K5
Handled it and played with it. Nice camera. A little smaller and lighter than my E-3, with almost as good a viewfinder.
But it not feel to be nearly as well-built or solid-feeling as either my E-1 or my E-3, and the controls, while pretty well located, also suggested (even) more trouble to handle with (real) gloves on than the E-3. The E-1 was/is a champion in this regard.
With lenses it is just no contest! IMHO, fixed focal length lenses have mostly become special-purpose optics: fisheyes, pancakes, macros, very fast teles, and even here, my 50f2 macro and 150f2 are superb lenses, and my 25mm pancake and 8mm FE are certainly more than adequate. And the Zuiko zooms are perhaps the strongest argument for choosing Olympus. Even the store manager, who carries mainly Pentax and Nikon, raved about the quality of a Zuko 11-22 he'd tried. He stated flat out that o that it and the 12-60 and 50-200 are a combination of IQ, brightness, useful range, close-focusing, relative compactness and light weight and weather sealing and
price that no other brand could quite match.
The Nikon D7000 is an impressive camera and a real bargain for its feature-set, though, it, too doesn't feel quite as robust. And I've owned Nikon and know that there is some truly great Nikon glass. But one real try of the heft and bulk of the latest incarnation of the classic Nikon 70-200, and a look at the price, and then at the range of lenses I'd need to match my Zuiko outfit, and, again, their total size and weight and price have more or less eliminated that option for me.
I really wish that Olympus had had - or committed - the resources to do a fair bit more with the E-5. Heck, I wish they'd found a way to marry the E-3 pentaprism and swivel LCD with an E-1-sized body. But as a rugged, portable, weather-proof system with excellent IQ in
most situations, it still appears to give the best bang for the buck even for those who haven't already bought into the system,
--
erichK
saskatoon, canada
http://erichk.zenfolio.com/
http://www.fototime.com/inv/7F3D846BCD301F3
underwater photos:
http://www.scubaboard.com/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/500/ppuser/5567 
