True, but even so, is there a better alternative to carrying a camera openly?
Well, I normally carry it slung over my shoulder underneath my jacket. This summer I will have to find a better solution, a jacket is not an option at 45°C. Last summer I normally carried it in a blue plastic bag.
And, except in those countries where people demand money to have their picture taken (which normally happens only in quite heavily touristed areas), you need only be a cash cow if you want to be.
There are all sorts of situations where it is undesirable to be taken for a tourist. I am not referring to heavily touristed areas; those are really only the most obvious case and usually it's enough to be a foreigner, no camera necessary (I've had to live in this sort of place for weeks before people got used to me walking around.)
For example, I have had situations where the omnipresent police, taking me for a tourist, hoped to milk me for some bribes and told me that it was forbidden to photograph what I was photographing. It took some arguing to show that I had a relatively clear idea what could be photographed and what couldn't, and that I had no intention to pay anything to anybody. In the end the policeman told me "Oh, I thought you were a tourist", which in his opinion explained it all. If this hadn't been in this particular country that I know very well, I wouldn't have got off so easily.
Finally, are many people going to see much difference between a Leica and a digicam?
That's wishful thinking IMHO. You'd be surprised. I guess the difference is rather in whether or not someone is posing for you smiling in the middle of the scene, or in whether you look through a viewfinder or at a big LC display.
There are countless examples of RF users not being stopped when SLR carriers are.
There's lots of anecdotal evidence, you mean, which on a RF forum is quite naturally going to be biased moreover. From my own experience on what cameras I've been stopped with, I'd be hesitant to say that a rangefinder gives you any "advantage" vis-a-vis any other type of camera. The best you can have IMHO is a good camera phone.
Philipp
