Leica, the originator of the 35mm still photography format, announced earlier its newest offerings, the nigh-indestructible M9 rangefinder (replacing the somewhat troubled M8 and M8.2 bodies), and a new digital compact dubbed the X1.

The king of the show (of course) is the M9, sporting a Kodak-designed 18 megapixel full-frame sensor (which solves one problem of its predecessor, which made wide primes behave notably less wide thanks to a crop factor). The sensor once again lacks an anti-aliasing filter, which I hear resulted in insanely sharp photos from the M8s and which meshes well with all expected physics as well. This time Leica has seen fit to put the cut-off filters back over the sensor, removing the sometimes criticized need for a gamut of such filters for your lenses. Bravo, Leica. Combined with the body tweaks done on the M8.2 to solve a few problems with the day-to-day, in-the-warfield use, Leica’s getting its M series very much to a nice zenith for the digital age. Mind you, I think you still have to take the baseplate off to switch memory cards, but there’ll always be trade-offs for award-winning body design, yeah?

The other camera, a compact body with a 12.2 megapixel APS-C sensor and a fixed 24mm f2.8 lens (kinda like Sigma’s DP2), brings the clasic M series aesthetic to the compact market, while simultaneously creating a new price tier for digital compacts. It features an available grip, and a built-in flash (which is quite cute and cylindrical), full-manual controls (including aperture and shutter dials), RAW, etc.

Both bodies have decided, in a bold and applaudable move, to forgo in-house software and instead come with Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom. Bravo, Leica. Seriously. I’ve used quite a few RAW and managements softwares, and Lightroom is easily the best of any of them, and makes taking pictures from good to fabulous a quick and painless chore, complete with robust filtering and organization options. More people could follow Leica’s lead here and I would not be hurt in the least.