This thread is getting rather interesting in many respects. People are happily surprised to find the new perspectives offered by the wide and tele converters attached to their pocket cameras. Yet, their pocket cameras are no longer pocket cameras, and their lovely prime lenses with their faultless optical engineering are being destroyed by compromise quality extra glass.
It seems to me that the Leica heritage is playing a central role here, again. Prime lenses are, of course, and still, the state of the art, but a lot of water has run under the bridge since zoom lenses were a synonym of mediocre optical quality. The minor optical distortions unavoidable with the zoom lenses (barrel/pincushion) can now be taken care of by post processing, which we do anyway.
When zoom is accepted, the step zoom, like the on Ricoh GX100, is given a big hand, mainly because it's almost like using prime lenses with their familiar focal lengths (I see the point with the optical viewfinders, but who really wants to buy all four of them and change them all the time? Yet, I'd love to see which focal length I'm using also with the normal zoom).
Another thread here is asking if we walk or zoom. Sometimes the space gets too limited for us to walk, and zooming becomes a very attractive option. Without zoom, we are forced to ask: do you crop? Another tough question for the Leica traditionalists. Cropping a digital image? Isn't it like using the d i g i t a l z o o m ?
Lovely Thai pics, again.