As a guy who works in the optics industry, I have to agree with most everything that's been said. However, as far as the shakes go, you can overcome that with the Leica by using the scan mode. Older models(pre 2002)didn't have that feature. The Swarovski gathers more light simply because of the larger objective lens, and is also more expensive. I think you'll get much more bang for your buck with the Leica CRF. You just can't beat that total package.