After a few years with a Contax G2, I have to say I miss the rangefinder thing. You either love it or you hate it. I can understand that. Even so, manufacturers are beginning to see photographers hankering after them again. What we want is the quality of Leica, but not the price. It can be done and the old film camera manufacturers did it with Voigtlander, Contax, and Epson. Not to leave out the Zeiss Ikon.
Panasonic started the ball rolling along with Leica by marketing the LX3 and DLux 4 respectively, and Olympus have done a good job with the EP-1 PEN. The problem with them IMHO is none have dedicated built-in optical viewfinders. From the point of view that purchasers of the rangefinder camera will be experienced rangefinder photographers and not beginners - although they might be up for one - you'd think these companies would consider what it was that we rangefinder users want. Me? Well you can forget built in flash. What I want is a camera that has two nice primes - a wide and a standard equivalent, and a decent optical viewfinder linked to the focal range of lenses I want to use. In truth, most rangefinder users are happy with a wide, a standard, and maybe a 90mm. That's all.
The Olympus EP1 PEN is quite exciting, but not yet up to the mark for me. This sketch below is what I would like to see the EP-2 looking like face on. I hope it does, but somehow think it won't.
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