For Panasonic and Sony, who didn't have long photographic lineages, and Olympus, who had basically started over from scratch in the digital era, they quickly moved to become standard cameras; competitors (and eventual replacements) for the classic SLRs.
For Canon, Nikon, and Pentax, who were all invested in digital systems that had physical ties back to their film legacies, there was a struggle to find a niche for these new cameras that didn't take market share from their established DSLR lines.
Pentax's solution was to go back to an older camera of theirs for inspiration...
Pentax's mirrorless entrant used a tiny 12MP 1/2.3" sensor, the size usually associated with pocket point and shoot cameras. They boasted that the new Pentax Q was the smallest interchangeable lens system camera on the planet.
While the initial Q was magnesium-bodied and came in white and black, Pentax went full kawaii with the later plastic-bodied models... the Q10, Q7, and Q-S1 ...and made them available in every color of the rainbow.
Because of the tiny sensor, the lenses could be made commensurately smaller and lighter. In the photo below is a Pentax Q-S1 with normal prime, standard zoom, telephoto zoom, and fisheye lenses.
The body and all four lenses combined weigh only a hair over one pound!
I don't know which I like better, the cheerfully colored models, or my all-black Q7, which looks like a regular DSLR unless you have an object of a known size nearby to provide scale...
Over the next couple weeks I hope to do an in-depth look at each of the four models, as well as the lenses I have on hand.
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