"I don't care what anyone else shoots with because ultimate(ly) it is the work that matters."
I think this is the root of the argument. And, I believe it's the great divide among the mass of "photo people" both on this forum and with the public.
Years back, Paolo Pellegrin was using cheap Olympus 6mp digital cameras ... I wonder if all his critics looked at the pictures he made with these cheap plastic cameras?
https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/paolo-pellegrin/
https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/olympussp500uz
I totally get that. I use old manual-focus Nikon and Mamiya 645 lenses attached with a tilt-shift adapter to a Sony A7R II. I ignore ninety per cent of the Sony's features because I like to shoot simply - manual exposure, manual white balance (mostly "sunny"). Because the kind of pictures I take dictate the equipment I use. My gear would be anathema (or at least frustrating) to Pellegrin, and his to me.
However, digital makes it easier to ensure you've got the shot you need. As a photographer who takes photography seriously (exhibitions and professional product photography), I welcome anything that helps me nail a photograph. So, being able to check my photograph immediately is essential - it is inarguable that using a phone to preview photos over Wi-Fi is far slower and clumsy. I cannot imagine any photographer I know using a screenless Leica for professional work - and I know many photographers, including the Magnum photographer who tutored me for two years.
It seems perverse for a company to deliberately hobble their cameras. It's better to have functions and find you don't need them than to not have functions and find you do! That's not an argument to include everything! Take video: If you'll never use video, then a stills-only camera makes perfect sense. But a wholly screenless digital camera would at best be more awkward to use than one with the usual screen. Digital is not film - the obvious differences being the ability with digital to change how the picture is taken and the ease of reviewing and retaking the picture: making a digital camera that is harder to use by removing core features so it operates more like a film camera is thus clearly an appeal to a nostalgia for film!
Another example. I really don't get the digital Leica M's ridiculous removable base plate - it makes the camera impossible to use for studio sessions on a tripod because you can't remove the SD card or replace the battery without moving the camera! Yes, I know this camera is not aimed at studio photographers, but they've prevented it from ever being used by them for a truly pathetic, pointless reason: nostalgia and form over function (rather than function over form as required by any serious tool). There is absolutely no practical reason for the base plate on a digital M. And the marketing reasons are weak too. I'd be very surprised if any digital M owner would have
not bought the camera if the base plate weren't present!
The faux cocking lever is trivial compared with the above problems, but underlines that the digital Leica M is not a tool aimed primarily at the serious or professional photographer. Yes, of course it can be - and is - used by them, but they are incidental users and not the primary target.
Paolo Pellegrin's Olympuses (Olympi?) are not the kind of thing: they were built to a particular specification (i.e. a low-cost basic camera for the general public). They did not incorporate design features to appeal to nostalgia or looks at the expense of reduced functionality.
I have no problem whatsoever with the idea of the Leica M. In fact, I was an early adopter and bought a new Leica M8, which was my main camera for 5 years. I worked around the problems (cutting crude holes in a spare base plate being my solution to studio use!). But it is a shadow of what it could have been while keeping to its core concepts of being a rangefinder optimised for manual operation.
And I can't help feel some defences are justifications grasping at straws, such as that of misoperation through always accidentally pressing buttons. Do these people have fingers like balloons! The wrong button on any device occasionally gets pushed, but in the 20 years I've been using digital cameras, the only place I've met this problem is online - never happened to me, nor to anyone I've met. Camera manufacturers design controls to minimise this!
I suppose I'm grumbling because I want a digital M but Leica clearly have no interest in making a purely photographic tool based on the M but aimed at professionals. That is, with all the frivolities removed and cutting-edge technology where essential: for example, battery and SD card doors; and a high-resolution, high-brightness LCD because the current one is horrible - a digital camera needs the best possible LCD, not its removal!
