From the first time I went out with my new Leica M9 I could not believe how much I missed the days of manual photography. Granted that the Leica M9 has plenty of automated features (like Aperture priority shooting), but the need to construct your shot with this camera took me back to the golden days of manual photography. Point-and-shoot is definitely not what this camera is all about. With the M9 I found myself back in the world of photography as art. Composition, aperture, f-stop, distance, white balance, etc., were again something I had to think about, and this gave me the feeling that photography was once more all about the photographer than about the camera. You, the photographer, are back in charge, but with an extremely modern work of art at your disposal. The experience is so great that you tend to put up with some of the challenges presented by these rangefinders: people with glasses find it hard to see the whole finder coverage, you sometimes forget you have the lens... Read more

I have wanted a Leica Rangefinder for a very long time. I am an experienced amateur photographer with an extensive portfolio in sports, landscape, portrait and travel photography. I have an immense collection of Canon digital and film bodies and nearly every lens Canon has produced in the past 20 years. I have been more than satisfied, more like enthralled, with the photography this equipment makes possible. Then I took the plunge and bought that Leica M9 I had been eyeing for the past year. After the sticker shot passed though I very nearly experienced buyer's remorse. Although I usually shoot all manual settings on my Canons, still the M9 looked painfully plain and unadorned without all the knobs, buttons, menus and gizmos to which I have become accustomed (alright addicted). I mean did I really intend to pony up $7000 for the body and another 3K for a lens so that I could step back twenty years? Then I took the camera on a winter photography trip to Venice along with my two adult... Read more

Remember the Leica M8? I wrote an honest review of the M8 on Amazon and got flamed by Leica enthusiasts. My main concern with the M8 was the smaller than full frame sensor (18 mm x 27 mm) and its extreme IR sensitivity. I fully expect to get flamed for this review. I was not able to rent an M9 in my home city, Milwaukee. 6 months on a waiting list and an AmTrack ride I did get my rental from a well known photo shop in Chicago (with insurance!). So here goes. The full frame sensor on the M9 boasts a resolution of 18 Megapixels WITHOUT an anti-aliasing filter. Files are in the DNG format. Both Canon and Nikon use full frame sensors with resolutions of 25 Megapixels BUT they DO use anti-aliasing filters. In theory less processing (i.e. no anti-aliasing filter) can can yield better images. Without an AA filer images could be suseptable to moire patterns. But there were none visible with the M9. The question is this. Is the picture quality of the Leica quantifiably better than its... Read more