Mike, Leica is a German company and the engineers that work on their projects have a western mentality, like most of us. All the rest of camera makers are mainly from Japan; cameras are designed by Japanese engineers, primarly for Japanese market with a Japanese mentality. What sounds very simple for us it is extremely complicated for them to achieve and, after all, simple, logical order for us, in Japan would not be considered good enough. It is not by chance that westerners write using one alphabet of 26 letters while the Japanese have two alphabet and use about 1800 ideograms to write. I am telling this because, during my 38 years carrier with Japan Airlines, I had to deal every day with this different cultural approach toward matters.

Mike, train, don't strain is the way to go and there is not a better way then walk

Mike everything will be fine and you will finally be able to complete your book tanks to the the dictating tech of modern computers you do not need to write until doctor will allow you. Very soon your right eye will be in a much better shape that has been in the past years and you can start going around the lake taking pictures with beautiful autumn colours. All the Best and get well soon.

Mike, every day people around the world take million of pictures but only a small percentage of them are taken by digital cameras. Definitely the quality of pictures taken by mobiles phones cannot be compared with those taken by cameras however people keeps on taking them by mobile for a very simple reasons: it is fun! To take a picture by a mobile phone you do not need to read any manual, you can see the imagine in a 6" screen, double the one in a camera, you can edit, cut, and publish them on a social with few simple gestures. If camera makers do not understand this simple facts and continue producing cameras in their traditional way I am afraid that their sales will continue shrinking and photographers will risk to become an elite of very capable romantic artists, as painters are nowadays.

Happy Birthday and Get Well Soon

Mike, fist of all Best Wishes for your operation and I am sure that you will recover much quicker than expected. Regarding being your chauffeur for 5 days I would be very pleased to offer myself but, in fact, I live in Rome, Italy, a bit too far away from your place. Nevertheless I am confident that many of your TOP readers living not too far from your place will offer themselves. In fact you need only 5 persons, one a day, to have the opportunity to take care of you and listen to the many stories that you will tell them. Americans are worldwide famous for their generosity, definitely they will not miss the opportunity to give you a hand.

I agree with Gary Bliss reporting words of Mr. Hogan: the number of persons that treasure their photo in prints is dramatically reducing year after year. The young generations, those who are supposed to buy the photographic equipment after the baby boomers will give up, are far more interested in sending their shots, no matter how technically perfect, to their internet audience and they do not need a highly sophisticated camera, a smart phone it is more than enough. The phone producers year after year are improving their optical performance while the camera makers are still timidly approaching the communication field. I would be very interested in buying the new Pentax K-70 but it seems that, besides it's excellent optical performance, in communication terms it is still far away from an acceptable standard. Perhaps I will hold on for one more year, but time is passing and I am getting really old...