Even so, my answer to the question was 4/3. How about for you? It depends: For someone who doesn't or rarely prints, the answer is probably 1". For someone who routinely shoots in dark or dim spaces, the answer could be be APS-C or even greater. I'm using an OMD, so to a large extent one can infer my preference from what I primarily shoot with.

overall impressions . . . problems or annoyances A friend has a regular A7. He says there are two big problems: the focus is too slow (though it is accurate) for the price, and, as everyone else has mentioned, the lenses are too few and too dear. Using only the 55mm in a controlled environment is pretty good.

I don't have one but have used one long enough to form an opinion (like many people on the Internet, I'll answer a slight variant of the actual question asked or person sought). It's a very nice camera. Perhaps even awesome, for all the reasons much discussed on the Internet. The AF is faster and more responsive or at least feels that way. The grip is nice. And so on. But the E-M1 isn't sufficiently better than my E-M5 to make me want to upgrade. It's at least twice as expensive as a used E-M5. The E-M10 is slightly less fast, slightly less this, and slightly less that... and I'd buy one over an E-M1. I don't tax the AF enough to want the E-M1. The E-M1 grip also feels physically better when holding the camera, but size and weight are paramount concerns, and I prefer the smaller cameras.

There's not much point in pushing a student out if there's only an abyss. The more honest answer might be, "There's not much point in admitting students when most of them are likely to fall into the abyss."

anything that affects the health of popular consumer products from the companies we depend on also eventually affects us As others have pointed out, camera companies should long ago have figured out ways to make cameras play nicely with phones. Why do I have to rely on an Eye-Fi card to quickly get images from an EM-5 to friends via text message? Cell phone cameras are finally forcing camera makers to do the things they should've done ages ago.

Fuji and Sony NEX (or ex-NEX, as I now call it) In an alternate world, Fuji and Sony cooperated and made a single lens mount compatible with both their cameras. Had that happened, both companies would be stronger and the allure of M43 much weaker.

I guess I just don't understand why Nikon would have such a big hit with the D700 and then wander away from the model designation and the spirit of the product. It may not matter much to Nikon. According to Flickr's camera stats—an imperfect data source but what we've got—2,562 people used the D800, D600, and D610 as average daily users. 1,289 used the D700. So about 50% are using the older camera in its approximate class. In Canon land, 3,837 used the 6D or 5D III, and 3,225 used the 5D II. So about 90% are using the older camera in its approximate class. Maybe Flickr users are biased towards Canon or the 5D II. Or maybe Nikon users really like the upgrade options and think that 36 is so much better than 12 or 22 that the D800 is worth it. People reading here know about the megapixel myth but it's possible that not everyone does.

The Olympus E-M5: it's not got the objectively highest image quality of any camera and it's not the smallest, but it hits the right price / performance / size / lenses combo for me. When I shot with DSLRs I missed a lot because the DSLR was too cumbersome to take out.

The more pictures I see that were taken with that lens, the more I like it I can't be the only one who'd love to see samples with said camera/lens combo. As for my own CoL... it's low. I've been happy with my OMD for a while, and while the A7 is attractive, I've learned that focus speed and accuracy are vital to make photography fun for me.

Unlike some of the academics to whom Katherine Firth links in her post about the "Academic Purity Cult," I've never received any professional pushback for blogging (well, aside from the people who don't like something I've blogged, but that's a different issue). I have—a lot of it, in fact, at conferences and from professors. That may be in part because I'm a grad student or because of my department, but pretty much everyone who has deigned to comment on the issue has disparaged blogging or any writing whatsoever that doesn't entail peer-review. To me, the revealing thing is what academics in math, physics, CS and other fields do: post to arXiv.org, say, and let the peer-review and publication catch up to the cutting-edge research. If a science-based academic learns something new, it's imperative to get it out there as soon as possible! By contrast, most humanities profs appear at best indifferent and at worst hostile to those kinds of open processes, and they're willing to endure months or years of delay between finishing a piece and seeing it published. Peer-reviewed journals won't accept work previously published on blogs or other online forums. Evidently what we're doing isn't sufficiently important to others to be worth publishing in a timely manner.

I'm surprised that Acorn didn't get mentioned. I'm using version 3 and like it a lot; like you, I don't do anything terribly complex, but it's much faster and cheaper than Photoshop.

@Tim F— The points about pricing are certainly true, but some people love the Zeiss name / branding / etc.—and, more importantly, it would presumably cost Zeiss very little in terms of engineering and manufacturing to offer an additional mount (AFAICT, Sigma's NEX and M43 primes are the same lens with different mounts). Someone will buy them, especially if they yield a different "look" than the current Olympus or Panasonic primes.

Micro 4/3 has a big lead in the availability of cool and fun lenses of the kind beloved of the lens enthusiast, but the "full APS-C" crowd is just about to get a big step up. I don't get why Zeiss isn't offering M 4/3 versions, much as Sigma has with its cheap f 2.8 primes. Since APS-C has a larger sensor size than M 4/3, Zeiss could presumably just change the mount, write a small bit of code, and cover all their bases with minimal engineering challenges.

We shouldn't be such price hawks. If I had more money, I wouldn't be. As it is, unless we see amazing performance, the competitors are too good. The comparison to the "Nikon 1-Series, the just-discontinued (and future collectible) Pentax K-01, and the Canon EOS M" seems apt: I've never seen anyone with any of those cameras. They've barely registered on Flickr's Camera finder. Logical competitors to all three, however, are reasonably popular: the Sony NEX series, along with Olympus and Panasonic mirrorless cameras. Flickr data isn't the final word, but it is striking. I'm not angry or irritated. I might be slightly disappointed, however. If the AF is good, however, I could imagine wanting a Coolpix A. . . when the price is 40 – 50% of the MSRP.

Mark Sample defines scholarship thus: "a creative or intellectual act becomes scholarship when it is public and circulates in a community of peers that evaluates and builds upon it." By this definition, as Mark Bauerlein shows in "The Research Bust," a lot of the writing published in peer-reviewed articles is barely research: no one "builds upon it," or the vast majority of "it," through citations. If that's actually true, then we really do need to re-define what counts as "scholarship."

Yeah, I know I just bought a 28mm for the D800, but please don't throw that back at me. It's most likely temporary, until one of two things happens: either Nikon fills out its new FX prime line with a 35mm ƒ/1.8G for FX, or I suck it up and get over the deep-seated psychological barrier I have against spending $1,619 for a lens I'm shocked to be the first to say this, but the new Sigma 35mm f / 1.4 is targeted specifically at you (in the plural sense: that is, people who want a great 35mm without paying more than $1,000). The list price is $899. They haven't hit the street yet, as far as I know, but that may be the obvious solution for your price / quality dilemma.

I "inherited" an early Canon DSLR and a couple of lenses, and I eventually sold that camera for a t2i and later sold the original lenses for a couple of Sigma lenses, including my favorite, the 30mm f / 1.4. I'm a classic case of path dependence: had I realized that I'd sell all the original Canon gear I had, I probably would've bought a Sony A65. But because I didn't realize that, and because I'm financially constrained, I'm now using a t2i because of a decision one of my parents made about eight years ago and because of my failure to realize what kinds of things I most like to shoot and which lenses I most like to use.

The concept in general makes sense: small is beautiful. And convenient! We'll see how Sony's implementation plays out. I left a variation of this comment on Philip Greenspun's blog, but my feelings haven't changed: I think Roger Cicala’s take is accurate (http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012/09/photokina-2012-the-cameras) : "I see two possibilities. First, the Zeiss lens is of amazing quality and this becomes the cult camera of 2013 and you can’t buy one at any price . Or the Zeiss lens is of good quality, and you can buy this for half price by March, 2013." If the lens performs like the $1200 Zeiss 35mm f/2s on the market, or in the same league as the $1300 Canon f / 1.4, and the autofocus is fast and accurate, then the camera might be exceptionally appealing to a larger number of people than you’re currently imagining. Like, say, me: I have a Canon T2i and use a Sigma 30mm 85% of the time, and I mostly shoot people and things. Having a fixed lens wouldn’t bother me, and the much smaller, more portable, and less intimidating body also means I’m a) more likely to have the camera with me and b) less conspicuous when I shoot. I assume that interchangeable lenses would make the camera physically larger and would also reduce the presumed economies of scale that come from making large numbers of a single lens, versus small numbers of multiple lenses. Furthermore, I assume the camera won’t retail for MSRP. In any event, these discussions are mostly moot until the testers get their copies and can tell us about the lens and autofocus. Steve Huff has held one and loves it so far. First impressions aren’t everything, but I’m watching this camera. I’d like to replace my T2i—the outer autofocus points and lack of wireless flash are bothersome—with either a Canon 70D (when it emerges), or a cheaper 60D (if the 70D is underwhelming), or, conceivably, the RX1, depending on what happens with price / reviews.

I mean, I've been so insufferable about it, such a broken record, such a pain in the ass, that if I don't buy the RX1, I fully expect a ragtag band of former Contax reps and Zeiss lens designers and Kyocera product planners to show up on my doorstep and beat the crap out of me. I hate to ask a question of the sort that's been troubling Internet forums for days, with vehement partisans on both sides, but I have to anyway: How do you feel about the viewfinder / external viewfinder situation? Does it matter to you?