Originally posted by Pentaxor I'm not sure what you meant by going much smaller John. is it sensor size small or camera size small? in fact, I dunno if the m4/3's would fair better in the MILC race with the introduction and improvement of mirrorless APS-C cameras which offers similar body size and offer compact lenses as well.
for me personally, the interests in m4/3 is more about compact size enthusiast interchangeable lens cameras. they would had probably thought that maybe APS-C is just too bit for such a tiny camera and too expensive. but if we are going to look at it, they are pretty much cost the same and just as small. I'm not sure what m4/3 could offer aside from size factor which doesn't appear to be that much anymore. maybe an innovative feature or lens selection? but that would spike up the price of the m4/3 system. the introduction of the mirrorless APS-C on this market kinda complicated the position of the m4/3 system is sitting in right now. I'm not sure if this would go down to branding.
Sorry if I wasn't clear - the "smaller" was in reference to the current line of thinking that at least one of the Pentax EVILs will be considerably smaller than APS-C.
At first I thought that was a bad idea, and talked about Pentax joining M43. But upon further thinking, APS-C and M43 sensors are so similar in size that Pentax might have a tough time differentiating between two product lines built upon nearly identically-sized sensors.
The two electronics giants are now going toe-to-toe in the mirrorless space, shadowing each other on price, form factor, size, etc... While Sony may have a slight edge in IQ, the latest generation of Panasonic sensors have closed the gap considerably, and I'd imagine that purchase decisions will be based on any of a number of factors - price, availability, design, etc... It will be quite a challenge for Pentax to compete in this space unless they come out with something significantly different. A much smaller sensor placed in much smaller cameras with much smaller lenses may do the trick...