 It's taken over four years, but Leica has finally produced a fully new M series camera, the M10. The $6500 M10 comes with a host of new things, including better image quality, wireless connectivity, and improved functionality over its predecessor. But at the same time, the M10 brings back many qualities of Leica's old film cameras, making it the most film-like digital camera the company has ever made. Buying and shooting a Leica is a unique experience, driven more by romance and nostalgia than value or performance. It's not about feeds and speeds, ISOs or megapixels. It's about feel and other entirely subjective qualities. Leica even has a German phrase to describe this, das Wiesentliche, which basically means the essentials. It starts with the design. The M10 is slimmer than earlier digital M's, giving it the same footprint as the film versions. It has fewer buttons on the back, and it doesn't record video of any sort. The controls have been designed so that all of your shooting parameters, aperture, shutter, ISO, can be set without having to look at the screen. It's the distillation of the needs of a still photographer, without any superfluous functions getting in the way. For decades, before they became exorbitantly expensive toys for the well-heeled, Leica cameras were the workhorses of choice for journalists, street photographers, and travel photographers because of their compact size, discrete functionality, and bulletproof build quality. The M10 carries more of those qualities over to the digital world than any prior Leica, so you can have a similar experience as someone shooting a 50 year old M3 without having to give up the conveniences of digital. Now don't get me wrong, the M10 is still incredibly expensive. A kit like the one I have here will run you well over $10,000. It's also incredibly hard to shoot with, especially if you're used to modern conveniences like autofocus, matrix metering, and close focusing distances. The M10 is not good for capturing fast action, and if you're shooting subjects like kids or pets, most of your shots are likely to be out of focus. It can take years to get proficient with the M's rangefinder focusing and metering system. As a result, the M10 is best for the same disciplines that classic Leica cameras were always good at, street photography, reportage, landscapes, and other low speed scenarios. Now compared to its immediate predecessors, the M type 240 and type 262, it can shoot in much higher ISOs, making it possible to shoot pictures in very low light. It has better dynamic range and a brighter viewfinder to make it slightly easier to compose and focus in low light. Now if you've never shot with a rangefinder, picking up and shooting with the M10 is going to be daunting. The focusing system is entirely manual and requires you to line up two small boxes in the middle of the frame to get focus. It can take a lot of practice to get right, and if you're shooting at wide apertures, like the f1.4 I have on this lens, it can be very difficult to nail the focus. And since the focusing is all done in the center of the frame, it can lead to some very boring composure if you don't remember to recompose after focusing. Leica's basic metering system also presents challenges if you're not prepared to handle it. It's basically a center weighted system that works okay most of the time, but gets thrown for a loop whenever there's a bright source of light in the frame, like the sun or lamps or street lights. It takes patience to learn how to shoot well with a Leica, and then patience to get the shot right once you've figured it all out. But for fans of Leica cameras, those that are bought into the romance of it all, these limitations are all part of the charm. Though the M10 is a fully modern sensor and can hold its own in terms of image quality with the best full frame DSLRs you can buy, the rest of it is decidedly low tech, even though it costs a lot more than other cameras. That means that if you're thinking about getting a Leica, you really need to be in love with it all, right down to the essentials, das Wiesentliche, of photography. I have to constantly like, hold the camera up, see what aperture I'm at, and then get my focus. Then I have to worry about, is my subject always in the center, which it is, because I'm bad at this. And then I can finally snap my photo.