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Anonymous
They're nice to use. I thought leicas were entirely hype until I happened to come across one for an extremely low price a few years ago. I bought it with the intention of immediately reselling it for a huge profit, but I made the mistake of running a roll of film through it first. It's now by far my favorite camera (and yes, I do own a couple DSLRs) and if I had to get rid of everything else, I would not be bothered if it was the last camera I could ever use. There isn't any specific thing that makes leicas better, fundamentally they're the same thing as any other fully-mechanical fully-manual camera. The only way I can describe it is how they feel. The manufacturing is as good as it gets and the control layout and simplicity of operation are, in my opinion, perfection.
I've had a couple G-IIIs and they're nice, especially for the price, but I wouldn't even put them in the same category as Leicas. There are rangefinders (Canonets, Minolta 7s, etc) and then there are rangefinders (Leica Ms, the new Zeiss-Ikon, new Voigtlander, Canon P, Nikon SP). While they both use roughly the same focusing system, they were designed with different goals and made to vastly differently standards. It's sort of like comparing a D40 to a D2x. They're the same basic category, but totally different cameras.
As far as Leica optics as in the OPs pic, they're just very good quality. At work I have the opportunity to use some Leica trinovid binoculars and they are the sharpest, most contrasty, flattest field binoculars I've ever seen. I have a pair of high end Nikon binocs that are very good, but still not quite equal.
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