sharpness I find better, but more importantly tonality and colour I find to be the same. As I mentioned, I find the image characteristics to be very similar to a back whereas I find nothing else is. I do love the rangefinder, it's gorgeous but it's a pain and I'm not into manual focus and comparing it to a 1ds mark 3 it sucks when it comes to handling. Comparing it to a mamiya afd3 with a phase back I prefer it. For a start, there's virtually no shutter vibration, manual focus is slow but it's just as slow on a MF camera, at least the leica is accurate and most importantly for me it doesn't weigh a tonne. The viewfinder is funny, it's a bit weird to get used to but with wide lenses it's really nice, when I use my mamiya now it's like looking down a tunnel, the leica is a bit more present and immediate or something. Also, shooting people there's a lot less camera between you and the person.