge up the battery I had. I put the battery in the broken camera and was frustrated to see the screen light up with a Landscape setting from the menu, sit there mulling over how it wasn’t going through the check process correctly and shut down. All this barely took 3-seconds. Pressing every combination of the buttons didn’t change anything.

    I had noticed the working camera I have sits—with power off—with the sensor fully uncovered. The broken camera has the shutter always closed.

    That took me to various web sites that had a very complicated series of button pushes to get the camera into a diagnostic mode that can reveal details like the number of shutter cycles. This seems to be a fairly common problem with some cameras that their shutters simply aren’t capable of the number of cycles film camera people are expecting. It turns out some of the expectation is because film people are shooting rolls of film and paying for every frame, so they find 50,000 cycles a huge figure. Digital people on the other hand have no problems cycling digital camera shutters a lot.

    But I digress…

These are the set of instructions I found for checking some hidden diagnostic details. 

    With your camera's battery well charged, perform the following steps in sequence.

Turn the camera ON while holding down the MENU button;

Once the LCD screen lights up, release the MENU button and then press it again briefly;

Use the arrow pad to move DOWN to the SPANNER item in the menu and press RIGHT;

Use the arrow pad to move DOWN to the BRIGHTNESS item in the menu and press RIGHT;

Press INFO;

Press OK, and a screen showing the camera designation will come up;

Press arrow pad UP;

Press arrow pad DOWN;

Press arrow pad LEFT;

Press arrow pad RIGHT;

Press the SHUTTER RELEASE button;

Press arrow pad UP (a PAGE 1 with some abbreviations and numbers appears);

Press arrow pad RIGHT to move to PAGE 2;

Write down the number to the right of "R" of "MS" on PAGE 2. This is the number of shutter releases (the number to the right of "S" is the number of times the flash has fired);

Switch the camera off to revert back to normal operating mode. Congratulations, you have successfully retrieved the shutter count information!



    Another tip is to remove the camera’s battery and let it sit for 48 hours. This should restore the original “new” camera settings so you can start without mistakes that may have crept in.

    I did find I could lift the shutter out of the way. I used a lead pencil tip and a finger tip to hold it up as I moved the pencil tip to get another grip. The shutter pushes up from the bottom to the top but you can insert the pencil tip between several of the blades. The sensor is not right under the shutter, but be careful as touching the sensor with a pencil tip is a very poor idea.

Besides touching the useless camera’s sensor isn’t the worst problem you will see all day. I could tell you about a red-light ticket hanging over my head, and I imagine we all have problems.

    I watched many videos on taking these little cameras apart and decided I wasn’t going there. I did learn from them about four washers in particular that fall out before you identify the positions of the two thicker ones as well as rebuilding that part of the camera involves tape and inserting screws while holding the camera inverted. 

    Another nightmare of these cameras is their sensor stabilization system—one horizontal and one vertical—involves tiny plastic gears that get loose on their shafts. One “repair” I saw was the second time the poor guy had to dive in and he decided to simply lock the frame in place using putty. 

Good grief!

Another site had a photographer that loved the Pen E camera. I have to say his images were wonderful. His cityscapes looked view camera squared up and then he would shoot a street image that is such a instant portrait it haunts you. He bought several of these cameras because even if they failed they were relatively cheap (~$500).

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