Originally posted by Clinton Sure, as long as it is fully supported, and has autofocus capability. Keep in mind, that AF motor is going to have to go somewhere.
You lose the OVF.
Is that a compromise you are willing to make?
The silliness in this discussion is the either/or dynamic, as if the market is decisive one way or the other because ALL consumers vote with their $$$'s exactly the same way.
from what I can see in market data, M43 has taken a modest slice from traditional DSLR's, but no more than that. DSLR's sales are overall increasing. The pie is still getting bigger because APS-C sensor commoditization and sunk cost dynamics (those pesky mirrors and old school PDAF) have been paid for 50x over. Profits are very good for camera makers in the midst of a worldwide economic pseudo-crisis.
The idea that mirrorless will entirely replace DSLR's in the near term is not going to happen. I suspect the manufacturing cost difference between the mirrorless and the well-paid for mirror box system is not all that great, and will be a factor in the very long run, but is apparently not a profit determinant in the near to medium term. The DSLR still has legs, in large part because it has such a vast installed user base.
The trump card for mirrorless is not form factor or manufacturing costs of the body. It is flexibility and lens costs. The latter are very costly to set up for sufficient ROI on the design and manufacturing side, but the long term smaller lenses will impact everything from sales appeal to inventory and shipping costs. The real kick for mirrorless is in the flexibility, especially video but also retrograde backward compatibility, macro, and manual focus.
Nevertheless there is likely to be market space for the larger camera with an OVF. A great number of monied hobbyists and pros very much like hands on gear with substantial tactile feedback systems and the near-perfect DR and latency of the OVF. The SLR form factor and design is the the most flexible pure photographic system ever developed. It can do macro to tele, wide angle to portrait and everything in between. I don't see its demise anytime soon.
There is no doubt that Nikon and Canon will continue to support this market and may offer a mirrorless path in the near future. Certainly Nikon has staked some space here with the X1, cautious not to tread on their legacy DSLR space. Both companies want to sell you more than one camera (D300 and D700 and a D3x).
Pentax/Ricoh's issue is the capacity to support the K-mount installed base simultaneous with mirrorless developments. Adapters are kludges that always limit the experience. Few sell well. So I advise people ehre top stop thinking of a single body that can do it all and look more at the issue of the market splitting and whether Pentax/Ricoh can support both with 5% of the Canikon market share. This is the fundamental the dilemma and the most critical aspect for those with lots of K-mount glass.
What disturbs me most in the interview is virtually no outright support for the K-mount. I fully agree that Pentax is dead as a brand if it abandons its current K-mount user base for newer tech alone. The brand has nowhere near enough cachet to make that leap.