The Leica M9-P ($7,995 list, body only) is a beautiful camera with an absurdly high sticker price. Its lack of bells and whistles will confound casual snapshooters, but its an appealing choice for seasoned photographers who fell in love with rangefinder film cameras and want a digital equivalent. If you're looking for a camera that supports autofocus, video recording, and offers a library of zoom lenses, the M9-P  is not for you. But if a compact camera with a large image sensor, bright optical viewfinder, and minimalist controls is what you're after, the M9-P may be what you're looking for—the only question is whether you can afford it. This high-end interchangeable lens camera doesn't offer the mass market appeal or flexibility of our Editors' Choice Olympus OM-D E-M5 ($1,299.99, 5 stars), but if you're set on a new digital rangefinder, your choices are all Leica.

Why Choose a Rangefinder Camera?

If you've never shot with a rangefinder, you must first understand that there are some fundamental differences that set the camera apart from an SLR. When you look through the optical viewfinder of an SLR, you're seeing exactly what the lens sees. This has its advantages—you get an accurate view of your frame and can preview the depth of field of your shot. With a rangefinder, two sets of framelines, which change along with the lens, are displayed in the viewfinder to give you an idea of what your frame will capture, but you'll want to keep shots a bit loose with the intention of cropping, as they aren't entirely accurate. You'll also see a bright rectangle in the middle of the finder with a double image—that's how you focus. As you adjust the focus on the lens barrel, the double image turns into one. Once you've mastered this technique, it's quicker than manually focusing an SLR, but obviously lags behind the best D-SLRs in terms of speed and precision.

So, why put up with the convoluted focusing and framing system? For one, the finder is always bright—regardless of whether you're using an f/0.95 lens or an f/4 lens. Depending on how wide your lens is, you'll also be able to see outside of the frame. This is ideal for shooting on the street where pedestrians may wander into a shot unexpectedly, or for tracking action. There's also no finder blackout when you take a photo—so you'll see the exact moment that you're capturing as you hear the shutter click. There aren't a lot of other digital cameras on the market that offer this—the Fujifilm X-Pro1 ($1,699 list) comes closest. It doesn't offer the manual focus rangefinder patch so you'll have to trust its autofocus when shooting with its hybrid digital/optical viewfinder in optical mode.

The other advantage is lens design. Because there's no mirror or focus motors, rangefinder lenses are amazingly small—especially when you consider that they provide full frame coverage. The rear element can be very close to the film plane, which makes it possible to design wide-angle lenses that are incredibly compact. The Leica Elmarit 28mm f/2.8 ASPH lens has a 2-inch diamater and is just 1.2 inches long, much smaller than any 28mm SLR lens of similar speed.

The short span between the lens mount and film plane also reduces the distance that light has to travel before it is captured, resulting in images that are much sharper around the edges and in the corners than those from SLRs. The M9-P has a series of microprisms built into the sensor that further help to increase corner performance, as digital sensors require light to hit the photosites straight on in order to be properly recorded—this isn't required when shooting film. The sensor also omits an antialias filter, which makes sharper photos possible. Along with the X-Pro1 and Nikon D800E ($3,299.95), it's one of the few cameras on the market that takes this approach to sensor design.

If you discover that shooting with a rangefinder is for you, your choice of camera bodies is limited—they're niche products at this point. Leica currently produces two other models. The M9 ($6,995 list) is essentially the same camera with slightly different styling and without a protective sapphire glass cover over its LCD. The recently announced M-Monochrom ($7,995 list) is basically an M9  that shoots only black-and-white photos. You can also look for an M8, M8.2, or Epson R-D1 (2 stars) on the used market. The 10-megapixel M8 and M8.2 will handle much like the M9, although the image sensor in those cameras is smaller than full frame, so your lenses will suffer from a 1.33x crop factor, and you'll need to use special UV/IR filters on your lenses to prevent unwanted color shifts when shooting certain fabrics and vegetation. The RD-1 is a 6-megapixel camera and uses a 1.5x APS-C crop sensor, the same size that is found in consumer D-SLRs, and is unique in that it is a digital camera that requires you to manually advance the shutter after taking a photo, just as you would with a film camera.