Nothing lasts forever, as the saying goes. Not being flippant here, just stepping back a bit and looking at all of the chatter, rumors, speculations, etc. It seems that Leica has placed itself in a tough spot. If they decide that the existing lenses for the R, which they surely cannot be selling too many lately, are not going to work for a MF sort of system, fine. Build the new glass, and get folks into it. If they are too worried about the existing user community of R-folks, who are not really buying much new glass, but hanging on to what they already have, love and cherish, then Leica may have to build/co-brand some sort of 35mm camera. Fact is that no matter how great some of the R lenses are, they are not meeting the needs of a larger 35mm user group. They lack AF or fast AF, and unless Leica is prepared to start revamping the entire line, the glass will cater to a much smaller group of users that are willing/wanting/prepared to deal with manual focus, stop-down metering, and things along this line.
Personally, I would have loved to see Leica place a great 35mm FF DSLR into the field, along with the glass to support that, meaning updated and fast AF among other things, while NOT losing the excellent optics and present performance. Not sure they can do that. Secondly, while having Leica possibly field a MF system seems attractive in these discussions, that is not going to be an easy hill for them to climb either. They could come in somewhere in the middle.....below the very expensive MF systems we are seeing roll out now, but also a bit more than the Canon and Nikon offerings. Not sure they can do this either, as it is not clear what the target group would be.....MF folks that are already several notches up, or 35mm DSLR folks that are looking for a bit more image quality, but many are already complaining about costs of things like the 1DsMkIII. Just seems odd.
And the idea of rebadging a Canon body.....well, I would think that Leica would have more to offer if they collaborated with Canon to produce some better short glass for them. Help them put out some absolutely killer WA glass that is edge to edge sharp wide open, that takes advantage of Canons AF system, that produces a clarity and resolution that exceeds anything Canon now has or may be willing/able to produce, and that truly serves the 1DsMkIII and beyond capabilities. I do not see this happening either, which is the other disappointment. Leica is going to struggle no matter what way they go. I hate to see this, but they have sort of brought this upon themselves by not being a bit more in tune, innovative and aggressive with offerings over the past couple of years.
Sorry for the rant....I would love to see an outstanding 35mm FF DSLR that nips at the heels of MF systems, and has a complement of superb, fast, optics to support it, regardless of that means new mounts, new design, new whatever. The MF systems are outstanding, but they still lack the overall performance capabilities of the 35mm DSLR world, where speed and things do make a difference. Give me a 35mm DSLR with all the speed and things they have now, but with really outstanding, high resolving glass to make a 25MP sensor really shine, and I might be tempted to stop looking at MF + DSLR to fill the bill.
LJ