C'mon guys, Rockwell is obviously a photography "provocateur". Next to politics, "camera brands" (for some reason) is a great subject for such mischief. That's why he gets so many hits, and everyone here knows his name. The Cult of Leica - obviously, more so than any other brand, is an easy target for provocateurin'. While there is an element of truth to what his says regarding obsolescence, it's an entirely moot point. A minority of drivers prefer to drive a car with a manual transmission (like me). To call a Leica "obsolete" is as irrelevant as saying a car with a manual transmission is obsolete or a spring wound watch is obsolete. There are a variety of reasons why people opt for older technologies - especially ones that put the user in control of the tool instead of outsourcing the decisions along to the fun to a microprocessor, or be battery independent. I won't recount them all. "Obsolescence", therefore is truly relative and subjective.
Since it is subjective (and relative) one can point to Rockwell's weighting of shutter synch speeds as a key criteria for camera evaluation. I agree to an extent, which is why I opt for fixed lens leaf shutter "japanese knock-offs" (from the 60's), which synch flash at all speeds. I might say, why do you need slow, noisey "auto-focus" lenses? Do you have something wrong with your eyes? Are you really that lazy that you can't focus a camera? And, do you really need all this gadgetry to take a simple picture when it doesn't involve "bursting" X number of frames per second? Doesn't it get in the way? Is even a light meter all that necessary, with 15 different "matrixed" areas - whatever? Can't you just compensate by a stop or so for backlighting using your own experienced based judgement? Doesn't this make you a better photographer?
Oh, looks like I fell for Rockwell's provocateurin' (again). Doh!
