Hope that this time I'm sort of, kind of on-topic.
I bought Q7 for the compactness of the package (body and lenses), versatility of ILC, and cost performance. I'm quite satisfied with these qualities. I'm not shooting for ultimate quality or ultimate resolution or anything.
I wasn't planning to do super telephoto, but I ended up enjoying it, too. I'm again pretty happy with the details of pictures I can take with my telescopes though my telephoto chops are still sort of limited.
This is one of my moon shots. (You can see the full resolution image by clicking the image and then clicking the "download" icon in flickr.)
I don't usually pixel peep much, but the moon is an exception. I enjoy looking at each and every detail I can find. And since I was kind of curious about the idea of down scaling test, below to the left is the full resolution image cropped but unscaled, and to the right is a 1/2.2 scaled image cropped to the same view angle (to mimic the resolution of 24MP APS-C sensor).
Scaled down photo is not bad at all. But to me it seems like the one on the left has some finer details than the right, e.g. outline of "thumbs up"-like mountain in one of the craters and ridge of the craters simply look richer with more gradation in the left, and tiny craters/wrinkles look merged on the right image etc. So it seems to me that there's some benefit of using Q7 sensor over larger ones for this telescope as far as extracting details is concerned. Noise is not a big problem either, moon provides enough light, but if it becomes an issue I can mitigate it by stacking multiple pictures.
This is just a cheap telescope, less than 100 USD delivered to your door when on sale, red dot finder and somewhat wobbly mount/tripod included. If you have better (as in bigger aperture, better precision optics) telescopes the difference would be larger.
Oh but I digress. Anyway. Good detail of the moon that satisfies me, checked.
This is possible at all for Q7 while meeting my other needs because it is ILC. Versatile, checked.
Q7/02 lens, telescope/mount/tripod and telescope adapter probably cost me about 350 USD total. Cost effective, checked.
I can talk about how compact my regular kit (Q7, 01, 02, 03 and 06 lens) is but I won't, but compactness checked anyway.
These are the things I like about Q system, and it would be sad if Ricoh throws it away.
As a side note, if there is a system that meets all of my needs and gets the same or better quality pictures, that's awesome. If cheaper, that's super awesome. That doesn't reduce my enjoyment of using Q7 now, I'll be happy to know that there is such a system, and I might consider buying that system in the future if Q7 fails and Ricoh doesn't offer anything. If you think you own such a system, congratulations, more power to you!
I thought for a short while that Nikon 1 system would be such a system for my purpose. But it turns out that no focus peaking/magnification is available without using Nikon 1 to Nikon F mount adaptor, and that means that my small telescope won't focus to infinity because it needs a very, very short flange back length. Oh well.