Originally posted by mattdm Olympus and Panasonic should be put into a separate 4/3rds bin. Sigma's main characteristic is Foveon — sensor size is secondary. And presumably, Sony, Canon, and Nikon are going to aim at full frame for their "serious" offerings and leave cropped sensors for the low-end.
That leaves Pentax alone in a pretty sweet niche of 1.5× crop advanced cameras.
I agree. A FF will always be more bulky than crop format, and the lenses for it are no pancakes neither.
For a landscape trip, where I wanted maximum IQ, I could be tempted by a Medium Format, but else I go compact primes and weathersealed K10.
Even the original Eos 5D, which has been described as a stripped consumer camera, but with a great sensor, is bulkier than my K10. And the original Eos 5D is not even sealed.
Canon & Nikon users are asking why they can’t get pancake size lenses. But high-quality primes are generally made for their FF models as well.
(In film, I seldom used wider than 24 mm)
I think Pentax could do well, having an APS-C sensor crop DSLR, and then an IQ beast in Medium Format.
A 645D with better ISO performance than film Medium Format, and you can easily handhold a lot of your shots. Like Andy Rouse did, shooting wildlife in Africa with Pentax Medium Format.
I expect a 645D to be 8.-10.000 $
BTW, I thought one of the reasons that FF cams have better View Finders, are larger mirror boxes ?
I don’t think we’ll see much smaller FF cameras than the Eos 5D, all these cameras are for use with big FF lenses, so they are built for a size comfortable with Pro grade glass. (Maybe could be made smaller, but don’t think it will happen).
Form factor is a big deal for many upgraders from P&S. It is only us old users, who like to accept bigger DSLR’s, because we feel SLR should be Film factor in sensor size.
The volume and money is made in crop, this is the SLR format of today.