I love my GXR. Nobody else I know has one (or even knows what it is). Sliding out the lensor unit really raises some eyebrows.
An updated Leica M unit with high ISO capabilities would be so incredible.
this is what modern digital cameras should be, but the manufacturers are too scared to try doing it, as they know it will destroy their business model and they have no idea what to do/how to make money once everyone realizes it's how digital cameras should have been from the start (and now even moreso that the tech rat-race has plateaued).
leica digital
SHOULD do this, but it would upend their M-mount business model more than anyone else's, and they're the one company who can't stand to have their business model fall apart. there's literally no point to putting 45 minutes into scrubbing an aluminum block when 4 years from now it's going to be an expensive paperweight.
you would think that even wealthy people would realize that it makes sense to put love & care into creating a beautiful camera body where every two-three years, you ship it off to Leica digital, pay them $1500 for a new sensor module and a $300 installation fee for them to make sure post-installation all the bits are "within-spec," and boom. honestly, don't even bother making it user-swappable (although that would be nice).
it's really not that hard a concept to grasp -- it's like comparing having a gold trash can that you throw out with the garbage, versus having a gold trash can you can open up, take the $.30 plastic bag out containing the garbage, and then throw that away. besides, if leica digital is so hell-bent on pimping their advertising (that was actually true in the film-camera days), they could use their old "OUR CAMERA*S LAST A LIFETIME" with only a tiny asterisk...
*bodie
if a company couldn't modify that business model to make it profitable, they're idiots. the problem isn't that
they're stupid, it's that
consumers are.