I have found that an appealing aspect of using the renovated Leica M4-P film camera after a year of being without it   is its operational simplicity,  especially when compared to the complex menus of the current  mirrorless,  full frame digital cameras.  The film rangefinder's mechanics are so   basic that the camera  forces you to photograph differently.   

The M4-P rangefinder was made  before Leica   included a light meter  in its film rangefinders  and the limits of film are quickly reached in low light situations. So it is not an all round camera like the latest full frame mirrorless digital cameras -- such as the sophisticated Sony A7 RV,  the  Nikon  Z8  or the Canon EOS  R5.  

Within these limits the usability of the rangefinder centres on image making that is slow placed and premised on the characteristics of the  film and the limitations of the rangefinder  camera.   

Due to the cost of 35m colour negative film (Kodak Portra 400 ASA) these days the 'in camera' image making has to be  slow and considered by necessity.  You are forced to slow down, evaluate what you are seeing,   and  then think about constructing the  image as a poetics.  

There is no thinking about  the technicalities of the camera,  the camera is an extension of the eye, and  the  focus is on the  form and tonality of the image.  You  need to get it right as cannot evaluate what you have done and re-do it, as you can with a digital camera. 

This pared down  mode of working takes you back to the very basics of photography and it situates  you outside  the computational present with its  increasing use of AI technology,   the more  higher-contrast, more saturated renderings,  and rhe analogue nostalgic look of  film simulations  (eg., those in  Fuji cameras such as the GFX 100 series).    This pared down mode of working is a return to an earlier era, that of photochemical photography which more or less finished in the early years of the  21st century.

That was  when digital image technology radically changed visual culture.   In photography this meant  the digitalization of photography, computer display images,   computer-generated images, electronic storage, smart phones  and networked images.   That of course does not mean the end of ‘documentation’, of referentiality, of the reference to reality, or the end of photography,  as the rhetoric of the ‘death of photography of the  post-photography perspective, has  argued.