I agree, that is one reason I have the Pentax gear. The top of the line body isn't that big (smaller/lighter than a D300), and with a small prime I can carry it in my right hand for long periods pretty comfortably. Not as vanishingly small as the G1 though, but that borders on too small for my hands. I want to try the new K2000 (Km) as it is supposed to be around e410 size. That with one of the pancakes would be very portable. I would really like to see a G1 variant made by Pentax with APS-C sensor and K mount.
That said I have a Voigt 58/1.4 Nokton waiting for me at the postoffice. Can't wait to slap that on the K20d and see how she runs. If I dig it, the Zeiss 25/2.8 will be next
Before I got the G1 what you were considering was exactly where I was headed. Years ago I owned a Kyocera Contax 139, a great camera with a built in motor drive. The thing about Contax was they had Zeiss lenses. And I recall the first time I got shots back how my jaw droopped when I saw the photos. The colors the contrast the sharpness was just amazing to me. A number of years later a firm in the photo district (Ken Hansens) was having a fire sale on Leica R4sP SLRs. The model was being discontinued and they snapped up all the remaining U.S inventory and then sold bodies for $300. A total steal!
I bought one, rented a lens and eventually gravitated to the Leica's SLR's picking up the 35mm and 90mm Summicron's, used. The shots weren't bad. But I missed the Contax. I eventually moved on to an M6 and stayed with that until the digital age. Again very happy with the results but still feeling a yearning for the Zeiss approach.
My first move to digital was the Leica D2. Nice camera. Then I got the LX1 and for the last few years I've enjoyed using these cameras.
This last fall I decided maybe it was time to really get something 'serious'. So candidates were the Nikon D300 and D700, and the Pentax K20D.
Why? Because I wanted to use Zeiss optics again. I didn't care that they were manual. I figured they were fully linked in aperture priority and with focus assist (and the fact that you could get a traditional microprism focusing screen it would work.
Well I held the D700 and the D300 and concluded they were just too damned big. For all the reasons others have cited. I felt they were like boulders. I also considered the new D90 but that didn't quite feel smallish in my hands the way I was hoping. Still a little chubby and clubby for my tastes.
I wanted to check out the Pentax as I'd seen on dpreview.com that the dimensions were quite good compared with the D300 and D700. What's more, unlike any other DSLR in its price range the Pentax was totally weather sealed. Having fried a Ricoh GR-D on a heli-hiking trip, that was a big plus.
But the camera shop I went to in Boston kinda put a bit of a jinx on that saying that Pentax wasn't the same since Hoya took them over and that their viability as a company was quesitonable and that their customer service was lax..blah blah blah..and so I never actually held it in my hands.
Then I read about the G1 and the possibility of mounting M lenses (read Zeiss for me) via an adapter to its body and I was once again intrigued. Would I be able to use focus assist? No. But the focus patch was soooooo much better than the EVF manual focusing experience I had with Digilux 2 that I was sold.
But I think it's great that you are looking into the either of the Pentax (I'd go for the K20D if for no other reason aside from a nice size that the thing has weather seals throughout).
Love to see the kinds of shots you'd get.
Good thinking, man.
Peter
