Hello Phoebe! Thank you very much. I’m glad I inspire you. I would really recommend the M8 or M9 (if you’ve got the dough) if you want to persue digital rangefinder photography. I must mention this though: The sensor (especially the one in the M8) perform really well in good light. In less favorable lighting conditions it’s not that good in my opinion.

You can of course bump up the ISO but that leaves you with grainy images, which just didn’t work out for me and my customers who require perfect images. (Just because I love some high-ISO images my M8 produced, doesn’t mean my clients thought they were as good). So I had to make the switch back to dSLR:s and I chose the Nikon D700 because of the full frame sensor, ISO-performance and the huge market of available second hand lenses+the low prices of said lenses (in comparison to the extremely pricy Leica lenses).

But all that greatness comes with some downsides of course. The D700 is heavy and not as easily slung over your shoulder for a quick walk in the park. It’s also very ugly. So it’s up to you: Pretty, iconic camera with lesser performance and superb lenses or Ugly, regular camera with great performance and great lenses. They cost about the same. Everything lately is shot with my D700 because I sold my M8.

Good luck!