Sandy
And yet another camera to consider is the Olympus E420. It is a real four thirds DSLR, with intercdhangeable lenses, but even smaller than the Panasonic G1.
respectfully the G1
is a
real 4/3rds camera and has the same sized sensor as all the other 4/3rds cameras. It simply has a
shorter registration distance between the mount and the sensor allowing the mounting of
even more lenses (pen F and the lovely Cosina lenses that come on the Voigtlander 35mm rangefinders). It is lighter and smaller than
any of the SLR styles and slightly more so than the E420.
If you are unfamiliar with the camera please examine images
G1 here and
420 here. note that the 'depth' metric includes the eyepiece in the G1 diagram and does not (trying to fudge the 420 into havint smaller dimensions).
I think that the 420 is quite a compact camera if you get to hold the G1 you'll find its more compact. They weigh the same however. As you can see below (G1 on left) the lighter Anti-alias filter and the slightly higher pixel density on the 4/3 sensor yeilds sharper images
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if you're interested please dig around on my blog for my user impressions and bits
PS
I just was thinking about your wording of:
and wonder if the emphasis was intended to have been
in which case while I agree that it lacks an optical view finder I find that this brings as many advantages (perhaps more) than disadvantages. Clearly this will be usage dependent. Personally I now use the 'viewfinder' for reviewing shots as I find that in bright light I can see everything better. This gives me the strange situation of composing on the tilt screen and reviewing in the viewfinder.
Being able to zoom in to the image to confirm focus in the EVF is also quite handy.