After reading about the leica M9, I thought about my ideal camera, which would be an amalgamation of a number of cameras I've used through the years. here's what I've come up with. the M9 comes close, but there's no way I could afford it right now.
- rangefinder-style focusing
from my polaroid 100. connecting the circle halves on the XD11 can get you there, but doesn't always work so well in low light situations or when what you're attempting to focus on is uniform. (the little ring of prisms never seem to be in sharp focus to begin with...)
- small
from my rollei 35S. if it's small, I'll carry it around. my rollei 35S I am in the habit of dragging to/from work and on trips with me. it doesn't take up much space. unfortunately it has no built-in focusing aids, and is a bit heavy.
- light
from my 110s. the weight of my instamatic 40 would be good I guess. this is probably the most pie-in-the-sky feature. I have nothing against plastic. really.
- digital output
as much as I'd like to say I have neatly organized albums of carefully printed B&W photos, time constraints simply aren't going to make this happen. to practically share these images, I need them in an electronic format. I can scan negatives myself, but it's hellishly time consuming, and I've never gotten satisfactory results for some of my thicker negatives. sure, I can have negatives scanned, but it's an extra step and a hassle.
- high ISO
some of my favorite images are from my polaroid 100 with 3000-speed polaroid and fuji film. I hear some digital sensors can do ISO 25600 these days. that ought to be fast enough.