The Leica brand is so strong that it influences peoples' secret wishes. Many buy cameras that look or work alike. This is the Leica envy. I too suffer from it. Last year I did something about it. Since November last year I've been shooting M mount (See Figure 1). I have no real Leica stuff. I could possibly afford it but then I would have to sacrifice a lot from the other parts in my life to get a marginal improvement of my kit. I've lost all my interest in the rangefinder technology, but I admire the lenses. There are high quality alternatives to Leica glass. I own lenses from Voigtländer, Zeiss and Minolta.

I acquired the Ricoh GXR Mount A12, also known as GXR-M. That body has some advantages. It is M mount, i.e., I can use these lenses without adapter. It is optimized for use together with manual lenses. For instance, Ashwin Rao describes how he is able to do manual focus fast enough for sports photography. That impressed me, and it the factor that settled the issue for me. Focus peaking have become even more important for me since my eye sight has deteriorated since I ordered it.

It also has really good image quality. Sean Reid was the one who convinced me that anti-aliasing filters are detrimental for image quality. Finally, the user interface is very well thought out. See Luminous Landscape's The field report.

The GXR-M is a true exchangeable lens camera. You mount whatever you have, possibly using an adapter. I have a Nikon F to Leica M adapter (Figure 2). I works nicely, even at infinity for the lenses I've tested.