Leica cameras produce some really awful photography

I'd die for an A1 but couldn't justify the expense compared to my A77 ii and then I would be up for $1000's of dollars for lenses, as for a Leica my next cell phone will have Leica (Xiaomi 12 ultra) lenses and that's as close as I care to be to one or I could stick with my poor man's Leica's (Panasonic Lumix).

I was really into it - the whole Leica thing, slide films and processing black and white.

It a hard school to learn - manual focus - slide films - exposure comp. Got a digital camera and thought what have I been doing all this time !!

Still in the all time favourites is this one taken with Leica M7

A friend of mine is a professional photographer, and Canon Ambassador, and I have heard her say hundreds of times:

"two things matter in photography, what's behind the camera, and what's in front of the camera, the camera itself really doesn't matter"

Although I'm sure she doesn't say that when Canon are asking her to help sell cameras... and she did talk me into an EOS RP

I'm chiming in here on this resurrected thread because it kind of strikes a nerve with me. Not the Leica, because I know nothing about them other than they make good glass and are very expensive, but because of all of the hype now with mirrorless cameras. I participate on one of the Nikon forums, and it's usually pretty good resource with a fair number of professional and semi-professional photographers there who know their stuff. But all this hype and migration to mirrorless continues to boggle my little mind. I've had some mirrorless cameras - the Fujifilm was an excellent one, but after years and years of using Nikon, I couldn't get used to the Fuji UI, menus, controls, etc. I got a Nikon Zf, which gave me familiar controls but I hated the viewfinder (it's a screen) and didn't think that it took particularly good photos anyway.

My other gripe (yes, I have a list) is that so many people over process their work with lightroom or other software. Take the picture correctly with good lighting, and you shouldn't have to spend hours manipulating the result. IMHO.

Here's one of my favorite images, I used a flashlight in the darkness. I probably took 70 shots before I got one halfway decent.