To photographers from the digital generation, the fashionable serious compacts sound to be an exciting novel idea. Fact is, the whole thing is old wine in a new bottle.
Contax G2 was the forefather bringing about the downsizing fad in the film era.
When SLRs were at the height of its development, photographers were like what we are doing today: asking for cameras in a smaller body without scarifying controllability. The only difference is that image quality was not an issue with the camera body back then.
So a new species of high-grade rangefinder film camera flourished and, much like the advert of MFT and mirror-less compact cameras to us today, became the talking point of the market. Those cameras allow users access to tweaking the EV, ISO value, aperture, shutter speed, using interchangeable lenses and the external viewfinder, to different extent.
The fad was brought about by Contax with its launch of the G2. Other camera makers followed the example. The Konica Hexar, Nikon 35Ti, Leica Minilux (which in fact was an OEM camera by Panasonic; hence the collaboration for the LUX series of today) and Ricoh GV-1v were the followers.
With reference to the development of those RF cameras, it is not foolhardy to predict that the wind of series compact cameras will continue to blow. Probably, we will see some of these old bottles be given new digital contents, and more crossover moves for using old lenses like the Voigtlander's on them.
Comments
Contax T3 and Minolta TC-1 may be included in this post, which are smaller than them but great quality in photo too.