One more post on Pentax K-01

I am still scratching my head after the K-01 announcement by Pentax. It is good that Pentax decided to keep K mount in their mirrorless cameras. Many people will love the camera just because of Pentax lenses. The sensor in the camera is one of the best available assuming that Pentax have used the same sensor as in K-5. It seems that Pentax has very powerful battery in K-01 sufficient for over 500 shots per charge. But I was very disappointed by lack of a viewfinder in the camera, especially considering its weight and size. It seems that the K-01 is the biggest camera in it's class (see the table below).

I do not understand what is the target group for the camera. The presence of K mount makes the K-01 very attractive for Pentax DSLR users, but I bet the DSLR users prefer to have a viewfinder on DSLR-like body. People with tripod / landscape shooter probably would not mind to have a camera with K-5 image quality, but the K-5 is weather-sealed camera while K-01 is not. On other hand, the K-5 is ~200 g heavier. For some Pentax DSLR users the K-01 might be a very handy back-up camera, but people who use compact camera probably prefer something more portable for upgrade. There are quite a few cameras to choose from, as can be seen in the table below. Obviously, the lenses are quite different, but I decided to use the available pancake in this table, in order to illustrate the minimal weight for mirrorless cameras. I have not included Nikon J1 (body only ~300 g, with build-in flash  and 10mm pancake at 77 g).

Body	Weight, g	Tilt	Flash	Pancake	Weight, total, g
Pentax K-01	561	No	Yes	40 mm/52 g	~610
Samsung NX200	223	No	No	30 mm/85 g	~310
Olympus E-P3	369	No	Yes	17 mm/71 g	~440
Olympus E-PL3	313	Yes	No	17 mm/71 g	~380
Panasonic DMC-GX1	318	No	Yes	20 mm/100 g	~420
Sony NEX-5N	290	Yes	No	17 mm/74 g	~360

There are other factors, such as a price. Pentax has many pancakes, while other manufacturers offer only one or two. I suspect that without viewfinder many long Pentax lenses will not be very useful.  Moreover, K-01 body weight is very similar to K-r (598 g), and the cameras are similar in size, so I suspect that for some people the K-r might be more attractive because it is cheaper, with fast autofocus (I suspect faster than K-01 at least with some lenses) and a viewfinder.

I hope that the company will continue development of this type of cameras. I mean K-01 type, not Pentax Q.