I've often wondered why camera companies aren't somewhat more cooperative, at least in *thinking* about their products. For example, if I owned Pentax, I would have asked the engineers to see if they could design the flash interface to get full functionality from the Nikon flash system, without violating any patents. Since the interface for flashes is generally pretty simple, I suspect it could be done -- and Pentax users would then have access to the best flash system ever made, and I doubt that Pentax would even notice the loss in its own flash system, which is pretty minimal.
Similarly, I think Sony should encourage, and even commission, Zeiss to come up with a whole range of small, fully-functioning primes for Nex -- and then NEX really *would* be the new Leica, and I would buy one in an instant. Throw in one or two somewhat compact zooms, and it'd be a beautiful system. But IMHO, as expressed above, compactness is essential. I think they might be able to achieve that by giving up the idea of super zooms, and going with perhaps four shorter-range zooms instead of the usual three. Sony might also take a close look at Leica's two tri-elmars: those are compact, even the wide one, and would be a terrific addition to the NEX system. But just pooping out a bunch of so-so Sony consumer zooms ain't gonna do it.
