^All of this. As a stalwart Leica shooter of 10 years, it's not bitterness or jealousy I feel, but sadness at their having moved on from making tools to what amounts to more or less "just another camera," albeit of a rarified form.

The key moment for me was the M7, when they reversed the direction the shutter speed dial rotates. Though it seems rather innocuous, but as a daily "lugger" with 2 other older bodies, it basically said "Goodbye, we don't care about your type any longer."

That they couldn't really keep up with the immense digital R&D budgets of more mainstream camera companies was not entirely surprising, and I accepted long ago that a Leica purchase would consist of high cost, and performance (though not necessarily image quality) that equals a generation or two back as compared to Canon/Nikon.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if this camera was immensely successful for them. The avant-garde design (as compared to the current retro-schtick) has cachet, <2K is a more reasonable price-point than the M models, it apparently performs adequately, and a new lens mount gives it plenty of "retail therapy" potential. This really is a page out of the Apple playbook.

Leica has been, for many years, not a single monolithic philosophy as manifested in equipment, but a company navigating a rapidly changing market. For a time they found a sizable market that echoed my wants, but no longer. Such is life, and Leica is not alone. Plaubel-Makina and numerous other companies were less fortunate or capable.

My "cred": 15+ years shooting/Leica CL/M3/M6/M7/M9:Canon/AE-1/D30/D60:Nikon/FM-3/F100/D90/D700/D3/D800:Fuji/X100S