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L E IC A F O T O G R A F IE IN T E R N AT IO N A L _ S P E CI A L E DI T IO N _ 2 . 2 0 14

SAILOR NURSE KISS

Capturing history for 100 years www.100years.leica-camera.com

Editorial

Content

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100 years of Leica_ LFI

Chapter 1: the brand core

Tradition, transformation, innovation

What is behind the Leica legend, how does Leica define itself today – and what does it mean for photographers?

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Chapter 2: how the Leica came into being

Oskar Barnack’s epochal invention

DEAR READERS, 100 years of Leica is the celebration of an idea that, from its beginnings, was carried forward by the will to achieve better pictures by means of photography. For Oskar Barnack, the inventor of the Leica, ‘better’ meant ‘simpler for everyone’ in the first place, but in order to achieve this task, stress-free precision in the interaction of all functions and lenses of unimpeachable quality have been critical preconditions. This central theme leads us through the history of the brand, an evolution I have had the pleasure to accompany for quite some time. In recent years, Leica has emerged victorious from several difficult phases of change because the traditional product philosophy with its recognition of the immense importance of precision engineered excellence has reached the boundaries of what was communicable to the market. However, what we are particularly proud of is that Leica has successfully integrated the values that define the identity of the brand – and, incidentally, embrace values that have always been relevant to photography – in products that even today, in the digital age, are of exemplary and unique quality. Let us take the M-System as an example – a more than 60-year old concept, always loved by many photographers and, as is currently the case, flourishing as never before. Join me in this special issue of LFI and let us take a journey to the most important milestones in the history of ‘the Leica’, which today appears in a differentiated form that Oskar Barnack could never have dreamed of.

Your Andreas Kaufmann

Ready to shoot 100 years ago, the camera that rang in a new era of imaging culture in 1925: Barnack’s ‘small film camera’

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Chapter 3: the Barnack albums

From the life of the Barnack family

An attic-treasure: previously unknown photos from the estate of Oskar Barnack’s granddaughter

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Chapter 4: optical excellence

From Elmar to Apo-Summicron

How the art of building Leica lenses developed since the days of Max Berek – the 50 mm lens throughout the years

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Chapter 5: the Leica M-System

The almost timeless Leica rangefinder

The M Leica has fascinated lovers of photography since 1954 – the epitome of the precision camera, whether digital or film

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Chapter 6: the Leica R-System

An intermezzo: the 35 mm SLR

The R-System once secured Leica’s survival – but lacked the essential features to secure its own

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Chapter 7: the Leica S-System

The S-System: “Let’s take the risk …”

How Leica regained the trust of professional photographers – with an extraordinary digital medium format system

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Constantine Manos: Miami Beach, 1982

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LFI _100 years of Leica

Tradition, transformation and innovation How did the Leica brand become a legend? With products that inspired and enriched photography at decisive milestones in its history. By the singular combination of simplicity, precision and exceptional capabilities. Zeitgeist did not always favour the Leica, but now, in this centennial year, the company shines out with a portfolio that reveals an innovative might inspired by tradition.

Chapter 1: the brand core

100 years of Leica_ LFI

1914–2014: The 100th birthday of a legend. Our congratulations to Leica. With which we mean both the camera and the company. And quickly, before anyone begins to complain: we know that ‘the Leica’ first appeared on the scene in 1925.

But it didn’t appear from empty space. It is the result of a stroke of genius on the part of Oskar Barnack, the precision engineer, first realised in 1914 in a form that so thoroughly convinced Ernst Leitz II, the son of the founder of the Ernst Leitz factory, that he encouraged him to perfect it.

What ultimately reached the market after years of constant development and refinement as a combination of the arts of engineering and a courageous entrepreneurial gamble was an extremely precisely engineered, easy to use, compactly-sized camera that would fit in a jacket pocket and prove to be the right tool at the right time. At the time, a revolutionary concept, even though, as will be shown, one that hung in the air, Barnack’s invention inspired the development of photography to become the universally utilised communicative and expressive medium that we so simply take for granted today. In the hands of countless famous and anonymous photographers, the Leica irrevocably changed and shaped our perception of the world. For decades, the masterpieces of optical and mechanical engineering from Wetzlar were nothing less than the synonym for 35 mm photography.

Leica Camera is the successor to Ernst Leitz Wetzlar and one of the oldest manufacturers of cameras and lenses anywhere in the world. This year, Leica left the small town of Solms and relocated the company to a new site in Wetzlar, the city where everything began. A move that expresses Leica’s belief in the importance of heritage and the beginning of a new era.

This heritage has always played an extraordinarily important role in the product-related self-perception of the company. The origins as a factory for the

A view of the new Leica complex in Wetzlar.

The move in this centennial year simultaneously marks the beginning of a new era and the company’s commitment to its origins

construction of microscopes in the 19th century laid the foundation stone for unrivalled expertise in the construction of high-performance instruments characterised by precision engineering and optical excellence. Since the days of Oskar Barnack and Max Berek, the lens designer, products created in the photographic segment on this basis possessed a particular charm with magical qualities that went more than skin deep. Their inner complexity in the interest of technically enabling ‘good pictures’ went hand-inhand with the struggle to maximise ease of handling to ensure that the creation of a good picture was a consequence of the intuitive actions of the photographer and a technology that was supportive rather than challenging. This tradition of product-perception and design has remained a hallmark of the company’s style until the present day.

Admittedly, there have been times in which this legacy had been more of a burden than an asset. It is only ten years ago that Leica stood on the verge of ruin. And this turning point was the deepest trough on the curve of a development that had grown more critical with every year of the past decades on a roller-coaster ride

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characterised by a cyclic alternation of glorious technical innovations and disastrous decisions. Other manufacturers, predominantly Japanese, frequently appeared to have had a better understanding of the practical needs and wishes of photographers than the company that was responsible for establishing the respectability of 35 mm photography and advancing it to become a standard. In the 1970s, it frequently seemed as if Leica would ultimately share the fate of the majority of the once proud German photographic industry – good, indeed superb, products but somehow terribly outdated.

Take the triumphant conquest of 35 mm photography by autofocus – Leica had actually developed a viable technology long before it began. But others were to transform it into marketable products – and Leica was left out in the rain. Also because Leica considered it impossible to harmonise the autofocus drive with their demands on the mechanical precision of their lenses.

But what is the point of an SLR system that gave the world some of the best lenses ever constructed, when it categorically refuses to listen to the needs of the clientele it addresses? The end of the R-System in 2009 was as sad as it was inevitable.

Similarly, the 1970s almost saw the company abandon the M-System – now one of the most important pillars of the brand identity – as the R was considered the only route able to promise future success.

Would there then have been occasion to celebrate the impressive anniversary of the original Leica with such optimism when the present and future of the product of the same name – or Leica photography itself – were in the balance?

It is highly unlikely.

That we can celebrate today and, as lovers of Leica photography, can happily consider a product portfolio of exceptional variety and quality, is again a matter of tradition. Particularly the stubborn defence of unique quality and preci- >

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LFI _ 100 years of Leica

Chapter 1: the brand core

Mounting the rangefinder assembly. From the beginning, it has always been the optical-mechanical centrepiece of the camera – even today, in the Leica M, with its LiveView capability

Installing the metal-bladed shutter assembly of the Leica M. As it is the first model in the history of the M to have a sealed body, the coupling of the shutter speed dial is now magnetic instead of mechanical

100 years of Leica_ LFI

To ensure absolute precision of the positioning of the sensor of the Leica M, a Leica technician performs the required adjustments with the aid of a sensor-supported testing instrument and the appropriate insertion of shims

The final touch and the end of a long production process – the application of the ‘red dot’, the famous Leica logo, onto the body of a Leica M

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Leica M: the contemporary embodiment of rangefinder tradition, with refinements that point the way to the future

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LFI _ 100 years of Leica

Chapter 1: the brand core

Mounting the image board with the extremely powerful Maestro processor developed especially for fast image processing – one of the lighthouse technologies of the S-System

Installing the Leica ProFormat (30 by 45 mm) sensor in a Leica S. The metal element surround it is a heatsink for better heat dissipation

100 years of Leica_ LFI

Adjustment of the focal plane shutter conceived exclusively for the Leica S. It offers a fastest shutter speed of 1/4000th of a second

Mounting the cleanly designed top cover of the Leica S with the shutter speed dial and the OLED display for its most important functions

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Leica S: the highend digital system with unrivalled levels of quality that begin with the sensor format

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LFI _ 100 years of Leica

Chapter 1: the brand core

High-tech and manual expertise in the construction of lenses: CNC-controlled pre-grinding and fine grinding of spherical lenses

Placing lenses on a calotte for the coating process. Precision measured in nanometres is essential when applying non-reflective coatings

100 years of Leica_ LFI

Precision cementing of two lens elements with different dispersion properties to create a cemented achromatic element

Incomparable excellence at all apertures, focal lenghts and focusing distances is the result of construction and manufacturing methods refined in decades. Here: the S lenses

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LFI _100 years of Leica

Chapter 1: the brand core

The Leica X: 2009, the pioneer of the idea that a large, APS-C, sensor can be installed in a digital compact camera. Plus: M-quality lenses and Leica-typical manual setting options

sion criteria has, in the long-run, proved to be a stroke of good luck – not only as a prerequisite for survival in a rapidly changing and increasingly complex market, but also as a precondition of the company’s regained innovative might.

In the years of the last decade, Leica reinvented itself. One precondition for this is that, since the medium-scale enterprise has been able to count on the entrepreneurial commitment of Andreas Kaufmann, it now has access to the decisive resources required for the advancement of ambitious development projects. Ultimately, the stock market launch of the company in 1996 brought nothing but problems. It did nothing to raise the profile of the brand identity and failed to create the necessary room to act.

Yet, in the meantime, it may be said that a

transformation process founded on the recollection of a legacy of essential values took place and defined a clear route to the future: the occupation of selected niches with all the means offered by contemporary technology.

When today’s M-System, which celebrates its 60th birthday this year, as a high-performance, 24 × 36 digital camera system is more attractive than any other since the M3; when the S-System has established itself primarily in professional studios and sets standards as a solution with an unrivalled combination of ergonomic handling, mobility and image quality; when the new T-System sets out to reinterpret Oskar Barnack’s legacy in contemporary terms with the best lenses in the APS-C super-compact class and intuitive photography in superior quality, this shows that ‘the Leica’ has since progressed far beyond the longstanding traditions of the ‘Leica format’.

With the S-System, the world now saw a

concept that broke new ground even in its target segment – with a choice of format that one might be tempted to compare with the revolution inspired by Oskar Barnack’s camera. Without a doubt for entirely different reasons, but certainly with similar motives.

Leica is a small player on today’s camera market, and its traditional ‘factory’ manufacturing principle, an integral part of the company’s philosophy, allows it only a certain size. Just as it allows only a certain price level. One that may appear prohibitive to many an aspiring photographer. However, Leica is a brand with immense charisma that, on the one hand, naturally has its origins in the visual consciousness of a present-day age filled with iconic images captured with Leica equipment and, on the other hand, in products that have long been associated with attrib-

100 years of Leica_ LFI

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The Leica T: The third digital system, alongside the M and the S, closes a gap in the Leica portfolio and enriches the APS-C compact class with a new species of reference lenses. And it can use M-Lenses, too

utes that have expressed the pure essence of photography throughout the ages – the freedom of the photographer to control the shutter speed, aperture, focusing distance and the depth of field as simply and precisely as possible. Particularly in the present day, we see a remarkable renaissance of camera concepts that, despite all their electronic finery, possess interfaces described as ‘classical’ or ‘retro’, and are quite simply inspired by the Leica.

Even Oskar Barnack’s demands that his camera must fit in a jacket pocket and have a ‘quite outstanding lens’ to have any chance of success have inspired such dynamic research and development in recent decades that Leica has been reinstated as the absolute reference instance when it comes to mastery of light and the design and construction of highperformance lenses.

In terms of continuity, in the sense of constant advancement of the vast store of genuine Leica expertise and technologies, the lens segment is the most likely area that can be accredited with this. Conversely, camera design reflects an orientation towards the expectationhorizons and changing needs of photographers and the development of technical possibilities – take the differentiation into digital systems with various formats. The pictures of camera assembly on these pages show to what extent – even at Leica – the construction of cameras has become dependent on the incorporation of electronic modules, and how the traditional virtues of precision engineering fade into the background. But where can the Barnack-gene still be found?

For example, in the design of an interface that, rather than boasting everything engineers are capable of and can integrate into a camera, concentrates on what is meaningful for preserving the autonomy

of the photographer in the process of using it as a tool. But how did it come about, in view of the immense diversity of concepts and the fact that photography had already been around for a century in Oskar Barnack’s day, that his particular idea prevailed and that the Leica approach was able to establish itself as an influential force of which true legends are made?

A good idea, brought to fruition and realised under favourable conditions, stood at the beginnings of an evolutionary process that has long-since proved to have been future-oriented. Others picked up the idea and took it to success in their own particular ways, but Leica drew its own conclusions as to the true essence of this idea. The purpose of this special issue of LFI is an attempt to trace precisely this specific aspect of the route the Leica took until today.

2 Lothar RĂźbelt: Pearls of the Big City, Vienna 1932.

By kind permission of Westlicht, Vienna

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LFI _100 years of Leica

Oskar Barnack’s epochal invention In 1914, Oskar Barnack had completed a fully-functional prototype of the camera that was to appear in 1925 as the Leica I and go on to revolutionise the world of photography. Barnack’s motto: small negative, big pictures. The instrument for making them: a combination of precision engineering and high performance optics, thought through to even the tiniest details.

Chapter 2: how the Leica came into being

100 years of Leica_ LFI

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A Leica I A with an Elmax 50 mm f/3.5 lens (actual size)

The slim, compact and plain metal-bodied camera with the rounded ends, offering just enough room for a focal plane shutter and fitted with a collapsible 50 mm lens, wasn’t a runaway success from the start. At the Ernst Leitz factory, even the decision to begin its production met with considerable resistance. After all, as the most prominent manufacturer of precision microscopes since the last decades of the 19th century, the company had a reputation to lose. To the company, the toy-like camera, in a previously unknown form and without an established market, appeared to be an incalculable risk. After a heated discussion one day in June 1924, Ernst Leitz II, the company director, swept all doubts aside with the words, “We will take the risk”, and Barnack’s little camera went into production. After all, it was already around half-past twelve – time for lunch.

Anyway, many other things also seemed incalculable in the early 1920s. The trauma of World War I, that had destroyed much of Europe with previously unknown brutality, was still being felt. The inflation set in motion by the cost of the war led to the hyperinflation of 1923 and who, if anyone, knew how long the relative stability after the currency reform of 1924 would last? At

With a focal plane shutter and speeds from 1/20th to 1/500th of a second, 35 mm cine film as a medium, incomparable handiness, ideal ergonomics for fast readiness and an outstanding 50 mm lens, the Leica I A was way ahead of its time in 1925

the same time, the burden of reparations lamed the nation and, at Leitz, the core business of manufacturing scientific instruments suffered from the loss of international sales and distribution channels during the war years. Even in the early postwar years after 1918, the company’s recovery was very slow. Nevertheless, instead of reducing the workforce, Leitz preferred to introduce a four-day working week, but this was no long-term solution for the situation.

On the other hand, the company could not seriously expect that the invention presented by Oskar Barnack, a precision engineer employed by Leitz since 1911, could significantly compensate for the company’s lost revenues. At least not immediately. It is possible that it was simple intuition, fired by his own practical experiences with Barnack’s prototype on a trip to New York in 1914, that moved Ernst Leitz II to recognise the future potentials of this little camera.

No one could ever have suspected just how epochal his decision would prove to be when the Leica I was presented to the general public at the Leipzig Spring Fair of 1925. Even though photography had established itself in recent decades as one of the most exciting innovations of an era characterised by immense technological upheaval, and had captured the hearts and minds of the masses, no one could really imagine how big pictures with a quality endearing to the eye of the beholder could ever be made from a tiny negative with a size of 24 by 36 mm. After all, in this age of plate cameras, the negative format had always been the picture format.

Cultural coincidences. In retrospect, within a period of only five years, Oskar Barnack’s invention was to become the initiator of a leap forward at least as significant in cultural terms as William Henry Fox Talbot’s invention of the negative-positive process around 1838 – or as digital photography would be in the 1990s.

On the one hand, the reasons lie in favourable timing. The 1920s saw the rise of an enormous variety of mass-circulation illustrated magazines. Alongside the Berliner Illustrirte, founded in 1891, >

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LFI _ 100 years of Leica

Chapter 2: how the Leica came into being

The genial constructor and inventor of the Leica: Oskar Barnack (1879–1936), right: in his workshop

the German market saw the appearance of numerous other publications: a few of which are listed here, the Hamburger Illustrierte (1920), Hackebeils Illustrierte (1921), the Münchner Illustrierte Presse (1923) and the Kölnische Illustrierte Zeitung (1926). They all benefited from advances in printing technologies that enabled the rasterisation and reproduction of photographs and from the growing expectations of an audience that wished not only to read up-to-the-minute reports of events from around the world, but also longed for the most direct and closest possible experience of them. This meant pictures. Pictures that began to dethrone the news itself and served more and more as authentication of the truth.

In turn, this appetite for pictures so different from the monumental landscapes or representative portraits that dominated the medium from the middle of the 19th century, created an entirely new profession, that of the photojournalist. This

doesn’t mean that photographic reporters immediately jumped at the new Leica – the choice of cameras on the market offered a wide range of plate and roll film formats, depending on the formats in demand for publication as enlargements were still an exotic concept. For quite some time, newspaper photographers

continued to work with 13 x 18 cm plate cameras. Nevertheless, it was only a matter of time until word of the opportunities offered by the little camera got around – for instance, through the work of Swiss photographer Walter Bosshard, whose photos from a journey through Asia with a Leica in 1925/1926 were published in the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung – despite the widespread dismissal of the camera as a ‘toy’, an opinion that was still held by many until the end of the decade.

To touch on another reason for the success of the Leica, it was particularly well-received by the avant-garde community. One of the ‘early adopters’ of the Leica was László Moholy-Nagy, who, during his tenure at the Bauhaus in Dessau, The very first advertisement, published in the Photographische Rundschau No. 5/1925, announced that the new camera could be seen at the Leipzig Spring Fair on stand 194/195

100 years of Leica_ LFI

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From left to right: Ernst Leitz I (1843–1920) established a factory for optical-mechanical instruments with a worldwide reputation and brought Barnack to the company, Ernst Leitz II (1871–1956) made the decision to put the Leica into production, Max Berek (1886–1949) calculated the first lens for the Leica

gave the initial impulses for establishing photography as a discipline. The Werkbund exhibition Film und Foto in 1929, for which he acted as curator, brought the ‘Neue Sehen’ (New Vision), as fuelled by the capabilities of the little camera from Wetzlar, to a wider audience. MoholyNagy himself was influenced by the Russian Constructivists like Alexander Rodchenko, who would soon begin to realise his ideas with the mobile Leica and who expressed his radically aesthetic approach to world interpretation in extreme views and by shooting from any possible position as long as it was not the ‘belly-button perspective’ of conventional photography.

However, one of the most significant marketplaces for creative experimentation was Paris and the sphere of the surrealist movement centered around André Breton. In its mistrust of ‘reason’, discredited by the experiences of World War I, the movement turned to the creative power of the subconscious. Film and photography

Elegantly built around the film chamber and shutter: the cross-section on this poster shows all the functional elements of Oskar Barnack’s compact, high-precision camera

became powerful media for exploring the mysterious aspects of everyday situations by means of visual irritation. An equivalent to the surrealists’ écriture automatique (automatic writing) – free-form and devoid of conventions. In moving pictures, by a sometimes unsettling combination of seemingly unrelated brief scenarios without any logical sequence of events and, in photography, by a systematic denial of the only recently established, strictly documentary, authenticity made possible by contemporary technology, and its replacement by an aesthetic of emotion, eroticism and the symbolic exaggeration of grotesque momentary constellations. It must be said that the small, intuitive and quickto-use camera from Germany came along at just the right time.

Simply everyone who was anyone met in Paris and involved themselves in one form or another of creative exchange – including all those who would sooner or later discover the Leica for them- >

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LFI _ 100 years of Leica

Chapter 2: how the Leica came into being

Oskar Barnack’s Liliput camera from 1914, a full-size replica from the Leica factory museum. As a lens, Barnack chose a Summar 42 mm f/4.5 calculated for microscope photography by Ernst Arbeit. At the left, a counter for 50 exposures. The lens had to be capped before cocking the shutter to prevent exposing the film to light.

Ernst Leitz II took a second Liliput (since lost) with him on a trip to New York in 1914. On his return, he is reported to have said: “Keep an eye on it” about Barnack’s invention

selves and shape the cultural history of the 20th century: André Kertész, Dora Maar, Gisèle Freund, Man Ray, Ilse Bing and, of course, Henri Cartier-Bresson, who would later always describe himself as a photojournalist. The genres had flowing boundaries and the protagonists inspired each other in their aesthetic approaches.

The decisive reason for the enduring success of the Leica, however, lies in the characteristics of the Leica itself. Barnack’s invention fell on fertile ground because it appeared on the market in a period that was receptive for visual experimentation and for the search for radically new aesthetic perspectives to mirror the social upheavals of contemporary industrial society. A period that celebrated subjective expression yet, in parallel, also demanded incorruptible evidence of reality, which was precisely what the ‘objective’ eye of the technical apparatus promised to deliver. Through the sum of its own attributes, the Leica was simultaneously a motor for the practical investigation of new ways of seeing, assisted in the refinement of the latest visual vocabularies and changed and

accelerated the process of photography itself. In 1948, Max Berek, Barnack’s friend and constructor of the first Leica lenses, summarised that the secret of the success of the little camera was due to the fact that ‘it almost unavoidably leads to astounding results in the hands of laymen unfamiliar with the principles of photography’ – a by

In 1923, Leitz constructed 25 examples of a first series for testing, later called the ‘NullSerie’ (0-series), which were given to photographers for practical testing. The camera above is No. 104, the fourth of the series.

The lens, Max Berek’s Anastigmat 50 mm f/3.5, still had to be capped before cocking the shutter. All dimensions are identical to those of the later production models of the Leica and everything indicates systematic preparation for serial production

no means insignificant precondition for its gradual permeation into the mainstream of photography, where it ultimately dictated the way ahead. Leica expert Erwin Puts (Leica Compendium, 2010) points out its smooth and compact construction in metal and glass, the key materials of the modern industrial age. What a contrast to the legion of contemporary cameras, with their extending bellows, their wooden bodies and their comparatively awkward appearance. But just how was the Leica idea developed to perfection?

The background. Cinematography as the dynamic visual art form of the machine age and microscope construction as the key technical precondition for the explosive development of science in the last third of the 19th century. Added together and ripened to a new concept in the mind of Oskar Barnack, these were the godparents of the new idea and the realisation of his ‘Kleinfilmkamera’ (small film camera).

This description, used by Leitz at the launch of the Leica I in 1925, puts everything in a nutshell much more precisely

100 years of Leica_ LFI

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Ernst Leitz I, portrayed by Oskar Barnack with the Liliput in the Black Forest in 1917

than the later expression ‘Kleinbildkamera’ (small picture camera), because what really mattered to Barnack was the idea of big pictures from small negatives. In the magazine Die Leica in 1931, he wrote, ‘The postcard format, and 6 × 9 format in particular, are fine for nice souvenir photos, but real pictures start at formats like 13 × 18 or, even better, at 18 × 24 cm. Yet even these formats seem to be rather small when viewed next to a picture with a width of 50 cm. It is a fact that the larger the picture, the more plastic (three-dimensional) and true to life it appears.’

The ‘true to life’ depiction of the world and reproduction of pictures were the key aspects of photography, an invention of the first half of the 19th century that would soon become the leading visual medium for a bourgeois era that attached great importance to collective participation.

Long exposures times, initially measured in minutes, severely limited the choice of subject. In 1840, these became seconds with the first lens constructed especially for photography by Josef Petzval. In the course of time, taking photographs became easier, thanks to advances like the wet collodion plate (Frederick Scott Archer/ Gustave Le Gray, around 1850), gelatine dry plates (around 1870) and the introduction of celluloid instead of glass as a carrier for the emulsion (since 1880). Also, since 1886, thanks to the research of Ernst Abbe, the Schott factory in Jena offered a range of 44 different glass types, for the first time with precisely determined optical properties that allowed the construction of optical systems with significantly higher performance than those previously made by trial and error.

Simplification and higher performance did not mean a reduction in size, in fact it was generally quite the opposite. Even explorers bore the burden of 40 by 50, or

even 50 by 60, plates on their expeditions, in the belief that only so would they be able to record the terrains they explored in sufficient detail. And how else could the splendour of scenery like Monument Valley be captured?

It is almost certain that Oskar Barnack would have agreed with their beliefs. Yet, in an era that celebrated not only speed, but also the solution of problems by means of technology in all aspects of life, Oskar

Barnack was certainly not alone in his annoyance that alone the preparation of a plate camera for a single exposure could well take between ten and fifteen minutes.

At the age of 14, Oskar Barnack, born on 1 November 1879 in Lynow, near Berlin, began an apprenticeship in a workshop for precision mechanical instruments in >

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LFI _ 100 years of Leica

Chapter 2: how the Leica came into being

A Leica I C with a Hektor 50 mm f/2.5 lens, 1930 (actual size)

Berlin. On completion, he took to the road and learned more about the construction of timepieces and calculating machines.

Shortly before the turn of the century, his way took him to Jena – like Wetzlar, one of the most important centres of the precision engineering and optical industry in Germany – where he found employment in the construction of microscopes at Zeiss. There, he very soon became familiar with the construction of photographic instruments – Zeiss had taken over the Palmos camera factory in 1902 and the lenses were made with glasses from Schott.

Numerous companies tried their hands at camera construction to benefit from the boom in photography at the time, which very soon led to cut-throat competition.

To address this situation, the companies Hüttig, Dr. Krügener, Wünsche and ZeissPalmos merged in 1909 and founded ICA AG in Dresden, Europe’s largest camera manufacturer before World War I. In his youth in Berlin, Barnack had witnessed the rise of the cinema and was fascinated by cinematography and photography, both of which battled for recognition as the most influential visual

After the Leica I A, the second leap forward was marked in 1930, by the launch of the Leica I C with a screw mount for interchangeable lenses. At first, all the lenses had to be matched to the individual cameras. From 1931 on, all cameras and lenses had mounts adjusted to a standardised film-to-flange distance of 28.8 mm. In 1929, it was possible to buy a Leica I A with either an Elmar 50 mm f/3.5 or a Hektor 50 mm f/2.5 lens. In 1930, they were joined by the Elmar 35 mm f/3.5 and, in 1931, by the Elmar 135 mm f/4.5, the Elmar 90 mm f/4 and the Hektor 73 mm f/1.9. For the first time,it was now possible to interpret depth of field in various ways with one and the same camera and to create different views of the same subject from the same standpoint. Earlier, with very few exceptions, cameras and lenses always belonged together: one bought a camera when a particularly fast lens was needed and then another for particularly large pictures, and so on – ‘as everyone will appreciate, a costly and awkward way’, as could be read in the Leica brochure Die auswechselbaren Leica-Objektive (The interchangeable Leica lenses). The ‘invention’ of interchangeable lenses made the Leica the centrepiece of a universal system for all relevant photographic needs. What’s more, now that photographers had the flexibility to manipulate the composition of their pictures and create effects far removed from natural perspectives, this revolutionised the aesthetics of photographic imagery

media at the turn of the century. In his memoirs, Mein Leben mit der Leica (Stuttgart 1990), Walther Benser, an employee at Leitz, recounted how impressed Barnack had been by advances in film editing in the early years of the 20th century and, above all, its perfection by D. W. Griffith, that – transported by changes of location and composition, close-ups and long shots – first brought apparently dynamic action to moving pictures. Parallels to the intellectual contrast between the capabilities of a stationary plate camera and the unique mobility and dynamism represented by the Leica are evident.

Oskar Barnack was an exceptionally gifted inventor in all areas of mechanical engineering. He began taking photographs in 1899 at the latest, with a 13 by 18 cm plate camera he had converted from a 9 by 18 cm stereo camera. One of the places he found his subjects was on walks in the Thuringian Forest. It was here that Barnack, an asthma sufferer since his youth, increasingly found the burden of his heavy camera annoying, which, around 1904, may well have planted the seed of the idea of a more easily portable solution in his mind.

100 years of Leica_ LFI

The rise of roll film cameras in the formats 4.5 by 6 to 10 by 12.5 cm made the life of a photographer easier, but, at the same time, meant a retrograde step in terms of photographic precision. Where the plate cameras had a ground glass screen for precise focusing, the roll film cameras had only a rudimentary viewfinder, which was only a satisfactory solution when taking pictures with the lens set at infinity – not exactly an ideal situation for serious photographers. On top of this, roll film was expensive, and Barnack himself believed that its chances of market success were limited. Instead, around 1906, he began to modify such a camera to take a revolving plate for exposing a series of 15 to 20 pictures with the aid of a lens with a short focal length. The quality of these miniatures left very much to be desired – but the idea of reducing the recording format and increasing the mobility of practical photography was born.

In Jena, Barnack made friends with the engineer Emil Mechau, who was working on a solution for the flicker-free projection of moving pictures. In the laboratories of Edison in 1893 – the year in which the young Barnack took to the road – William K. L. Dickson halved the width of 70 mm Kodak roll film to create the perforated 35 mm film that was to become the standard film for the motion picture industry.

To be honest, Zeiss was not particularly interested in Mechau’s work and, in 1908, he left to take up a new job at Leitz in Wetzlar (where he completed his projector and later, at AEG, was to make his name as a pioneer of television technology).

It is quite probable that Oskar Barnack, inspired by Mechau’s experiments in cinematography, already began to think about the possibilities of using cine film as a medium for still picture cameras while he was still in Jena. Perforated film with a width of 35 mm meant a frame size of 18 by 24 mm in the vertical film travel of cine cameras and projectors. In those days, the idea of using this film for photo cameras

Top: brochure for interchangeable lenses for the Leica, bottom: an advertisement from 1931

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had been drifting around for quite a while – what was missing, was the technology for viable enlargements, not to mention suitable lenses. Quite a number of cameras had been developed with this in mind, but none of them got far beyond the status of experimental models. Mostly because their concepts were too closely related to cine cameras, too impractical due to other reasons or not sufficiently developed for the needs of photographic mobility.

Whether Barnack was familiar with these concepts remains unknown. What is known, is that he met up with the prototype of a camera called the Minigraph that had been sent to Zeiss to be fitted with a Kino-Tessar lens. Although it had nothing in common with his later developments, it was a still picture camera designed for use with cine film.

When Barnack left Zeiss and moved to Leitz in 1911 on the initiative of Mechau he will certainly have remembered the Minigraph, as a reminder that there was, in principle, a way to make big pictures from small negatives. His conviction that this was so grew stronger from year to year.

Although this shows that Oskar Barnack may not be seen as the inventor of 35 mm photography, he was, however, the first to systemically pursue the idea to its completion. As Ulf Richter, the Leica historian, wrote in his book, Oskar Barnack – von der Idee zu Leica (Wetzlar 2009), it was remarkable that ‘none of the prominent camera manufacturers at that time, neither Ernemann, Hüttig or Wünsche in Dresden, Goerz in Berlin, Contessa-Nettel in Stuttgart, nor Krügener in Frankfurt/ Main, were involved in the development of anything similar, nor had they lodged patent applications for a still picture camera for cine film. When others only began to take up Barnack’s ideas in the broadest sense as late as in 1930, after the clear breakthrough of the Leica, this is even clearer proof of the uniqueness of Barnack’s development in 1914 and how advanced it was.’ >

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LFI _100 years of Leica

Chapter 2: how the Leica came into being

Leica II, 1932 (actual size)

The Liliput – the original model. In the technical laboratory of the mechanical workshop at Leitz Oskar Barnack was initially responsible for the refinement of production processes to harmonise the greater potentials offered by the expansion of the range of optical glasses available with the concurrent, exponentially greater, demands on mechanical precision. Ernst Leitz I granted the young mechanical engineer a great deal of freedom. And this was certainly essential for the beginnings and the earliest chapters in the history of the Leica. An environment in which creativity could run free, without the domination of the pressures associated with the development of marketable products, and where Barnack had the peace to experiment and refine his ideas.

At the time, the production of scientific microscopes was profitable enough.

Under the leadership of Ernst Leitz I, who, in 1864, became a partner in the optical workshops founded in Wetzlar by Carl Kellner in 1849, and took it over completely in 1869, the company grew from its modest beginnings to become one of the most prominent manufacturers of optical

1932 saw the third leap forward – the Leica II with a coupled rangefinder. Or, as Oskar Barnack wrote, ‘automatic focusing’. He experimented for five years until he found the precise and elegant solution he was looking for. Initially, he experimented with a Fodis, accessory rangefinder for the Leica I, mounted horizontally on top of the camera and a complex system of gears connecting the rangefinder to the lens (page 31, bottom: experimental model from around 1927). On the one hand, a construction like this clashed with Barnack’ aesthetic principles and, if it were to be detachable, it would be impossible to achieve the accuracy he envisaged. At the same time, integrating it in the compact body to preserve the conveniently compact form of the Leica would mean shortening the baseline of the Fodis. So Barnack faced the challenge of transferring the motion of the lens during focusing to the moving element of the rangefinder with utmost precision.

The relation of the rotation of the lens and the mirror in the rangefinder system represents a gearing ratio of around 1:200. Barnack wrote: ‘When the rangefinder nevertheless noticeably responds to a rotation of the lens by hardly the width of two marks of its distance scale, one can imagine how fine the motions expressed by the movement of the mirror in response to this small amount are (…) And, at the same time, the action is completely free of dead travel (…)’. Halving the baseline of the Fodis to 4 cm made it possible >

instruments. That Leitz had become familiar with the rationalised precision manufacturing methods of the telegraph and watchmaking industries during his years as an apprentice mechanic in Switzerland, strongly influenced the rise of the company after 1870. When Ernst Leitz II joined his father’s company as an apprentice in 1889, it was already the world’s market leader in the microscope segment, with sales of over 50,000 instruments.

The company also manufactured photographic lenses for cameras by other companies and, in 1898, the catalogue offered lenses like the Periplan for eight different formats, from 7 by 10 to 30 by 40 cm. In 1901, in the course of the expansion of the product portfolio, the company established a department dedicated to photographic lenses. In the following years, the mathematician Ernst Arbeit created, amongst other things, the Summar range of state-of-the-art lenses. Like the Periplan, these were offered in a range of sizes and focal lengths for the typical roll film and plate formats of the day.

The increasingly scientific approach to the construction of lenses made further

100 years of Leica_ LFI

changes in the manufacturing process unavoidable. The manual process, in which one employee constructed a complete microscope on the pattern of a reference model without precise construction plans was replaced by splitting the process into phases in which individual employees specialised in the construction of sub-assemblies from a standardised range of components. Specialised departments for machine tool design, component production, assembly and adjustment were established, and the employees of each had to be specialists, who were responsible for ensuring the narrow tolerances required in the construction of high-performance microscopes. The mixture of mechanised serial production and highly-skilled manual precision that, in principle, characterises the production model at Leica until today, not only ensured that quantitative expansion went hand-in-hand with qualitative innovation, but also created the conditions required for the later realisation of the Leica as a high-precision instrument – another key factor in its success.

Around 1913, Barnack constructed a full-metal cine camera for his friend Mechau, who needed films for his projector project. This was also the time that the

to mount it between the rewind knob and the shutter speed dial (small photo: experimental model from 1930/31). ‘The entire assembly is enclosed in a protective housing from which only the viewing eyepieces protrude (…).

This enabled a rather elegant use of the space available and the entire result appeared quite harmonious, as if it had been contemplated for the Leica from the start.’ That the Leica should maintain its pocketable size despite the new feature that significantly increased its readiness to take pictures was just as important to Barnack as the fact that the new coupling mechanism could be retrofitted to the Leica I: value conservation by means of complete modernisation for even the oldest models was to be the guiding principle for all future innovations

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note ‘Eigenk.’ (own construction) began to appear quite frequently on the pages of Barnack’s workshop note book. On a page at the end of 1913 stands a note that reads ‘Mikrokinoeinrichtung fertig für Aufnahmen’ (micro cine apparatus ready for filming) very probably an exposure meter for cine films. A few months earlier, however, a note mentioned a ‘Photokamera Eigenk.’ (still picture camera, own construction). As Barnack always made a clear distinction between still and moving pictures, Ulf Richter sees this as clear evidence that the Ur-Leica was not, as can be frequently read, a spin-off product of a cinematographic project. ‘After all, what is the point of a camera with a counter for 50 exposures in double cine format, which can only be loaded with film in a darkroom, as a device for determining the correct exposure parameters for filming on location? A short strip with 18 by 24 mm frames would have been sufficient.’

It seems more plausible that Barnack’s still picture camera was a stand-alone project from the start – after all, he had already had the idea in mind for a couple of years.

Apropos ‘double cine format’: as mentioned earlier, film travel in a cine camera is vertical, horizontal travel makes good sense for the use of film in a still picture camera and results in a doubling of the frame format to 24 by 36 mm.

But is that sufficient for the construction of a competitive camera that, as Barnack envisaged, would not only fit in a pocket, but could also rival the large formats in terms of quality? Here, Barnack let himself be led by what appears to be an outrageous idea that explicitly distances itself from the general opinion associated with large plate formats, namely that the camera always performs better than the human eye. It occurred to him that large format pictures showed details that could not be resolved by the human eye at normal viewing distances – usually equivalent to the diagonal of the picture. Correspondingly, big pictures were indeed the >

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LFI _100 years of Leica

Chapter 2: how the Leica came into being

Leica Standard, 1932 (actual size)

aim – as a natural look and a suggestion of depth only appear when the interpupillary distance is as small as possible in relation to the viewing distance – but only such pictures that have no need to show more than can be resolved by the human eye at the normal viewing distance.

In an article titled Plauderei über die Entstehung der Leica (A chat about how the Leica came about) from 1948, Max Berek describes the considerations that led to the ‘Leica format’: The eye can effortlessly distinguish two elements in a picture when the angular distance between them is two minutes of arc. In the case of a circle with the radius 1, this corresponds to an arc length of 0.0006. Conversely, unsharpness becomes visible when the angle is greater than two minutes of arc.

Berek now calculates that, considering a resolving power of 0.03 mm (the maximum diameter of the circle of confusion), a focal length of 50 mm is required to reproduce such fine details (0.03/0.0006 = 50). ‘This focal length was chosen as the standard value for the planned camera.’

How many picture elements would now be required to achieve a picture with

The Leica Standard came on to the market in 1932, only a few months after the appearance of the Leica II, but without its latest innovation, the coupled rangefinder. But it did have a screw mount. The reason for the launch of this simplified model was explained in the brochure: ‘The general appreciation of the outstanding construction of the Leica camera is well-known.

But today, in these times of economic need, many an amateur photographer must forgo his wish of purchasing the Leica camera with automatic focusing (…), as its price is too high in relation to his income.’ In 1934, the price of a Leica Standard complete with an Elmar 50 mm f/3.5 lens was 155 Reichsmarks and a Leica II with an Elmar cost its buyer 240 Reichsmarks. Of course, the Leica Standard could be converted into a Leica II or (from 1933) a Leica III at any time - the cost of it being exactly the balance

satisfactory richness of detail? ‘Barnack found the answer to this question by counting the raster points of raster prints that appeared good in visual terms. He arrived at a mean value of around one million picture elements.’ According to the assumed resolving power of the film, this gave a size of 0.0007 mm2 for each picture element, and a million of these would cover an area of 700 mm2. For Barnack’s ‘most attractive’ aspect ratio of 2:3, this gave a format of approximately 22 by 33

mm – already close to the format resulting from the rotation of cine film to the horizontal, and offering certain reserves. The choice was made. 24 by 36 mm would be a good format to work with – the perceptible detail contained in the picture would match what is naturally seen.

In connection with Oskar Barnack’s question of format, the art historian Wolfgang Kemp referred to the film Blow-Up (1966), directed by Michelangelo Antonioni: a bored fashion photographer is working on a street photography project in his spare time and captures a couple on film in a park – with a 35 mm camera.

When printing the enlargements, he thinks he has discovered a revolver and a lifeless body – had he witnessed a murder?

If he had used a large format camera, he could have easily recognised the revolver beyond any reasonable doubt – if it was there – and also the corpse – if it was there.

On the other hand, Kemp continues, this grab shot could never have been made … The pragmatically-motivated, explicit omission of detail information stood at the threshold to the liberation of photography by the Leica.

100 years of Leica_ LFI

Now that the format question was answered, it was time to work on the hardware details. The camera was to be small enough to fit in a pocket and, due to the planned extreme enlargement of the pictures, the mechanical components had to be exceptionally precise – as one could by no means rely on the relatively deep depth of field of the intended standard lens, the film flatness had to be absolutely exact – and Barnack wanted it to have the added convenience of coupled film advance and shutter cocking. The latter made a focal plane shutter essential, and the construction and dimensions of this completely dictated the exterior of the camera.

At first, an appropriate lens for the planned film format was not available – after a number of experiments, Barnack decided on a Summar 42 mm f/4.5, a lens From 1926 on, Leitz offered all sorts of accessories. Enlargers like the Focomat appeared on the market in 1933 and the final versions under this name remained in the programme until the 1980s. Leitz also developed various attachments for reproduction and macro photography – like the Belun (bottom right), a stand with an extension ring for 1:1 reproductions with a 50 or 35 mm lens

Top: brochure for the Leica Standard

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from the optical repertoire of Ernst Arbeit, for his camera, which he initially wanted to call the ‘Liliput’, but this name had already been registered by Ernemann in 1913. That the camera, which offered a choice of two shutter speeds, 1/25th and 1/50th of a second, and a fixed lens that initially had to be capped before cocking the shutter, delivered very promising results convinced Ernst Leitz II when he tested the camera extensively on a business trip to the USA in 1914.

He obviously found it so usable that he initiated a patent registration process in June 1914 – which, admittedly, was not granted, as there was already a similarly formulated patent registered by Zeiss for a camera with combined film advance and shutter cocking, though not for cine film.

Leitz was only able to protect Barnack’s invention as a registered design. Such a registered design is valid only for six years and, as Ulf Richter mentions, the fact that Leitz extended it in 1920 goes to show just how convinced the head of the company was of the potentials of this little camera.

The road to the Leica. Throughout the war years, Oskar Barnack refined his prototype, worked on the precision of the shutter mechanism and designed and constructed an accessory rangefinder for the camera. But now, the most important thing was the calculation of a lens especially for its film format. Max Berek was commissioned with this task. As a member of the scientific staff at Leitz since 1912, he had already worked with Barnack in the construction of microscopes.

The lens that faced the challenge of making big pictures from small negatives, was to be slightly faster than the Summar to make the camera as versatile as possible and, on the other hand, it also had to offer sufficient depth of field to compensate for the frequently imprecise manual setting of measured distances on the lens to ensure that at least usable negatives would always be available for the planned extreme >

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LFI _ 100 years of Leica

Chapter 2: how the Leica came into being

Leica III, 1933 (actual size)

enlargements of the pictures it delivered.

And it had to be sharp from corner to corner. The latter meant that the usual way at the time could not be employed that the focal length must correspond to the format diagonal, in this case, 43.3 mm. The required imaging performance for such an angle of view of about 53 degrees could not yet be realised, as experience with the Summar had already shown.

This also spoke for a 50 mm lens, which eventually became the standard focal length for 35 mm photography. A patent was registered for a 50 mm f/3.5 anastigmat at the end of 1920 – which simultaneously proves how far advanced the development of the camera must have been and how much Ernst Leitz II, who became the sole director of the company on the death of his father in 1920, was expecting it to reach the maturity required for serial production.

There is a prototype model (described

by Hans-Günter Kisselbach in Barnacks erste Leica, Stuttgart 2008), that must have been constructed quite some time before the first series produced for testing

The fourth leap forward came in 1933, and was embodied by the Leica III, which featured an escapement mechanism for long exposure times. This offered shutter speeds from 1/20th of a second to a whole second, which wereset by a dial on the front of the camera.

One year later saw the appearance of the Leica IIIa (bottom), with a shutter speed range extended to 1/1000th of a second

(later called the ‘Nullserie’, the 0-series).

It had an Anastigmat lens, an adjustable focal plane shutter and, very important for Barnack, a cassette for changing films in daylight. What’s more, it also already had the dimensions of the camera bodies up to the Leica IIIb. In the opinion of Ulf Richter, ‘This is the camera that deserves the name Ur-Leica’, whereas the Liliput from 1914 (generally described as the Ur-Leica) must be seen as its ancestor.

While the models of the first 0-series from 1923 still required the lens to be capped when cocking the shutter, Barnack solved this problem in the second 0-series in 1924 with a construction that set a time delay between the activation of the curtain roller and the curtain tape drum to achieve a light-tight overlap during the travel of the two shutter curtains. He also refined the mechanism for determining the shutter speeds and this all led to another patent being filed in mid-June of 1924, the final step before serial production could begin.

An idea gains ground. By the end of 1925, 903 examples of Barnack’s camera had been delivered. In the first version of the manual, it still bore the name ‘Leca’, but the company soon agreed to change the name to ‘Leica’ (Leitz-camera) to avoid any risk of confusion with a French camera called the ‘L’Éca’. By 1929, this figure had already grown to 16,000 and, at the end of 1931, was to increase again, to over 70,000 cameras.

A decisive factor for the dramatic increase in sales around 1930/1931 was the

100 years of Leica_ LFI

introduction of interchangeable lenses.

The screw-mount Leica IC, for which focal lengths of 35, 50, 73, 90 and 135 mm became available from 1931, was the first camera to make possible what we take for granted today: the ability to capture different aspects and details of events with a single camera and from the same point – a perfect invitation for courageous photographers of the coming years to experiment and develop radically new visual languages that would become characteristic of the golden age of Leica photography, which lasted until the end of the 1960s.

In the years immediately following 1925, the main task was to break new ground for the little camera. Curt Emmermann, from 1931 on publisher of the magazine Die Leica, in a way, the predecessor of LFI, was given the opportunity to test the camera in 1925, and recalled: ‘No matter where I turned up with this camera (…), I caused quite a stir with it in professional circles. People just had no confidence in such a little thing.’

That also applied because cine film as a medium for still picture cameras was just not on the radar, even for film manufacturers like Agfa. They only began to pull together some years later, but then with a vengeance. They didn’t market it as 35 mm film, they called it Leica film, for photography in Leica format. A large format photographer played a significant role in this. Paul Wolff, who was presented with a

The Leica 250 (below) from 1934 – based on the Leica III – was probably the last camera construction to which Oskar Barnack made a significant contribution. The voluminous film chambers were designed for cassettes holding 10 metres of film, sufficient for 250 exposures.

‘There is the news photographer who loses irretrievable moments when forced to insert a new cassette in the middle of the most interesting events, (…) there is the amateur on a holiday trip, or the explorer, who seldom has the opportunity to develop his films on an expedition (…)’ – this is how the brochure explained the logic behind this construction. The camera was not a great success, quite probably because it clearly defeated the concept of the small and elegantly handy camera. Fitted with a motor winder, the Leica 250 was occasionally used for aerial reconnaissance in the Second World War. The same idea, but more graceful and actually rather pretty: the Leica 75 (above), designed for 3 metres of film and 75 exposures. This camera, also known as the ‘Baby 250’, never went into production

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Leica for his invaluable contribution to the international photographic exhibition in Frankfurt in 1926, thought it might be a good idea to take it along to his large format commissions and use it to shoot a few snapshots. He got over his initial laments about the poor quality of the film material purely by chance when he stopped the development of an overexposed film after only a short time and suddenly had an almost grainless negative in his hands – simply ideal for enlarging. Paul Wolff was delighted. And his motto, ‘overexpose and underdevelop’, very soon became the mantra of Leica photographers. Wolff’s 40 by 60 prints soon swept aside any remaining misgivings about the quality of the little camera perfected mechanically and optically by the skills of Oskar Barnack and Max Berek – in 1933 at the latest, when Leitz sent Wolff’s big pictures on a worldwide exhibition tour. By then, specialist photo suppliers and even competitors had long since recognised the potentials of the ‘small negative – big picture’ idea.

Nevertheless, even that took quite some time. Leitz had always sold its microscopes directly to scientific institutions.

At first, connections to photographic suppliers were non-existent, and a sales and distribution network had to be established step by step by dedicated representatives.

Slide shows were also introduced as a marketing measure and soon began to attract audiences counted in hundreds. Leitz had launched the compact Uleja projector that was used for the shows in 1926 – only one of numerous accessory products developed by Leitz that were essential for the enduring success of Barnack’s concept against established photographic methods. In addition to projectors, the catalogue from 1931 also contains developing tanks, enlargers and a whole range of accessories for copying and reproduction, with which the Leica was now well on the way to becoming not only a system camera, but rather a universal system solution for all relevant areas of photography. >

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LFI _100 years of Leica

In 1929, Zeiss Ikon AG began to think about how to compete with the Leica and, in 1932, put an end to the Leica’s monopoly of 35 mm film with the launch of the Contax I, a camera that proved to be unreliable, was ergonomically somewhat crude and no serious rival to the Leica, which, in the same year, took its next leap forward on the road of success with the coupled rangefinder that finally made it the hand-held camera with the fastest readiness to shoot.

In 1933, the Leica III expanded the shutter speed range of 1/20th to 1/500th of a second by the addition of an escapement mechanism offering longer exposure times of 1/20th of a second to a whole second, while the Leica IIIa, from 1934, added a top speed of 1/1000th of a second. In 1935 Leitz expanded the system with a mirror box with ground glass screen focusing for use with the Telyt 200 mm f/4.5 lens – in a way, making the Leica the first single lens reflex camera. Not an elegant solution in Barnack’s definition, but one that was much appreciated, for instance at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. The mirror box,

Chapter 2: how the Leica came into being

This prototype (top left) was already constructed with a die cast shutter crate instead of a sheet metal shutter housing in 1934. This solution was eventually realised in the IIIc, which appeared on the market in 1939. It was 3 mm longer than its predecessors and was adopted for all subsequent screw mount Leicas and M cameras. The main reason for this change in construction was to improve the stability of the camera for use with heavier interchangeable lenses. Also tested around 1934, but first realised in the IIIb in 1938, wasthe placement of the viewfinder and rangefinder eyepieces next to each other. This much improved and speeded up the procedure of focusing and composition.

Shown above on a IIIf with the commemorative number 500000, intended for dedication to Ernst Leitz II

which let the Leica access the worlds of telephoto and macro photography, was built as the Visoflex until the 1980s.

With over 93,000 examples sold, the Leica IIIa was an enormously successful camera. From 1925 onwards, Oskar Barnack made countless changes to the details of various mechanical components to make functions run even more smoothly and had added them to the models in production. But one aspect of the Leica remained untouchable: the elegant form and convenient size had to be maintained as they were, and it had to be possible to integrate every new change into older models. In fact, the conversion of a Leica I into a IIIa was no problem at all. Nevertheless, in 1934, a prototype had already been constructed with a die cast main chassis rather than one formed from sheet aluminium. In addition to simplifying the production process, a key reason for this was to improve the stability of the construction to bear the weight of the sometimes quite heavy interchangeable lenses for which the body of the Leica I had

100 years of Leica_ LFI

not been designed. This body form first appeared as the Leica IIIc in 1939 and was 3 mm longer than its predecessors and, as such, marked the end of the conversion options available for older models.

1936 saw the launch of the Contax II and with it the first serious challenge to the Leica and its claim of being not only the most versatile and precise camera, but also the fastest – the new Zeiss camera not only had a bayonet lens mount, it also had a single window for the viewfinder and the rangefinder. However, the Leica’s position was very well founded at this time. And the Leica was simply a much more attractive

and harmoniously designed camera. Leitz brought out the Leica IIIb in 1938 with the viewfinder and rangefinder eyepieces next to each other. This must have appeared to have been a reaction to the Contax in the battle for dominance in the best handling stakes though, admittedly, Barnack had already tried out a prototype of this solution back in 1933.

Sadly, he would never see its realisation in serial production: Oskar Barnack died after suffering from pneumonia on 16 January 1936.

Some time at the end of the 1920s or the early 1930s, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Henri

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Cartier-Bresson, André Kertész, Ilse Bing, Gisèle Freund, Umbo, Tim Gidal, Martin Munkácsi and many others discovered the Leica as a congenial tool for their particular needs and not only created iconic images that characterised their epoch, but also transformed the Leica itself into an enduring icon (as in the case of Ilse Bing’s Self-portrait with Leica from 1931). Ultimately, a considerable proportion of the brand’s aura is rooted in the oeuvre of the photographers of that era. To quote Max Berek again: ‘If Barnack were still alive today, he would be extremely pleased to see that the whole world loves and enjoys

Could this be an Ur-Leica M3? In addition to its hinged back plate, the Leica IV, to be dated around 1935/1936, also features a large brightline viewfinder with parallax compensation, a non-rotating shutter speed dial with both slow and fast speeds – a patent granted to Ludwig Leitz II (1907–1992, right), who became the head of the construction department at the end of the 1930s and contributed significantly and imaginatively to the development of the rangefinder cameras

his idea. An idea that was ultimately fathered by his own, personal infirmity.’

The way his idea would develop became recognisable in the mid-1930s. A prototype by the name of the Leica IV dates back to the year the Contax II first appeared. In contrast to earlier models, the shutter speed dial of the Leica IV no longer rotated when advancing the film, a feature developed by Ludwig Leitz, the son of Ernst Leitz II, and it also had a combined rangefinder and viewfinder with parallax compensation. For the moment, however, the concept stayed on the shelf, possibly due to dimensions that were different from those of the classic Leicas. Nevertheless, it did mark the beginnings of another revolution that would admittedly become reality only after the end of World War II.

3 Oskar Barnack, studying a ‘big picture from a small negative’, probably in 1934

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LFI _ 100 years of Leica

From the life of the Barnack family A surprising and fascinating attic-find: a short time ago, albums full of captivating impressions of the family life of the inventor of the Leica were discovered in the estate of one of Oskar Barnack’s granddaughters. They include pictures taken by Barnack with the Liliput camera, the original prototype of the Leica. LFI is proud to present a first look.

Chapter 3: the Barnack albums

100 years of Leica_ LFI

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An album page with contact strips and pictures taken in 1913: Johanna and Konrad Barnack, captured on film by Oskar Barnack with the Liliput camera

Oskar Barnack’s son, Konrad, with scrutinizing look, daughter Johanna, dressed up as a rabbit, Barnack himself in his workshop, as the proud owner of an automobile, and with his wife Emma in carnival costume, photos which document Barnack’s time in Jena and his first steps in photography – although his inventiveness had already come to light, for instance as the constructor of a bicycle – what Peter Coeln, proprietor of the WestLicht auction house in Vienna, first had the opportunity to see in January 2014, is quite a sensation for

anyone fascinated by the history of the Leica. Barnack’s granddaughter, Hedda, had placed the albums containing around 1,250 photos in the safe hands of a close friend when she moved out from her parents’ house in Cologne in the 1990s. Quite recently, her friend obviously recalled the treasures slumbering in his attic. Fortunately, the Barnack photo albums are now being editorially catalogued as a mutual effort by WestLicht and Leica, and selected photos from them will soon be made accessible to a wider audience – for instance, in the new Leitz Park in Wetzlar.

Many of the photos were taken by Barnack’s daughter, Hanna, who had been

given a Leica in 1933, very probably on the occasion of the birth of Hedda, Oskar Barnack’s granddaughter. In a historical context, the most remarkable photos are those taken with the Liliput: this was the name Barnack gave the ‘small film camera’ he completed in 1913/1914 and used extensively in a family setting to get an impression of its capabilities.

We are pleased to be able to present a small selection of these pictures for the first time, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Leica idea.

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Chapter 3: the Barnack albums

Top left: wedding pictures from 1903. Oskar Barnack extensively tested the forerunner of the Leica he had completed in 1913/1914 in a family setting. Top: daughter Johanna, 1916, right-hand page: son Konrad, 1916, far right: a family portrait, very probably in Barnack’s garden, taken by an unknown photographer in 1916. Of course, fun played a big role in his family life: the picture at the left was taken at the carnival in Wetzlar in 1914 and shows Oskar and Emma Barnack (the couple on the left) in full carnival costume

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Chapter 3: the Barnack albums

On this page: ‘The radio ham’ – Oskar Barnack took this picture of his dog with headphones at some time around 1925. In addition to portraits of Emma and Oskar Barnack, taken around 1907 in Jena, the album page with the handwritten title ‘Hannis Eltern’ (‘Hanni’s parents’) also shows the inventor of the Leica with his self-constructed bicycle.

On the next page: Barnack’s decision to buy a car came quite late, as a result of pressure from his family. Daughter Johanna took this picture of him with the car nicknamed ‘Black Peter’ in 1934. Below: the precisionengineer at a lathe, probably taken around 1911 by Nicolaus Befort, the Leitz company photographer at the time. The picture at the far right was probably taken at the Leipzig Spring Fair of 1934, and shows Barnack holding a Leica III with a 50 mm Elmar and a Vidom universal finder (our particular thanks go to Ulf Richter for his assistance in assigning dates to the pictures)

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4 Sung Soo Lee, Train Station, Jodhpur, India, 2013.

Leica M9-P, Apo-Summicron-M 50 mm f/2 Asph

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From Elmar to Apo-Summicron To a great extent, the Leica I owes its success to the lens Max Berek calculated especially for its 24 × 36 mm negative format. In the decades that followed, Leitz and Leica developed the art of optical design to absolute perfection. Let’s take a look at the most important milestones, with the 50 mm lenses as our example.

Chapter 4: optical excellence

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The Elmar 50 mm f/3.5 from 1925 and the current top-of-the-line lens, the Apo-Summicron-M 50 mm f/2 Asph.

90 years of glass research and applied aberration theory have led to almost absolute perfection

When Peter Karbe, head of the optical development department at Leica, starts to think about a new design at his computer, he knows there is a collection of old notebooks on the shelves behind him.

These are the production records from the era of Max Berek (1886–1949), who constructed the lens for the first Leica. When the Anastigmat of the evaluation series and the Elmar 50 mm f/3.5 were made in the early 1920s – “a stroke of genius”, as Karbe says – paper and pencil, tables of formulas, a slide rule, and the theory of aberration formulated by Philipp Ludwig Seidel around 1857, were the only tools of the lens designer, and it took weeks to calculate the paths of a dozen rays through the elements of an optical system until a suitable draft design was achieved that could be used to construct a prototype. For Berek, a good cigar and a pot of tea were also an important part of the process.

It may well be that the treasures Karbe keeps in his office are a bit of nostalgia, but, in fact, the work of the pioneers still influences the methods used in the Leica optical department until the present day.

Not necessarily with regard to solutions, but certainly to the approach of minimis-

ing optical aberrations from the start by profound analysis instead of coping with them in the design process.

Creativity, high-tech and manual skills. Today, the methods and technologies available for the optimisation of the passage of light are something Berek could only have dreamed of and, frequently, they were developed or refined by Leitz or Leica. This applies, for example, to the pioneering use of computers for ray tracing in the 1950s and to the systematically increased use of asphericals since the early 1990s – i.e. lenses with surface geometries that deviate from the spherical – that first made all the lens designs possible for which Leica is so famous today. To ensure that the sophisticated designs also fulfil their purpose, that object points are transformed into image points precisely and with minimised losses over the entire surface, at all distances and with all apertures, this demands an arsenal of machines and instruments that are essential for guaranteeing absolute precision in the interaction of all mechanical and optical components.

Every modern Leica lens results from a combination of cutting edge technology and craftsmanship. Complex machines take care of grinding the lens geometries, the application of a magnetic polishing

medium finely controls the shape of the surface of asphericals, which is measured with computer-generated holograms; CNC machines perfect the lens mount components with microscopic accuracy, all of which serves to minimise the essential fine adjustment procedures formerly required in the assembly processes. Nevertheless, for the blacking of the rims of lens elements to prevent stray light, there is still nothing better than applying the paint by hand with an artist’s brush.

Within seconds, modern design software completes tasks that formerly took days or weeks, calculates with thousands rather than dozens of rays and communicates a precise picture of the level of imaging quality the designer can expect from an optical system. Where does the brainwork come in? It is a fact that optimisation programmes relieve much of the designer’s burden, but they are only one means to an end. On the contrary, they assume that the designer has a precise concept for influencing the parameters such as glass type, lens thickness, lens radius or the distance between elements.

If the software were left to do it alone, the result could well be a wonderful >

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Chapter 4: optical excellence

Max Berek (1886–1949). The work of the lens constructor has left its mark on the methodology of lens design at Leica until the present day. And every calculation that goes into production is still assigned a B-number (for calculation office Berek)

lens – but a lens with numerous elements, a lens that would perhaps be impossible to construct with justifiable costs and effort.

A lens designed with no consideration of how and why which types of aberrations occur, as the programme only concerns itself with compensating for them. Certainly not an M lens, in the design and construction of which the art today is to keep it not only sufficiently compact to avoid occluding the view through the viewfinder, but also to ensure that it behaves identically in the plane of focus at an aperture of f/1.4 as at f/4 and f/5.6.

Something like this demands creativity, and the brainwork involved can well be counted in years, in contrast to which, the actual calculation is, today, a relatively fast process. This creativity makes good use of the vast experience gathered in now almost a century of systematic design of high-performance lenses and explains why the first step for Karbe’s team in every

new design project is to the department’s own archive to look whether there have been comparable ideas in the past, what options were available at the time, which options were chosen and what could be done better with today’s facilities.

Between perfection and restrictions.

‘Making it better’ is always a matter of the cost and effort required, the opportunities offered and the profitability at the end of it all. Certain criteria limit the creativity of lens designers: are the glass types required for the targeted levels of performance available? Is it humanly possible to actually bring the concept that looks so good on paper to serial production maturity in mechanical terms? And how far may creative ambition go before the alarm bells in the financing department begin to ring?

Anyone reading through the chronology of M-System lenses will come across designs in the range that have remained unchanged for decades. For instance, the Summilux 50 mm f/1.4 (1961–2003), the Noctilux 50 mm f/1.0 (1975–2008) or the

Summicron 50 mm f/2, (since 1979 in its fourth version) – all of them lenses that have inherent weaknesses when viewed in absolute terms, but all the same, perfectly consistent concepts. The last of these is still in the programme, but now has a sister, the Apo-Summicron-M 50 mm f/2 Asph. “I’m quite happy about it,” says Karbe, with his typical penchant for understatement. For good reason, too: it took quite a while until the manufacturing process was tuned to sufficient perfection to allow the serial production of a lens with such demanding specifications as this design without residual errors. But its spectacular imaging performance garnered the M-System an unassailable position in the 24 by 36 mm segment – one is tempted to say, once again.

The idea for it had been in Karbe’s drawer for several years, but only when the M Monochrom appeared on the stage, did Leica finally decide that the time had come

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A leaf through Berek’s workshop note book. Sketches of lens configurations and notes for parameters like radii, spacings, thicknesses and diameters stand at the beginning of every draft concept for a new lens

to treat the world of photography to such astoundingly homogeneous rendition of details and contrast. It is certain to remain the absolute reference lens in its focal length class in the foreseeable future, too.

Here, the sum total of all the highly-refined design techniques Leica is able to make use of flowed into the result. The degree of perfection in light transmission achieved by this design obviously has its price, and, in view of a tag of 6,000 euros for a moderately fast standard lens, quite a few asked themselves whether Leica had not gone a little too far. After all, isn’t the rangefinder camera, in first line, a precise, reliable and fast tool with ideal handling for reportage from the heart of the action, where the ultimate tweaks of microcontrast are generally not all that decisive? True enough.

However, the M-System has gone through a complete repositioning process since its extreme popularity and styledetermining status in the fifties and sixties

and the threat of a gradual decline into obscurity in the shadow of the dominance of SLR systems. The renaissance it experienced in the last 20 or 30 years, and particularly since the coming of the digital M9, was marked by an emphasis on the character of the rangefinder camera as a masterpiece of mechanical and optical excellence, created solely for careful, contemplative and precise photography. It is, therefore, no coincidence that the late eighties and early nineties were the period that saw the key technological breakthroughs that were to leave their mark on today’s portfolio of lenses. Obviously, first and foremost, was the production of asphericals, inevitably followed by appropriate modifications to component manufacturing and adjustment processes.

Compactness as a technology-driver.

Although the rangefinder system had become a comparatively exotic phenomenon on the market as a whole, the objective was to firmly establish it with a unique selling proposition, which meant that

there must be no better lenses to be found for its format and the range of focal lengths it offered. In this respect – from the standpoint of a lens designer – Leica soon made a virtue out of its necessities, i.e. the legacy of a body with a short register distance, a comparatively narrow bayonet mount and an optical viewfinder that prevented the use of thick lenses that could block the view. Actually, the design of a superbly corrected, top-class lens is not all that difficult. Nevertheless, it becomes a true art when the lean and compact character of today’s, in part extremely fast, M lenses and their dependence on the micro-precision of all their components is considered.

The M crisis actually paved the way to betting the entire inheritance on the ace card of optical perfection. However, the way to the fundamental revision of production methods in the direction of microscopically tight tolerances was also paved by constructions like the Apo- >

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Chapter 4: optical excellence

Lens finishing in the 1950s: cementing a pair of lenses with Canada balsam, aligning lenses with the optical axis by the reflection of a mirror image, rubbing down an aligned lens to its exact diameter (from left to right)

Summicron 180 mm f/2 for the, then still blooming, R-System. Nevertheless, the breakthroughs in the manufacture of asphericals targeted the M-System and have led to a process of innovation that, firstly, constantly pushes the limits of the technically possible and, secondly, as the experience gained in the extremes of the M sector can be exploited technically and strategically everywhere, is an inspiration to all areas of product development. An example of this is the lens of the X Vario, which, although not exactly super-fast, benefited considerably from M knowhow – and certainly plays in the same league as the current M lenses in terms of superior imaging performance.

The development of a lens like the ApoSummicron-M 50 mm f/2 Asph follows an immanent logic: the M-System as a field of experimentation in the search for the perfect lens under unfavourable conditions.

This led, in turn, to the creation of techno-

logical lighthouses that shine brightly on Leica’s unique art of lens design.

That the effort involved is not invested exclusively to automatically make the enjoyment ever more expensive, is shown by the Summilux-M 50 mm f/1.4 Asph, and, in 2003, by its well-earned accolade of being voted the best super-fast 50 mm lens for 24 by 36 mm photography of all time.

One of the special glass elements used in this lens costs as much as the entire optical system of its non-aspherical predecessor.

A factor that by no means led to an increase in price of the new lens against the older version – the higher cost of the special glass was offset by rationalisation in the manufacturing process.

example for illustrating the history of the development of Leica lenses. In view of the diversity of the range of lenses available today, this may well be seen as a rather narrow view. Zoom lenses naturally bring quite specific challenges for lens designers, not to mention the combination of large angles of view and wide apertures – as realised in an extreme form in the Summilux 21 mm f/1.4 Asph. However, in the context of a resumee on the occasion of the centennial celebration of the birth of the Leica, it seems appropriate to focus on the particular focal length with which the majority of all Leica lens-name classes were originally associated: Elmar, Summarit, Summicron, Summilux, Noctilux …

An exemplary ‘standard focal length’.

The first Leica lens was a ‘50’, and so is the current flagship lens of the Leica M-System. Between these two extremes lies a series of fundamental development steps in which the standard lens for 24 by 36 mm photography was also involved. We would therefore like to take this focal length as an

The Elmar and the Hektor. “Of course we were in a position to calculate a lens with an aperture of f/2 in those days,” recalled Berek in 1949, in an interview about the times around the birth of the

100 years of Leica_ LFI

Lenses are fixed in a carrier and fine ground and polished with the aid of a spindle grinder

The gradual increase in lens speeds required every ounce of the lens designer’s creativity to compensate for the concurrent increase in aberration effects. Above, the Hektor 5 cm f/2.5 from 1930, a triplet variation.

The Summar 5 cm f/2 from 1933 (top right), was Max Berek’s first double Gauss lens and the beginning of the line of fast standard lenses for the Leica. In 1939, it was followed by the Summitar 5 cm f/2, in which Berek had been able to prevent the extreme vignetting of the Summar by using a particularly large front lens.

Splitting this lens to create a cemented element offered additional correction opportunities for improvement of performance across the entire image field, despite the greater influence of peripheral rays

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Leica. “But amateurs had as good as no experience in the proper use of such fast lenses; they didn’t know anything about their pitfalls and difficulties.” Protecting the first users against ambitious attempts to photograph everything wide open to shorten exposure times, and the subsequent disappointment of photographs ruined by misplaced planes of focus, which could well have discredited Oskar Barnack’s revolutionary invention right from the start, was reason enough for not immediately sounding out the limits of the technically possible. Berek’s four-element Anastigmat 50 mm f/3.5, patented in 1920, followed by the Elmax, with a fifth element, and, in 1925, another four-element design, the Elmar 50 mm f/3.5, was based on the consideration of constructing a lens that was as small as possible, collapsible and able to be corrected to the highest possible quality levels.

Indeed, the breakthrough of the Leica was not least due to the quality of its lenses.

The recalculation of the Elmar 50 mm f/3.5 after World War II, with different glass types, hardly influenced its optical performance, which illustrates not only the excellence of Berek’s design from the 1920s, but also the limitations of this particular optical design (that it actually did offer some room for improvement with more refined, modern methods, is shown by the f/2.8 version from 1957 and, above all, the new construction from 1994, which remained in the programme until 2007).

Berek based his design on a Cooke triplet, a positive-negative-positive lens construction described by Harold D. Taylor in 1893. As long as the angle of view is not too large and the maximum aperture is moderate, this design is effective for the correction of Seidel aberrations (astigmatism, image field curvature, spherical aberration, coma, distortion and chromatic aberration). As simple as its basic design may be, the variables lens spacing, lens thickness and the six surface curvatures already offer such enormous >

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degrees of freedom that, as Berek noted, no two lens designers would ever construct an identical triplet.

The cementing of elements offered an additional opportunity to simulate a glass type with a higher refractive index; at the same time, it let the number of glass to air interfaces remain constant – coatings for the reduction of reflections had not yet been invented. On the whole, it offered plenty of scope for creativity and, one example of how Berek made the best of it, was his decision to relocate the aperture stop further forward than its then usual position next to the middle element, and place it close to the second lens surface – with the effect of further reducing flare.

Another variant of the triplet was the Hektor 50 mm f/2.5 from 1930. Being a faster design, Berek needed more correction options, but without the addition of more glass to air interfaces. The lens was therefore constructed as a system with six elements in three cemented groups.

Closely related to this lens was the Hektor 73 mm f/1.9 from 1931, Leitz’ first venture into the world of extremely fast lenses.

The focal length chosen for this lens indicates that, in view of its large maximum aperture, it could only be realised with a smaller angle of view; theatre photographers loved this lens and the previously unknown opportunities it offered them.

Nevertheless, it also clearly indicated the limitations of the triplet design with regard to increasing lens speed.

Even though an entire range of lenses with focal lengths from 28 to 135 mm appeared as members of the Elmar and Hektor families in the 1930s, and made the compact and conveniently mobile Leica one of the first truly universal system cameras, more and more reportage photographers began to demand faster lenses to compensate for the slow films of the day and increase their flexibility when capturing ‘life itself’ in pictures (not to mention the growing competition from rivals like the Sonnars from Zeiss).

Chapter 4: optical excellence

The Summar, Summitar and Summicron. The Summar 50 mm f/2 from 1933 founded the tradition of fast, universal standard lenses for the Leica and the beginning of research into the design options offered by the double Gauss type that first ended in the 1980s (and was recently revisited in the current range of Summarit-M lenses with the moderate speed of a maximum aperture of f/2.5). In principle, this is a modification of a simple two lens, concave-convex construction for an astronomical telescope developed by Carl Friedrich Gauss at the beginning of the 19th century. In its simplest form, a double Gauss photographic lens has two such pairs, located back-to-back and with the aperture stop located between them.

This type proved to offer extensive options for aberration correction, and a multitude of variants can be envisaged. For instance, the inner elements can be split into positive and negative elements to create a six-element construction – like the Summar. The Leitz brochure emphasised ‘close to apochromatic colour correction’ and ‘exceptional sharpness to the edge at maximum aperture’.

One of the downsides of this successful lens was a noticeable vignetting that led to unattractive effects, particularly when using one of the growing numbers of colour films, a problem that Berek was able to eliminate with his Summitar 50 mm f/2 in 1939. This had a particularly large front component that, split to create a cemented element, offered an additional correction surface that could be influenced by the radius and, despite its increased peripheral brightness, provided even better performance across the entire image field than the Summar had previously done.

Nevertheless, effects on the image due to the increase of oblique peripheral rays, caused by the magnification of the front component, brought problems in the form of spherical aberration. Berek had various ideas about how this could be solved, but would not live to see their realisation.

Max Berek, the creator of the first lens, and 23 later lenses for the Leica, died on the 15th of October in 1949.

Otto Zimmermann, Berek’s successor, implemented Berek’s ideas after the technical preconditions were fulfilled by the introduction of lens coating for the attenuation of reflections (see page 55) and the development of a new, highly refractive glass type (see page 56). In 1953, Leitz presented the first Summicron 50 mm f/2, a lens in which, firstly, the new LaK9 glass had allowed the realisation of flatter lens radii and, secondly, in which the foremost cemented element of the Summar had been transformed into a double element with a thin ‘air lens’ between the elements, which proved to be very effective in correcting the spherical aberration caused by bundles of oblique rays. This air-filled gap of only 0.2 mm demanded utmost precision when installing the lenses.

The Summicron 50 went on to become the standard lens par excellence for the Leica rangefinder system, particularly in the new version from 1956, developed for the ‘dual range’ version that should guarantee identical imaging performance in the range of up to 48 cm with a close-up attachment as in the normal range to infinity. The existing ‘air lens’ was slightly enlarged and a second was included between the third and fourth elements.

While the first Summicron was collapsible, the rigid construction of the second version united the attributes of precision, robustness and smooth action in a way that enduringly characterised the reputation of the Leica rangefinder system.

The next new construction came from Walter Mandler at Leitz Canada in 1969, at a time when the M-System was fighting for survival against extreme pressure from the rising popularity of single lens reflex photography. Pragmatic by nature, Mandler oriented his version on the Leicaflex Summicron, said goodbye to the luxury of the seven-element construction and came up with a six-element lens that was easier to produce. But pragmatism alone is not what counted here: the quality was also improved and, in particular, showed >

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Loading a calotte with lenses (top) for the application of coating layers (bottom right) for the attenuation of reflections

A portion of the incoming light is reflected at interfaces between glass and air. This alone already leads to much less light leaving the system than entering it; add to this the reflections occurring at each surface in the return path of the reflected light, and a heavy loss of contrast is the result. Lens designers in Max Berek’s day were forced to reduce the number of glass to air interfaces to a minimum, which, in turn, limited the measures available for the correction of aberrations. The cementing of elements was one way to gain a little more freedom for this. The choice of extreme lens curvature was also a method for minimising reflections – albeit one that increased the degree of spherical aberration. The Xenon 50 mm f/1.5 from 1936 was a prestigious victory in the battle for lens speed superiority with Zeiss, but its ten glass-to-air interfaces actually let less than 50 per cent of the light reach the film. In 1940, after the licence for the coating process developed by Alexander Smakula at Zeiss in 1935 was made available to all companies important to the war effort, the situation changed completely: even the first coatings increased the transmission values of the lenses to 90 per cent.

LENS COATING So now, the lens designers finally had better options for correcting aberrations. In 1949, the first lens to appear was the Summarit 50 mm f/1.5, more or less a coated Xenon.

Only by explicitly including the coating in the calculation could a significant increase in performance be achieved in this aperture class.

For example, the use of glasses with a high refractive index that permitted the realisation of flatter curvatures, with which effects like spherical aberration and coma could be The Summarit 50 mm f/1.5 from 1949

effectively limited, was now really worthwhile. This eventually led to the appearance of the first version of the Summilux 50 mm f/1.4 in 1959, which was replaced in 1961 by the much more precisely calculated second version (in the range until 2004). The coatings for minimising reflections are a mixture of metal oxides and fluorides matched precisely to each particular glass type. They are applied in such a way as to effect a phase shift in the components of light waves so that these are neutralised by destructive interference.

Today, the coatings used by Leica are applied in several layers varying from 1/10,000th of a micron to several microns.

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On the former Leitz factory site in Wetzlar is a dilapidated shed. Between 1954 and 1989, this was the home of experimental research into glass. The glasses developed here are not only still found in the catalogues of glassmakers like Schott and Corning, but also often helped Leitz to maintain their competitive edge in lens design and construction and they continue to play a key role in the design of new lenses. Beginning in 1939, the physicist Gustav Weissenberg from the mineralogical institute of the University of Marburg collaborated with Leitz, initially in the context of research into coatings for minimising reflections and, from 1944, on the development of optical glasses in Marburg. The availability of glasses with high refractive indices and low chromatic dispersion had always proved to be a bottleneck in the development of photographic lenses and it was Max Berek, who pressed Leitz to intensify research into glasses.

In 1949, the year of Berek’s death, and after hundreds of attempts, Weissenberg developed a suitable melt that did without the optically favourable, but radioactive, thorium. By the addition of lanthanum oxide and traces of tantalum and zirconium oxides, he created a glass by the name of LaK9 that offered precisely the refractive properties required and eventually made it possible to construct the Summicron 50 mm f/2.

Following this success, Ludwig Leitz moved the department from Marburg to Wetzlar, where work then began in 1954. In an interview a few years ago, Norbert Meinert, last head of the research laboratory before its closure in 1989, described how a vast store of knowledge and expertise developed from humble beginnings. At first, the team had virtually no access to relevant scientific data and “we couldn’t get anything from Schott” – after the war, the glass manufacturer formerly located in Jena was occupied with re-establishing the company at a new site in Mainz and, although no means were available for their own R & D, they kept a very tight hold on everything they had in the way of know-how. This aspect also influenced Leitz’ decision to go it alone. The work was initially characterised by trial and error and thousands of test melts, each of which was recorded with painstaking precision

Chapter 4: optical excellence

because a successful glass would have to be reproducible. A mixture of about ten substances in proportions determined by experimentation were melted together at 1100 to 1620 degrees for up to three hours and then constantly stirred until the melt cooled to 500 to 1200 degrees. Cast as a block, the glass was then cooled to room temperature overnight, after which, its refractive index could be determined, which could be positively influenced, by briefly warming the block. The team was very ambitious in its search for glass formulations with increasingly higher refractiveindices and lower dispersion properties – one of which was used in the design of the Summilux 50 mm f/1.4 that appeared on the market in 1959.

THE LEITZ GLASS LABORATORY

‘More by luck than judgement’, the researchers discovered that increasing the proportion of zirconium oxide made it possible to melt glasses with anomalous partial dispersion, i.e. deviations in the refractive index dependent on the wavelength of the light, that were particularly suitable for apochromatic correction. This is how the famous type 900403 glass came to be – with a refractive index of 1.9 and a dispersion value of 40 – which was used in 1966 in the Noctilux 50 mm f/1.2, the first aspherical lens. The glass laboratory could only really have been seen as a production facility in its early years.

In fact, it concentrated more on basic research, and the around 35 glasses it developed were produced under licence by prominent glass manufacturers. Most of the photographic lenses made between 1949 and 1989 would never have been possible without the efforts of the glass laboratory and, when today’s spec sheets mention special glasses, it is almost certain that the formula originated from the ‘alchemists’ in the small shed at the foot of the Kalsmunt, Wetzlar’s basalt plug. The sale of this division to Corning in 1989 marked the end of an era.

Top: Gustav Weissenberg, the first head of the glass laboratory. Bottom: work at a glass furnace with a stirrer

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The Summicron 50 mm f/2 was the first fruit of the work of the Leitz glass laboratory. The collapsible version (left) appeared in 1953. The recalculated rigid version from 1956 (centre) became a synonym for the robustness and precision of the M-System. The sixelement version, produced since 1979, may be seen as the ultimate incarnation of the double Gauss design

significantly better contrast performance at f/2 than its predecessor. Plus: the minimum distance shrank from 100 to 70 cm.

The current version of the Summicron 50, another Mandler design, appeared in 1979. It was also a six-element construction and benefited from all the advances and refinements in computer calculation technologies and glass research since the appearance of the previous version. Five flat surfaces made it much easier to produce and the design – with a particular sharpness that ‘pops’ when only slightly stopped down – no longer contained any of the original lanthanum crown glasses that gave the Summicron-type of lenses its name. This lens represented the peak of double Gauss construction.

From Summarit to Summilux. In the 1950s the pressure was on to push the speed of lenses beyond f/2, and not only at Leitz. Partly due to rising market demand and competition and partly due to a search for qualitatively convincing solutions driven by ambition on the part of the lens designers. The step from f/2 to f/1.4 means

not only doubling the light gathering ability, but also the need to compensate for the – at least – fourfold increase in aberrations caused by the greater influence of peripheral rays.

Berek had already designed a 50 with an initial aperture of f/1.2 in the 1930s, but, as it was technically too sophisticated to be able to realise its construction rapidly enough to respond to the equally intense activity at Zeiss, Leitz opted for a Schneider design, the Xenon 50 mm f/1.5. In 1949, methods for coating lenses to minimise reflections had become available and Leitz released the Summarit, in effect, a new name for a coated version of the rather soft Xenon. However, it soon became obvious that, when the coating was included as an extra variable in the calculation process from the beginning, it became possible to correct aberrations even more effectively, improve quality and push the speed of the lens even a little further than before. With a change to the glass types and lens radii, the Summarit became the Summilux 50 mm f/1.4, presented in 1959 – the change of name may well have been made to better match the name ‘Summicron’, and simultaneously communicate the message of ‘more light’.

It was not destined to survive for long.

Mandler had constructed the first ever lens with a focal length of 35 mm and an aperture of f/1.4 in 1960, and the experience gathered in this demanding combination of a wide angle of view and high speed, made possible by new glass types with high refractive indices from the glass laboratory, naturally now also benefited the 50 mm lenses.

Alone the long production run of the second Summilux 50 mm f/1.4, from 1961 to 2003, is indicative of the high levels of performance that Mandler achieved with this seven-element lens constructed with five different glass types. Unrivalled for decades, its contrast performance wide open contributed significantly to the reputation of this extremely fast standard lens and, the fact that Mandler had accepted image field curvature in his design, reflects, as Leica specialist Erwin Puts writes in his Leica Chronicle (2012), that rangefinder photographers tend to place the sharpness in the middle of the picture anyway, there where the rangefinder spot is seen in the viewfinder. >

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Chapter 4: optical excellence

A substantial improvement to an already excellent design is always a very difficult task to realise, and only advances in aspherical technologies made the effort involved worthwhile.

The Noctilux. A couple of characteristics from his Summilux for the M, a little inspiration from the Summilux calculated in Wetzlar for the Leicaflex, the glass and two lenses more than Werner Marx used in his premiere of asphericals in the Noctilux 50 mm f/1.2 in 1966 (see page 60) – that was the recipe for Mandler’s f/1.0 design.

But only in theory – in reality, it had taken several years, and the Como optimisation programme had been immensely useful in the fine correction of this lens that appeared on the market in 1975. Almost certainly the most outstanding lens associated with the name of Walter Mandler – the Noctilux 50 mm f/1.0.

Opinions differ enormously – it no longer makes real sense in terms of the arguments of earlier decades that it compensates for low film sensitivity, it is only universal in the sense that it could well come in useful to let in a lot of light, but it is actually much too heavy and bulky to carry around with a light and small camera like the M all the time. That is one side of the coin. A special lens that, in the first line demonstrates what Leica can do, that expands the creative opportunities offered by the rangefinder system to unrivalled new levels and creates pictures of sheerly indescribable charm when the plane of focus is placed precisely where one will have it. A lens for those with a passion and, as such, with a beauty that need not be explained. And this, the other – and everyone is more or less right.

Which ever way you look at it, it was a masterpiece of lens design with remarkable performance at f/1. For aficionados, the residual vestiges of spherical aberration were an aesthetic gift, and the focus shift when stopping down – a consequence of the correction method employed for the

The insertion of lens elements into the barrel requires enormous care (left).

As does checking the results from the surface grinder (right)

The first Summilux 50 mm f/1.4 was in production from 1959 to 1961, which makes it the shortest-lived Leica lens. Nevertheless, it determined the direction Leitz would take in the following years: the development of lenses faster than the Summicrons and, at least, their equals in performance. It was the first design to bear the name Summilux, and it came about as a further development of the Summarit 50 mm f/1.5 from 1949, with new glass types but a similar configuration. Prototypes engraved with ‘Summarit f=5cm 1:1.4’ indicate their genesis in a kind of fluid transition in the production process

emphasis of its performance wide open – has only become noticeable since users in the era of digital photography look more closely and the deviations from ideal sharpness are no longer lost in the thickness of the film emulsion. 1975 – that was a time when the fate of the M-System >

100 years of Leica_ LFI

Well into the 1950s, the calculation of a lens was an exhausting process. So it’s no wonder that the lens calculators at Leitz at that time had a longer lunch break than their other colleagues. One often saw them taking a midday nap and, soon enough, the long, narrow building where they worked had its nickname: “Where do the lens calculators work?” – “In the sleeping car.” Wolfgang Vollrath, head of the lens department in the 1980s and constructor of the Apo-MacroElmarit-R 100 mm f/2.8, recalled this anecdote in 2009. He also describes what was so exhausting and how design methods have advanced over the years.

The tasks of a lens designer could be simple, if it were not for the law of refraction. As rays of light passing from air into glass behave in such a way that the angle of refraction cannot be determined from the angle of incidence and the relative refractive indices of glass and air, but that the respective sines of these angles must be used, means just one thing – a hell of a lot of maths. Calculation of the sine of the incident angle, determination of the sine of the angle of refraction from it, calculation of the angle of refraction itself, then determination of the sine of the exit angle, and so on for every lens element. Now it is not enough to do this for one ray per object point, it must be done for many rays and many object points. And, of course, with the aim of achieving a clean and clear convergence of the rays in a single image point with the chosen lens configuration. This means that the parameters of the lens elements involved must be constantly adjusted and then recalculated.

And that not only for rays parallel to the optical axis but also for the oblique rays. And that not only for the rays that were projected onto the paper plane, but also for those in free space. And, when a lens curvature has been corrected for the correction of one group of rays, rays further away still remain uncorrected. So the parameters of several lens elements have to be balanced simultaneously.

Not to mention that the correction of an aberration effect such as coma may make another aberration effect even worse. Then, the decision of which compromise to choose must be made to arrive at a balanced result that, nevertheless, corresponds to the aim of the design.

But luckily, as Vollrath says,

IN THE SLEEPING CAR, ON THE WAY TO COMO

The Elliott 402 mainframe computer at work, 1958. Leitz pioneered the use of computers for optical design

nature sometimes shows a friendly side: the minimisation of the aberrations of a ray also affects its neighbouring rays and, depending on the form of the lens, the aberrations have different signs and can therefore eliminate each other in appropriate lens configurations. When things went well, a lenscalculator could calculate 50 surfaces per day and would be occupied with a six-element design for three days. On top of this came the correction, and everything started – maybe several times – all over again.

With the aberration theories as formulated

by Philipp Ludwig Seidel in the 19th century and the formulae determined from them, one did at least have a reference point for assessing the quality of a chosen lens configuration.

Depending on the specifications of a lens, one could make the analysis as complex as may be, but, above all – which is what Berek’s method implies – one does have a means to investigate the effects of every surface and, assuming a system of utmost simplicity, possesses the ability to minimise aberrations from the start.

According to Vollrath, it is more likely that a configuration can be arrived at on the basis of aberration theory and then optimised by calculation, “and, what’s more, when it’s finished, you know exactly why the lens is so good.”

Leica still works like this today, and, since the introduction of computers, this

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approach also characterises the in-house development of the optimisation programmes that fundamentally changed the everyday routine of lens calculators. In 1953, Leitz became the first German company in the industrial segment to install a room-filling mainframe computer – a Zuse 5 that calculated 360 surfaces per hour. The Elliott 402, acquired in 1958, was even faster and when a computer developed by IBM was installed in the 1960s, the performance rose to surfaces per second, rather than per hour. This began the era of computer-aided correction, yet, the first programmes had their decisive weaknesses: the quality function they used as a basis for the correction procedure, with the aim of minimising values, compiled all aberrations with a more or less appropriately selected weighting and calculated a result from which it could not be determined whether particular aberrations could be corrected together or not. Or, the programmes suggested unrealistic production parameters.

At the end of the 1960s, Helmut Marx solved these problems by developing a programme that made it possible to correct each aberration individually while taking all the others into account. What’s more, not only aberrations were considered in the calculation of variables, but also lens parameters like thickness, curvature and spacing, all of which can also be an objective of correction. This programme, christened ‘Como’ (Correction, Optimisation and Minimisation by Orthogonalisation) opened up new opportunities for the precision correction of lens designs drafted with superior imaging performance in mind and even included production feasibility factors in the calculation. In principle, all design programmes available today do exactly the same, but, at the time it was programmed, Como was revolutionary and in a further developed form it is still the basis for lens calculation at Leica, only now, it’s available on the desktop computer. Its use as a meaningful tool assumes that the designer has already developed a precise draft specification of how a lens is expected to perform, and, just as in Berek’s day, the conception of every Leica lens today is a project founded on the creativity of the individual – the difference being that the designer’s tribulations in the ray tracing process are now taken care of by a computer.

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Helmut Marx, head of the Leitz lens calculation department at the time, wanted to attempt it anyway. The preliminary work on this project began in 1959/1960. Marx initially experimented with fascinating ideas, for instance, the construction of the outer portion of a lens from four different types of glass.

Indeed, a prototype was realised, but the cost for serial production would have been far to high. So he set his sights on asphericals, for the serial production of which neither reference data, nor tools existed.

Welcomed as a sensation, the Noctilux 50 mm f/1.2 was a commercial disaster.

Nevertheless, it stayed in production for nine years after its appearance in 1966. In the 1960s, the construction of lenses with apertures of f/1.4 was considered to have been mastered. Yet photographers clamoured for more. It was the heyday of realistic reportage under all thinkable lighting conditions.

In 1956, Canon had already launched a 50 mm f/1.2 and, in 1961, a 50 with a maximum aperture of f/0.95. At the same time, Nikon launched a 50 with f/1.1. Leitz – at the time bigger than Canon – wanted to go at least one better – their rivals’ designs were only theoretically usable at their maximum apertures. In 1965, an article stated that the problems of very fast lenses, like spherical aberration and coma, could be eliminated by the use of aspherical lenses. However, it also predicted that their serial production would well remain an illusion.

THE FIRST ASPHERICAL LENS

Top: the Noctilux 50 mm f/1.2, built from 1966 to 1975

Helmut Marx, a pioneer of aspherical technology and computer-aided lens calculation

Within only six months, a special grinding machine had been constructed. A diamond cutting head had to be designed that made it possible to grind the aspherical form within tolerances of 1/1000th of a millimetre.

The development of new polishing processes was also required, as conventional methods eliminated the so painstakingly ground aspherical forms. Marx had not only provided the design for the lens, but had also developed the new production methods and, in terms of performance, the effort was more than worthwhile: the aim was the achievement of an image free of reflections and with rich contrast, and the Noctilux 50 mm f/1.2 delivered truly excellent results at maximum aperture that were far superior to those of the other light-gathering titans of the time.

Stopped down, it was even better than the Summicron. However, it showed not only a slight shift of focus when stopping down, but also proved to be susceptible to fluctuations in the flange-to-film distance, which led to the recommendation to have it adjusted to match the body on which it would be used. Eventually, this first venture into the world of asphericals turned out to be too complex and costly and, after several years, Walter Mandler was to develop the even faster Noctilux 50 mm f/1.0. Constructed once again exclusively with sphericals, it became truly popular as users discovered its dream-like signature and the aesthetics of creative interaction of gossamer-thin depths of sharp and unsharp planes.

What could be achieved by asphericals had now been proved thanks to Marx’ pioneering work and the early 1990s saw the breakthrough in production technology that was to establish asphericals as an integral part of almost any lens design.

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was almost sealed (more on this later) and, as Mandler began his design, its existence was already balanced on a knife edge; something truly spectacular was of the essence, and that with a tight and inflexible development and production budget.

No doubt about it, Mandler succeeded on all counts with the Noctilux 50 mm f/1.0 and its construction entirely with spherical lenses. It may well also have played a role in spreading the opinion vehemently voiced by the management at Leitz Canada throughout the company that – no matter how popular the single reflex may be or become – it would be sheer sacrilege to let something as wonderful as the Leica rangefinder system simply quietly die away. And it was a good thing the company listened.

The Asph era: the Summilux, the Noctilux and the Apo-Summicron. As we mentioned earlier, some designs last for decades. This is not always because everyone was perfectly satisfied with them, but sometimes because the cost and effort to make any changes would be much too high, and the priorities set were simply somewhere else. As in the case of the Summilux 35 mm f/1.4 from 1960. As the first ever wide-angle lens with such a fast aperture, it was a true classic for available light photography and, stopped down, was hardly any different from the Summicron.

Nevertheless, anyone wishing to use it wide open had to tolerate the lower contrast caused by flare and the butterflyshaped rendition of point lights, as is typical for spherical aberration from oblique rays entering the optical system.

In terms of correction, this was the end of the road for the double Gauss construction. In the meantime, and not least due to the M6, the M-System had experienced a renaissance and, as large angles of view and fast apertures are amongst the greatest challenges in lens design, at the end of the 1980s Leica took the Summilux 35 as the motivation to try new routes.

Walter Mandler calculated almost 50 lenses for the screw mount Leica and the M and R-Systems. Amongst these were groundbreaking designs like the first 35 mm lens with an aperture of f/1.4, the current Summicron-M 50 mm f/2 and, of course, the Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1.0. Mandler was 23 when he came to Leitz in 1946 and began work in Max Berek’s department, although his only qualification as a lens calculator was his admission, “I’m willing to learn all about it”. He turned out to be a very fast learner. In 1952, Leitz founded a subsidiary in the Canadian town of Midland, Ontario, – in part, to establish a safe haven far from Wetzlar in view of the Cold War, and also to be closer to the important American markets. From 1954 on, Mandler established a second centre of excellence for optical development there that, under his leadership, made a name for itself particularly for the development of cost-effective, computer-aided methods for the design and construction of fast lenses. In the following years, an extremely productive and friendly competition for the production of the best design arose with the counterpart in Wetzlar headed

by Werner Marx

The Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1.0, 1975 to 2008

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This involved placing a negative element in front of the first and last, positive, elements of the classical double Gauss construction to increase the light flow and extend the options available for correction across the entire image field. Above all, it involved the integration of two aspherical elements. The resulting nine-element lens exceeded all expectations and already delivered high contrast performance at f/1.4 – the only problem was, however, that the asphericals had to be made in the same elaborate way as for the Noctilux 50 mm f/1.2, which, until such a lens was perfect and satisfied all the specifications calculated by the designer, not only took a very long time, but also ran up enormous costs.

Built only in small numbers until 1994, the Summilux 35 mm f/1.4 Asph is today a highly coveted collector’s item.

Since the early 1990s, the lens design department at Leica, then under the leadership of Lothar Kölsch, had begun to forge ahead with the development of costeffective production methods for their asphericals. In collaboration with Hoya/ Schott and Zeiss, a blank moulding process was developed, which, in combination with special testing procedures based on interferometry, first bore fruit in 1994 in the Summicron-M 35 mm f/2 Asph, followed in 1996 by the Summilux-M 35 mm f/1.4 Asph. Both now had only one aspherical surface, and both proved that aspherical elements made it possible to achieve imaging performance that would have been unimaginable without them, especially under the restrictions of the compact construction of the M-System.

Then again, shrinkage effects in the blank pressing process limited the number of glass types that could be used and, in turn, limited the geometries that could be realised. In view of this, the decision was made to continue along the aspherical route and simultaneously invest more in manufacturing technologies which would allow the production of asphericals with arbitrary specifications by grinding. >

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Peter Karbe (top right) and his team are responsible for all Leica high-performance lenses produced since the beginning of the new millennium. Sophisticated precision production techniques for aspherical lenses are a prerequisite for their realisation. Top and centre right: preliminary and fine polishing; bottom right: surface quality assurance with a computer generated hologram

Top: painting the lens rims to prevent stray light. Right: fine adjustment of the lens barrel mechanisms

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The Apo-Summicron-M 50 mm f/2 Asph, the most perfectly corrected 50 mm lens of all time is flanked here by a Summilux-M 50 mm f/1.4 Asph (launched 2003), the first M lens with a floating element, and a Noctilux-M 50 mm f/0.95 Asph (launched 2008), which, despite its exorbitant initial aperture, actually achieves even higher performance than the Summilux

In the late 1990s, computer-controlled machine tools (CNC tools), already employed for metalworking, began to find their way into the optical segment.

From 1997, several R lenses were the first to benefit from these new methods, which now offered rationalised production of asphericals with diameters larger than 25 mm, the limit of the blank pressing process. A particularly sophisticated element of the process ensures exact surface geometries: a grinding emulsion containing particles of iron is applied to the raw lenses and its flow on the surface is so precisely determined by computer-controlled electromagnets that it allows precise removal of deviations from the ideal form that are so small that they can only be measured in nanometres. This magneto-rheological finishing process is supported by testing procedures that are now no longer based on the physical existence of a reference form but instead employ computer-generated holograms, for which the theoretical design serves as a reference for the aspherical form.

Such techniques can lead to extremely finely corrected optical designs, and such designs can easily become a nightmare for those who have to install them in a complete ensemble of glass and metal. While the lens designer tends to think in dimensions below the micrometre level, realities in the world of production consider compliance with tolerances of two to four micrometres a rather sporting challenge.

That today’s lens design process includes such tolerance limits in the definition of suitable adjustment points from the start, belongs no less to the advances in the construction of high-performance lenses than the production technologies already mentioned. Erwin Puts dedicated himself to this matter in exhaustive detail in his Leica Compendium (2009).

In this respect, another achievement of the art of precision engineering is the integration of floating element mechanisms into the lens barrels to ensure outstanding imaging qualities from infinity to closest focusing distances. With the Summilux-M 50 mm f/1.4 in 2003, Peter Karbe established floating elements – first realised in the 1980s in the Summilux-R 35 mm f/1.4 – as a design characteristic of the M-System.

The breakthroughs in aspherical technology and subsequent refinements in the production process brought new lenses in almost regular rapid succession: the ApoSummicron-M 75 mm f/2 Asph and the expansion of the Summilux family by the focal lengths 21 and 24 mm. And then came the grand slam, the Noctilux-M 50 mm f/0.95 Asph, followed closely by two more lenses, the Summilux-M 35 mm f/1.4 Asph, now also with a floating element, and, finally, the Apo-Summicron-M 50 mm f/2 Asph. All of them, and the now third Noctilux in particular, provide indisputable proof that high to highest speed in a lens no longer means having to make any kinds of compromises in optical performance whatsoever against that of their slower contemporaries. Anyway, at least when, as at Leica, the approach to lens design involves setting targets higher than users would expect and where the choice of the means to an end is to take the simplest possible construction, study its shortcomings and arrive at the best solution from there.

Precisely the way Max Berek taught it.

5

Henri Cartier-Bresson: Martine’s Legs, 1967. Š Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos/Agentur Focus

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Almost timeless: the M Leica 60 years have passed since the launch of the Leica M3. The concept of the Leica rangefinder camera, with its unique combination of finest optical and mechanical precision, compact dimensions and intuitive handling, is a living legend.

With its successful transition into the digital age, Leica has proved that the rangefinder system has a future – both as the expression of a photographic principle and an expandable platform.

Chapter 5: the Leica M-System

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In 1954, the Leica M3 offered everything for the heart’s desires of mobile, strolling and watchful photographers: speed, precision, compact ergonomics and an interface to its users that promoted intuitive photography

“What cameras do you use?” – “Leicas, and I always have. I don’t like SLRs because they manipulate you into doing things.”

What Garry Winogrand, American street photographer and user of an M4, said in 1979, expresses three things that he and generations of photographers agree upon: since 1954, ‘Leica’ has generally been the synonym for a Leica rangefinder camera – a piece of equipment with an intensely emotive component. The M-System seems to possess qualities that go far beyond the convenient compactness of a precision camera with exceptional lenses.

And these qualities seem to correspond to a style of photography that stands in intense contrast to shooting with an SLR. However, in Winogrand’s days – he died in 1984 – it looked as if the SLR had won hands down. Since the 1960s, rangefinder photography had already been gradually slipping into a niche. Which could let you think that the impulse to shoot with an M Leica primarily promised a certain kudos.

Yet, although this impulse certainly pulls in certain circles, it still doesn’t explain how and why the rangefinder camera is still in existence after 60 years. It not only continues to exist. Despite its niche status, it is still admired as one of the most significant icons of camera construction there has ever been – even by people who prefer to shoot with other concepts.

A certain historic irony is not to be denied when pundits announce the coming end of digital SLR photography, at least in the 24 by 36 mm ‘Leica format’ – for the time being, the future appears to belong to mirrorless digital system cameras. One reason for this is compact size and discretion. And thus, Leica can suddenly profile the M-System as one that had been there all the time – a compact and mirrorless system. And, on top of this, can claim quality-leadership; the lenses in any case, and the concept when it comes to the camera – now called only the ‘Leica M’. Continuity also remained far more significant than change in the transitions to digital capture, even though, after the M8 and M9, the Leica M (internally the Type 240) truly

marks a quantum leap in the evolution of the system. But only in part, because no one who grew up photographically with an M4 would find even a trace of difficulty in shooting in the ‘old familiar way’ with the latest embodiment of the M series. That a photographer can do much more with it than he is used to – if he likes – is a pleasing aspect that reveals that a concept so rich in tradition can still be good for surprises.

It may well be true that the policies of Leitz/Leica with regard to the rangefinder camera were frequently of a defensive nature and, under the shadow of capital shortage and intense competition, were characterised by attempts to keep up with photographers’ wishes for greater speed and a little more convenience. Nevertheless, since the M3 from 1954, no other camera concept has ever come even close to developing such an incomparable iconic status or profoundly emotive following .

The familiar remarks of a grand master of the art like Henri Cartier-Bresson >

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(“A Leica is like a kiss…”) and, equally, his oeuvre, almost certainly inspired many a photographer to take an M Leica in their hands and style themselves as an adept of the master. Nevertheless, precisely the fact that numerous great photographers of the 20th century picked the M Leica as their chosen tool reveals something of substance and points to an elective affinity between photographic interest and technical medium.

The position Leica today assigns to the, in the meantime, digital rangefinder system, is admittedly of a different complexion. Today, it is above all the excellence of the lenses that recommends the M as the instrument for discriminating photographers. The camera concept itself seems almost to have been relegated to secondary significance. Anyone making photographs with the ‘Type 240’ may, but does not have to, use the rangefinder. It also offers LiveView, an aspect that considerably changes the act of composition and even permits the use of R-System lenses. It is, therefore, probably only a matter of time until Leica develops a line of lenses that goes far beyond what has previously been genuinely associated with the M-System. So what is so special about the concept built on and expanded from Oskar Barnack’s original idea by the Leitz camera constructor Willi Stein and his team starting already in the 1930s?

The M3. No one had waited expectantly for the Leica I when it celebrated its premiere in 1925. In contrast, the world of photography in 1954 was very eager to see what Leitz, the world famous manufacturer of 35 mm cameras, would be revealing at the photokina. And the Leica M3 did precisely fulfil the photographic needs of its time. More than 100,000 examples sold in the first three years speaks for itself.

The patents relating to the following problems are based on the ideas of Ludwig Leitz (son of Ernst Leitz II) and Willi Stein, and date back to the 1930s: the inte-

Chapter 5: the Leica M-System

Willi Stein had already begun with the construction of Leica rangefinder cameras in the 1930s and continued this work in secret throughout the years of World War II. Bottom: a construction diagram of a ‘camera model with a rapid winder’ from 1946

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gration of the viewfinder and the rangefinder measuring spot in a single window and the projection or masking of a set of frames in the viewfinder,dependent on the lens attached; the combination of slow and fast shutter speed in a single mechanism controlled by a central shutter speed dial; increased precision of the travel of the shutter curtains by means of a complex system of cams and springs – and all without considerably enlarging the camera body. Ludwig Leitz had even already thought about coupled exposure metering. As the shutter speed dial was no longer permitted to rotate for this purpose, as it did on the screw mount cameras when advancing the film, and the slow and fast shutter speeds were to be brought together, this spoke for an entirely new shutter construction .

The prototype from 1936, assigned the name Leica IV (shown on page 37), already featured a number of these new ideas, including parallax compensation. Then again, what was finally completed as a preproduction prototype at the end of the 1940s, looked completely different. The last vestiges of the modularity of the screw mount Leicas were gone, in favour of a

Left: a finished chassis assembly with a shutter and rangefinder in front of a complete camera.

Right: a prototype of the M3 from 1948, still with an exposed frame counter dial

pronounced self-containment of form. In contrast to the early prototypes, the M3 is distinguished by various modifications to details; the most obvious are the raised frames around the three windows that characterise the face of the camera – the rangefinder window, the frame line illumination window and the viewfinder window – with which Stein wished to create a ‘premium’ look.

Before the camera came on the market, Ludwig Leitz, who was not only a physicist, but also a sculptor, wished to have a designer on the team for the final touches, and found him on a visit to the Werkkunstschule Hannover, the institute of applied arts. Heinrich Janke, now 84, can perfectly impersonate the shy, almost whispering, but insistent, way that Ludwig Leitz spoke, just as on that day in 1953 as he approached the student, who was occupied with casting a bronze, and began a conversation, at the end of which he asked whether Janke could envisage working on the design of a camera. Janke could, and did.

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Admittedly, the plaster model he made on the basis of existing drafts found little favour with Willi Stein – in Janke’s words, ‘a man of enormous authority, even the porters at the factory gates stood to attention when he appeared.’ What was missing, for instance, were the baroque frames that Stein considered essential. Janke, then in his mid-twenties, was first able to realise his idea of formal clarity in the M2. His distinctive signature was to characterise the aesthetic identity of the product portfolio and, until he retired as head of design in 1989, he never ceased to argue vehemently against ‘styling nonsense’.

The Leica M3 – M for ‘Messsucher’, 3 for frames for three focal lengths – was enormously successful anyway, as the sum of its properties offered precisely what was in demand: convenience, precision and speed of handling. The accuracy of the rangefinder, the brightness of the viewfinder with 0.91x magnification, the quick-release bayonet, much easier film changing than in the screw-mount cameras, the rapid-wind lever (initially double-stroke) and all shutter speeds in geometrical sequence on a single dial – all of these were ingredients in a mature >

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concept conceived entirely with practicality in mind. This concept was made absolutely irresistible by simultaneous robustness and finesse in the smooth interaction of all elements of its precisionengineered construction – and enduringly confirmed the reputation of Leitz as the manufacturer of the best precision cameras for 35 mm film.

The M3 ideally fulfilled the needs of photographers dedicated to realistic social reportage. Even today, photographers frequently emphasise the advantages of what is seen through the viewfinder of the rangefinder camera. The extended field of view around the bright-line frame marking what will be captured lets the photographer anticipate the development of events and press the shutter release at the decisive moment. Unlike the image as ‘seen’ by a lens and communicated on a focusing screen, the almost life-size scene in the viewfinder of an M3 appears as a

Chapter 5: the Leica M-System

Heinrich Janke (84),seen in his workshop with a bronze depicting Ludwig Leitz. Janke’s artistic oeuvre, whether abstract or, as here, objective, has always been suffused with a will to divine and reveal the inherent essence of an object, a movement or an attitude in a concentrated and intense manner. In his function as the company’s head of design since the end of the 1950s, he also implemented what applies to his oeuvre as a sculptor in his design of the complete brand identity of Leitz Wetzlar. Just don’t come with any ‘styling nonsense’ that has no relation to the function of the product. The face he designed for the Leica M2 became the basis for all subsequent M models

window on the world that promotes a direct and personal interaction between photographer and subject that almost lets the presence of the camera be forgotten.

This process of concentration is by no means interrupted by pressing the shutter release, neither acoustically nor otherwise (like the momentary darkening of the viewfinder by the mirror of an SLR, which

would later be used as a differentiating argument against the use of the same). The double-stroke film advance was able to credit itself as an advantage that allowed gentle cocking of the shutter without jerking the camera and disturbing the process of shooting – and gentleness was the reason behind this construction: it was feared that the much faster film advance in comparison to the screw mount cameras could possibly damage the film. As it turned out, this feature was not well-received and motivated the famous Life photographers Alfred Eisenstaedt and David Douglas Duncan to urge Leitz to adapt the proven benefits of the Leicavit rapid winder for the M Leica and also initiated the decision to introduce the single-stroke lever, which appeared in 1958.

The M2. The viewfinder of the M3 offered bright-line frames for 50, 90 and 135 mm, whereby the frame for 50 mm was fixed – a

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The M2 from 1958 was given a newly constructed rangefinder with 0.72x magnification which included the bright-line frame for 35 mm lenses that was lacking in the M3

statement favouring the ‘standard lens’ as defined by the Leica I – and the others appeared only when corresponding lenses were mounted. However, news photographers in particular relied on wide-angle lenses, and the viewfinder magnification of the M3 offered insufficient space for appropriate frames. In response, Leitz developed a rangefinder that was, firstly, a less complex construction and, secondly, had a magnification factor of 0.72 that enabled the projection of a 35 mm brightline frame in the viewfinder. In return for this, the frame for 135 mm was omitted.

The M2 that appeared in this form in 1958 had also lost the ‘window frames’, which, in the words of Heinrich Janke, ‘also saved 20 minutes in the production process’ and became the basis for all later M models.

The M4. The 1950s and 1960s were the golden age of M-Photography, but keeping both the M2 and the M3 in the portfolio

soon became a luxury that Leitz could no longer afford: firstly, the culture of rangefinder photography found itself under pressure from the success of SLR cameras like the Nikon F and, secondly, production capacities were tied up by the development of the Leicaflex. Primarily, Leitz responded to the fall in sales of the M with modifications to make it faster: a rapid loading take-up spool, an angled rewind crank in place of the knurled knob, an ergonomically refined wind-on lever and the return of the 135 mm frame. Although all this made the M4, available from 1967, the most versatile M with the most comfortable handling to date, it could not conceal the fact that the rangefinder principle was going out of fashion, despite breakthroughs in the design and construction of super-fast lenses (see page 60).

Motor drives, easy use of all imaginable focal lengths without aids like the Visoflex and clip-on viewfinders – all paired with a photographic aesthetic that was less concerned with real life compositions captured in a fleeting moment than with

the creation of visual concepts, for which the focusing screen was far more suitable than the abstractive view through the viewfinder – all this supported the growing hegemony of the single lens reflex camera. In this respect, it is perhaps significant that, in 1972, Henri CartierBresson set his camera aside and returned exclusively to painting and drawing, his original metier in the 1920s.

In the coherence of its design, the M4 also seemed to render impossible any further modifications beyond the purely cosmetic. At the time of the Leica M3, the integration of an exposure meter was far from being possible, yet a Leicameter, coupled with the shutter speed dial, could not be the end of this road.

The M5. During the development of the M4, Leitz had investigated how throughthe-lens (TTL) metering could be realised, even though it would have meant >

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modifications to the body design. A patent from 1964 describes the construction of a metering cell that swings into the ray path when a lens is mounted and swings out again when the shutter release is fully depressed. Prototypes engraved with ‘M4’ also indicate that Leitz could well have realised what was later to appear as the M5 in 1971 in the 1960s. Instead, the decision was made to release the M4 as a refined version of the M2 – quite possibly, the company’s fear of its own courage played a role, a reticence that the company would soon be unable to afford in financial terms.

Leitz hoped that the M5 would be a shot in the arm for the faltering rangefinder system and its construction was indeed quite brilliant. It offered the TTL metering already described, shutter speeds in the viewfinder, a large shutter speed dial, which could be conveniently turned with the thumb without taking the camera from the eye, and a hot shoe contact.

Chapter 5: the Leica M-System

THE LEICAVIT The picture at the top shows an M3D with a Leicavit rapid winder and an MP from 1956. The D stands for David Douglas Duncan, the legendary photojournalist born in 1916. Leitz built four of these special versions of the M3 for him around 1955.

They could be considered the predecessors of the dedicated press photographers’ camera, the Leica MP (P for Press).

Although the standard M3 offered no option for attaching the Leicavit, Duncan and his colleague Alfred Eisenstaedt managed to convince Ludwig Leitz that the proven rapid winder for the screw Leicas would be a necessary and wonderful thing for press photographers using M Leicas.

When the M2 then appeared in 1958 – with couplings for the Leicavit – the only a few hundred examples of the MP became obsolete (and very much sought after as collector’s items) – what remains, is a historically outstanding example of how the intervention of prominent photographers can motivate the realisation of a technical feature of the M-System.

But its dimensions and proportions were so completely different from the familiar M cameras – it was 16 mm longer, 11 mm taller – that Leicaphiles found reason enough to denounce it as a failure, even though it united everything its predecessors could do with extremely welcome innovations. In a nutshell, the M5 flopped.

With the consequence that Leitz decided to discontinue the entire M-System.

This never actually happened, but the company had learned from the experience that it does not pay to seriously change the long-since iconic face of the rangefinder camera. Yet, it could also be said that the reason was not (exclusively) its unfamiliar design, but rather, as Erwin Puts suggested in 2009, it was simply that the M principle as such had lost so much ground in the esteem of photographers in the 1970s that the M-System would lose out, no matter how many innovations could be presented to rival the versatility

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1967 saw the appearance of the M4. Identifying features: an angled rewind crank, a two-part, ergonomically refined wind-on lever and four bright-line frames for the coverage of 35, 50, 90 and 135 mm lenses

of contemporary SLR cameras. Anyway, the next two models to appear were in the familiar, classic design.

The M4-2 and the M4-P. The revival of the M4 in Canada (see page 77) was rewarded with a modest but encouraging echo. Leitz celebrated the return to purism in a marketing campaign that emphasised precisely this aspect: the Leica rangefinder camera as an absolutely dependable reportage camera, even in extreme situations – the shutter of the M4-P could, for example, be winterised for use in Arctic climates – reduced to essentials; the superiority of the rangefinder camera corresponded with lenses like the Summilux 75 mm f/1.4 launched together with the M4-P, or the Noctilux 50 mm f/1.0 from 1975.

It goes without saying that, behind the scenes, work proceeded on concepts focused on rationalisation and electronics

(please also refer to page 78). Eventually, in 1984, the market saw the launch of the camera with the longest unbroken production run of all M models.

The M6. The M6 was, above all, made possible by the miniaturisation of electronic components that finally enabled the company to integrate TTL metering into the classic body form. The M6 rang in a renaissance of Leica’s M-System – relatively speaking, after all it took ten years before 100,000 examples of the M6 were sold, not three, as in the case of the M3. Stringent monitoring of costs dictated its production. Some previously highly labourintensive components were simplified, and even the established practice of filing mechanical parts to tightest tolerances during assembly, on which the mythology of ultimate hand-crafted precision since the appearance of the M3 was founded, was relaxed in favour of the of selection of perfectly fitting pairs of components.

Then again, the engineers had specially developed a highly-reflective and ex-

tremely robust pigment for the metering spot on the shutter tape. Thus, with painstaking attention to details, a camera was created that was as rationally constructed as possible, yet actually exceeded the precision of its predecessors.

The M7 and the MP. The M6 was wellreceived – except by conservative Leicaphiles, who saw a dilution of the fine arts of precision engineering in the advent of electronics in the M-System. That the changes in the production process due to the increase of functions was by no means a disadvantage, indeed also that the successively refined shutter of the M6 had attained an unrivalled degree of precision and discreteness, was willingly ignored in this invocation of past glories.

Leitz itself had added fuel to this invocation. The marketing ploys of the 1980s emphasised aspects like solidity, feel and aesthetics and, referring to the golden >

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A precision masterpiece made from 150 individual components: the combined rangefinder/viewfinder. In the foreground, the roller that transfers the movement from the lens cam to the motion of the optical measuring system

The combination of the viewfinder and the superposed-image rangefinder to make a single optical system, a Messsucher, gave the Leica M its name. The functional principle of this Messsucher is based on triangulation: assuming the length of one side and two angles of a triangle are known, the lengths of the other sides can be calculated and, in turn, the distance between the camera and the subject. The known side-length is the distance between the viewfinder window and the rangefinder window, the baseline, and is always 69.25 mm in the case of Leica M cameras. The view through the viewfinder is naturally at a right angle to the baseline. Turning the focusing ring of the lens

M AS IN MESSSUCHER transfers its motion via a cam and roller to a moving optical element in the rangefinder that captures the second measuring ray and projects it into the viewfinder as a partial image. When the two images are perfectly superposed in the rangefinder spot, the two angles have been determined and, consequently, the distance to the subject. In the case of the M3, the secondary ray path was led into the finder at a right angle, with a viewfinder magnification factor of 0.91.

In contrast to the rangefinder of the M3 (right), Willi Keiner’s version for the M2 (centre) was less complex and used for all subsequent M cameras

This construction allowed frames only for lenses with focal lengths of 50 mm and longer.

The requirements for an additional 35 mm frame in the M2 meant a modification of the secondary ray path, as the surface area of the prism that reflected it into the system also had to be increased. The moving parts of the rangefinder must fulfil the most stringent precision criteria – the cam of a 50 mm lens travels a distance of only 4.2 mm over the entire focusing range and must be transferred to the rangefinder with extreme accuracy. In terms of precision, the rangefinder in the Leica is an unparalleled focusing aid up to the focal lengths of moderate telephoto lenses.

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A steady hand and a sharp eye are essential in the assembly (left, installing the frame masks) and adjustment of the rangefinder/viewfinder before and after its installation in the camera

age of reportage photography, constructed an aura around the instrument that lent the M a special charisma. Don’t copy, be aware. This was a strategy that certainly hit the mark in differentiating the M Leica – the finely finished and clearly structured metal surfaces of the camera shone out from the masses of fully-automatic, plastic-bodied offerings of the 1980s.

At the beginning of the new millennium, Leica brought out two models that perfectly embodied the following balancing act: the investigation of the development potentials of the M concept versus the cultivation of the heritage of the mechanical precision camera.

The M7 was constructed with an electromagnetically-controlled, and thus even more precise, shutter and, above all, aperture priority exposure – for some, sheer sacrilege and an unforgivable concession to the mainstream, for others, a welcome innovation that supported the spontaneous art of photography envisaged by Oskar Barnack. That the M was now completely

under the dictatorship of batteries was criticised by some, while others appreciated how the AE function enabled the use of stepless shutter speeds precisely as metered.

In contrast, the MP was a revisited M2, albeit in a cautious but effectively revised form, with a classical, one-piece, fullmetal, wind-on lever, a knurled, pull-out knob for rewinding and a completely mechanical shutter. However, it also had the digitally-controlled metering system of the M7 and the light balance display of the M6. Obviously, the MP also needed a battery for metering but, in all other respects reflected the mastery of the arts of precision engineering for which the name Leica traditionally stood. Its construction was somehow of another age, yet it revived the memory that photography in its most wonderful form is a process that unites the actions of hand, eye and mind.

Strictly speaking, an M7 can recreate this feeling in an even more practical guise – yet, the MP occupies a special niche in that it communicates a particularly clear message: it appeals to the photographer’s free will and rewards it with the

certainty of encountering no function that has not been conceived and realised for the intended purpose, and performs it with the smooth interaction of its components.

If speed was of the essence in the case of the M3, the philosophy of the MP is more of a contemplative process. And why not?

The niche in which the M-System now found itself may have been tiny, but it certainly possessed provocative charisma. In this, it demanded conscious contemplation of what makes a picture good and what makes it better. And, if possible, leads to the conclusion that it lies in the precise setting of shutter speed, aperture, focus and framing. And nothing else.

A captivating thought, were it not inextricably entwined with the question of the recording medium. In 2004, Leica came up with a campaign with the title ‘I am a film dinosaur’. The intention was clear – it was all about praising the virtues of the ‘Leica way’ in the face of a technology about which it was still unknown whether it would possess the potential to >

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Form follows function: the integration of through-the-lens exposure metering demanded a redesign of the familiar form of the M. The M5 appeared in 1971 and was not well received

The metering arm swings out of the ray path before the shutter release is fully depressed.

Bottom: sketch for a patent application

A prototype completed in the 1960s still bore the engraved ‘M4’ designation and featured a particularly ergonomic, large shutter speed dial

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The M Leica always had been a complex camera to produce, which, in view of the rapidly falling sales since the late 1960s, began to become an increasingly serious problem in the the early 1970s. Single lens reflex cameras suited the tastes and needs of the time, and the attempt to combat this trend with the launch of the innovative concept of the M5 was not crowned with success.

The strategy intended to win new customers for rangefinder photography with the Leica CL also failed – in fact, the camera, already produced in a joint venture with Minolta, actually cannibalised sales of the M4 and M5.

At the same time, the Leicaflex was having a hard time in its attempt to defend the pride of the Leica brand against its Japanese rivals.

Around 1973, the Leitz family sold their share in the company to the Wild-Heerbrugg concern, a Swiss manufacturer of surveying instruments, which showed absolute disinterest in the photographic segment and the provision of funding. This led to two decsions.

Firstly, an intensification of the collaboration with Minolta and the development of a more cost-effective range of SLR cameras and, secondly, the discontinuation of the MSystem. The impact on Barnack’s legacy could not have come harder. As the facilities in Wetzlar were proving to be too expensive, 1973 saw the establishment of a satellite factory in Vila Nova de Famalicão, Portugal, where production of the R3 began in 1976 – and, today, a highly-skilled workforce still manufactures components for Leicas. In contrast, and thanks to the activities of Walter Mandler (see page 61), Leitz Canada had been a centre for lens design and construction since the 1950s and stood by no means in the shadow of Wetzlar. In fact, the subsidiary sometimes produced more lenses than the factory back at home. Walter Kluck, initially sales manager, later vice president and, from 1975, CEO at ‘Elcan’, the name he thought up for the Canadian subsidiary, had every reason to worry about the jobs in the factory. He did everything within his power to persuade the management to transfer the tooling for the M4 to Canada and, in view of the lower labour costs, to at least make an attempt to rescue the M-System. Back in Wetzlar, the company was skeptical: Kluck would have to prove that he could sell at least 4,000 cameras a year,

Walter Kluck, president of Leitz Canada from 1975–1980, was responsible for ensuring that the M4 stayed in production and, in turn, the survival of the M-System

THE SAVIOUR OF THE M-SYSTEM

Made in Canada: the Leica M4-P. Where the ritual of taping over the red dot began

and only then might he be given the chance.

But Kluck was a brilliant salesman; Rolf Fricke, one of the founding members of the Leica Historical Society of America, once wrote about how Kluck, born in 1922 and captured by the US forces in World War II, found a job with an organisation engaged in putting an end to black market trafficking and how Günther Leitz (later the first CEO of Leitz Canada) dropped round to

see him to exchange Leica accessories for a refrigerator. Extremely impressed by the young man, he fetched him to Wetzlar and, a short time later, entrusted him with the establishment of a subsidiary in French-occupied Saarland (where the Leica ‘Monté en Sarre’ cameras were assembled).

Anyway, in the 1970s, he set out to personally visit dealers around the world and ask them how many rangefinder cameras they could take off his hands. After he had firm orders for more than 9,000 cameras, one thing was certain – the production of the M4 in Canada could begin to roll. 1976 saw the appearance of the M4-2, the first M with a standard connection for a winder, and also the hot shoe contact from the M5. The M4-P followed in 1980 with new bright-line frames for 28 and 75 mm lenses, just right for the simultaneously released Summilux 75 mm f/1.4. Due to an unfavourable exchange rate, production of the M-System was relocated to Germany in the 1980s. Nevertheless, without Walter Kluck’s engagement, the M, Leica’s most important core brand, would possibly no longer exist.

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The first classical M camera with TTL metering – made possible by the miniaturisation of electronic components, the M6 from 1984 rang in the renaissance of rangefinder photography

As happy as Leitz could have been about the rescue of the M-System by the Canadian branch of the company, demand for the M4-2 and the later M4-P was limited, and it was the R-System that ensured the survival of the photographic division in the late seventies and early eighties. In view of the standards of photographic technology at the time, the fact that the classical M Leica was incapable of TTL metering could not be swept aside by marketing pitches highlighting the camera’s reduction to essentials and its purist philosophy. In this situation, Leitz constructor Peter Loseries considered the concept of an M camera derived from the Leicaflex, a concept proposed by Otto Weller in 1968: how about a platform solution to combine the best of the worlds of the M and R Leicas and cut production costs at the same time? So he took a Leica R4, removed its mirror box and pentaprism and installed a rangefinder. It sounded quite simple at first, but it would mean a totally new construction. If the idea were to have been realised, it would have been a rangefinder camera that would not only solve the TTL metering problem, but would also

M6 ELECTRONIC: THE UNFINISHED SYMPHONY have automatic aperture priority exposure mode, the hinged back of the R – much more practical when changing films – and a choice of spot or centre-weighted metering by means of two different Fresnel lenses.

So, where did the project fall short? Above all with its shutter: a relatively loud, metalbladed shutter in an M camera in place

An ambitious idea by product designer Peter Loseries: the M6 Electronic (1981), an M with TTL metering, derived from an R4

of the famous whisper of a cloth focal plane shutter was unthinkable. As if the experiences with the M5 had not been negative enough with regard to the response to its deviation from the classical form. Yet, even more decisive was that the shutter of the R4 was not sufficiently light-tight – not a relevant problem in an SLR, where the mirror acts as a baffle, but enormously relevant in a rangefinder camera. Progress in microelectronics finally saved the day and pointed to the different route that culminated in the M6. Peter Loseries’ fascinating concept remained as only a footnote in M Leica history.

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Aperture priority exposure and an electromagnetically-controlled shutter – the M7, launched in 2002, embodied the state-of-the-art of electronic functions in the classical rangefinder concept

revolutionise photography. That HannsPeter Cohn, the company CEO at the time, described digital technology in an interview as an intermezzo was on the one hand calculated optimism, on the other hand understandable in view of the – at that time –widely held opinion that film would certainly endure on a higher artistic level.

The fate of the dinosaurs, as everyone knows, is that they became extinct, a fact that was clear not only to Cohn, but also to the product developers.

That Leica was capable of realising high-end digital products had been proved in 1996 by the S1 scanning camera, a niche product with which the company wished to show the flag in the field of professional reproduction – but no one had even thought of general photography. To bring about the digital renewal of the brand core, the company turned to collaboration as the most logical strategy for acquiring appropriate expertise. Now Leica has traditionally always been a company with

A refined and beautiful homage to the classic M: the exclusively mechanical MP from 2003 with a Leicavit rapid winder

distinctively vertical integration – a digital camera, however, would mean sourcing key components elsewhere and risking a similar loss of prestige for the M-System as was only recouped with tremendous effort in the case of the R-System. On the other hand, there are better alternatives than death in virtue. The decisive impulse to push ahead with the development of a digital M came in 2004, with the appearance of an Epson-branded digital rangefinder camera.

The M8 and the M9. At first, the R-D1, based on a Cosina/Voigtländer Bessa R, and sporting a 6 MP sensor and a crop factor of 1.5, seemed to confirm that it would be an act of violence to experiment similarly on the venerable M-System.

However, the competitor also advised an unexpected approach: perhaps rangefinder photography would be much more attractive if the reliance on film were dropped, the availability of which was shrinking faster than even the biggest pessimists had held possible. The development of the Digital-Modul-R (see page 89) had brought valuable experience – the only problem to be solved was how to cope with the anything but trivial issue of the short flange-to-film distance of the M-System.

With conventional sensors, the oblique angles of incoming light, particularly in the case of wide-angle lenses, would mean that slanting rays would not even reach the sensor – no problem with film, but a big one in the case of sensor pixels, which >

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A courageous and extremely successful gamble: derived from the M9-P and presented in 2012. The removal of the colour filter array from the sensor makes the M Monochrom a specialist for black and white photography with sensationally high resolution

could be described as being like an array of buckets. This challenge, above all, – later surmounted by a grid of microlenses – was the reason for Leica’s initial hesitation to build a digital M. Considering this, it is no less than a wonder that the M8 was designed and completed within two years and presented in 2006. But the pressure to succeed was maybe a little to much. The problem of the oblique rays had motivated Leica to rely on a Kodak sensor with an extremely thin glass cover plate that proved to be insufficiently effective as an IR cut filter. In consequence, scorn and annoyance were loud when it turned out that infrared light could have a disastrous effect on the pictures. What’s more, the metal-bladed shutter, identical to the one in the R9, brought noise levels that were unthinkable for an M Leica.

The decision to do without a moiré filter to preserve the full performance of the

A completely successful transition of the classical rangefinder concept into the digital age, both inside and out: The M9-P (2011)

A necessary, but, in some respects, not entirely successful evolutionary step: the M8 from 2006, the first digital M

lenses was logical, but too advanced to be coped with by existing signal processing systems. The – moderate – crop factor of 1.33 didn’t go down well at all, and was seen as a betrayal of the ‘Leica format’. Nevertheless, on the whole, the M8 was a successful evolutionary step. The story of the compact precision camera with manual focusing could continue. And 2009 saw the solution with a sensor in ‘Leica-Format’; the enormous response to the M9 can be seen as clear evidence of the time-

less relevance of the principle it embodies: where else, when not in the M-System, are the following simultaneously united – compactness and superior quality and intuitive, autonomous actions with the greatest possible precision?

The Leica M. All this is also found in the latest step forward in the evolution of the

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The name alone indicates a turning point: the Leica M may still be a rangefinder camera, but it also lets those who prefer other focusing methods to get the best out of its legendary lenses. What’s more, the bright-line frames are electrically illuminated

The CMOS-sensor by the name of Max marks Leicas emancipation from third party developments, including digital hardware

A universal system camera with the ‘Leica format’: everything that was possible with the RSystem is now also possible with the Leica M

M-System. In a camera that unites unbroken continuity and broken traditions with a certain irony. An M camera that records moving pictures, and one that no longer relies completely on its rangefinder. One that plainly throws down a challenge to its rivals in the mirrorless system camera segment. The CMOS sensor developed exclusively for the ‘Type 240’ enables

LiveView with focus control and, in this way, offers an option to work with the camera just like with other contemporary digital camera concepts. Which means two things: it opens the way for the Leica M to applications that are as universal as they can be with manual focus lenses (M and R).

At the same time, it marks the departure from the classical rangefinder system that experienced and survived so many decades of ups and downs in its exclusive niche existence. However much some may

regret that Leica now stands as a rival to others in a segment of mainstream photography, it was, after all, a very small niche. From a strategic point of view, however, it would have been even more regrettable if the achievements of the lens designers that grew from confrontations with the restrictions of body design were not carried sustainably into the future. For all previous M models, the policy has always been the successive addition of new features that were standards elsewhere to the existing rangefinder principle. What applies for the Leica M is that it can exploit the enormous potentials of the best lenses ever built for 35 mm photography for those with no particular affinity for rangefinder cameras, but nevertheless seek a high-end camera that offers endless creative scope and can, in this way, discover the charm of rangefinder photography.

6 Jonathan Adams: Pink Cadillac.

Leicaflex SL2, Summilux-R 50 mm f/1.4

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An intermezzo: the 35 mm single lens reflex era The Leica portfolio included a range of 35Â mm SLRs from 1965 to 2009, at first as the Leicaflex cameras, then as the R-System. In the 1970s, they helped to compensate for the crisis in the M-System and, in the 1980s, the system brought about a whole series of exceptional lenses.

As a state-of-the-art system, the most serious drawback was the lack of autofocus, which meant that it simply could not compete with its rivals.

Chapter 6: the Leica R-System

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The Leica R9 (2002): it shot on film, it shot digital (thanks to a special back), it stood out with unusual design and enormously intuitive handling, but the air was much too thin for a system with only manual focus lenses

Why doesn’t Leica have 35 mm single lens reflex cameras in its range any more?

Good question. Could it be because Leica has a medium format digital SLR in the range and simply can’t please everyone?

The fact is, that the Leica R9, discontinued in 2009, was, and still is, a fantastic camera and that the R-Lenses built from the 1980s on were among the finest lenses ever made for 35 mm SLRs. Nevertheless, the sad fact is that hardly anyone wanted them.

How could that be possible? What was it that moved Leica to slam on the brakes in 2009 after a long downward slide and completely drop the R-System? After all, a couple of years earlier, Leica had brought out a digital back for the R8 and R9 and, shortly afterwards, the M8 had appeared – which left many hoping for a renaissance

of the system in the not too distant future with a digital SLR solution for the then blooming, but intensely competitive, DSLR segment.

What actually came was a big surprise for everyone – in the guise of the S2. A big disappointment for some, at first, but a logical step forward – and very successful.

That trends in the digital 24 × 36 mm and smaller sensor segment clearly favour mirrorless concepts, lets the end of the R-System appear both timely and sensible. Why leave a special niche on the fringes of the market to take on the big brands in a segment where the best that could be offered would be a me-too product? And why invest intensely in the development of an autofocus solution, without which any product would be ranked from the start as an ‘also ran’ in the success stakes? Which is another reason why the R-System found it so hard to hold

its ground, despite its clearly recognised qualities.

The history of the Leica reflex system is shadowed by missed opportunities. After all, back in 1976 and 1978, Leitz had presented fully-functional prototypes of Correfot, the company’s own development and the world’s first autofocus system. This could have begun a revolutionary product line, and Leitz would have stood as the pioneer of yet another milestone in the history of photography – alone.

As already mentioned in this issue, the Swiss concern Wild-Heerbrugg, the majority shareholder of the company at the time, lacked any real interest for the long and legendary heritage of the photographic division at Leitz. (See page 77.) An atrocity, one might say today – with >

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Leicaflex SL2 (1974): a wonderfully bright and clear viewfinder and excellently built – but much too expensive to produce and a dinosaur in comparison with its contemporary rivals with multiple automatic modes

the result that the management sold Correfot off to Minolta, a partner in the SLR sector since the early seventies, and received a number of Minolta lens designs to build up the R-System lens portfolio in exchange. From a strictly financial standpoint, this could well have been the right decision at the time – who knows? While Minolta worked flat out on the development of the AF technology and brought out their first mass-produced autofocus camera in the mid-80s, Leica ‘simply’ carried on with the efforts to emancipate itself from its partner and perfect the manual focus R-System to bring it into line with Leica’s stringent standards.

To all intents and purposes, the R8 would have had to have been an autofocus model to avoid being a technological dinosaur in the SLR segment from its launch in

Looking a little like an M with a mirror housing on top – the Leicaflex from 1965

In 1968, the Leicaflex SL also offered throughthe-lens (TTL) exposure metering. And spot metering, an exclusive feature for many years

1996. In fact, the number of contacts on its ROM strip was no coincidence, but the management decided otherwise. The development of the R8 began in 1990, actually before the appearance of the R7 (1992), and its free-form design, intended to explicitly express its heritage as a true Leica, set it apart from all previous R models. The smooth top deck, hiding the typical pentaprism ‘hump’, was a conscious quote

of the design characteristics of the M Leicas and every feature of its ergonomic design was dedicated to manual control of all photographic parameters. This, once again, clearly reveals Leica’s anticyclic stubbornness. Leica bucked the trend towards computerisation and automation

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The Leica R7 (1992): the last of the R models based on the collaboration with Minolta already had numerous attributes unique to Leica and shone with every function available in manual focus single lens reflexes at the time

The R3 (1976, left) began the successful period in the history of Leitz SLRs. Top: the fully mechanical R6 (1987)

of functions in the 1990s – which is anything but popular today – and the consequent minimisation of the photographer’s autonomy. The R8 may have looked bulky, but it was very well balanced, above all for the use of planned heavy zooms, and offered all the metering modes and auto-

matic functions the Leica R cameras had featured since the R4. For the first time, it also offered multi-segment metering and all the latest refinements of microelectronics. Nevertheless, its emphasis on intuitive handling and the reduction of its user interface reflected the essence of the restrained character of the fully-mechanical R6 and R6.2 cameras (1987–2002), which came about as a response to the

wishes of professional photographers for a camera that would function reliably under all conditions. Leica may have expected that the need for a high-end tool with an emphasis on manual functions would endure forever in the SLR segment.

This sounded plausible as a profiling strategy and, in the best of all worlds, could well have been a success. Ultimately, however, in view of the requirements of the clientele it targeted, its lack of autofocus turned out to be the criterion that killed the system – long before the hype surrounding digital photography, for which the Digital-Modul-R from 2005 was by all means a creative answer.

Apropos tradition: in the perpetuation of the legacy of Oskar Barnack, the fact that Leitz had developed the rangefinder camera to create an instrument with >

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Just three of many excellent lenses for the R-System: the Apo-Macro-Elmarit-R 100 mm f/2.8 (1987), the Summilux-R 35 mm f/1.4 (1984) and the Vario-Elmarit-R 28–90 mm f/2.8–4.5 Asph (2003), the first Leica lens with floating elements

superior reliability, precision and handling, always played a decisive role for the self-conception of the company and their unshakeable belief in the concept – even in the late 1950s, as single lens reflex cameras began to assert themselves on the market. In view of the success enjoyed by the M cameras, should Leitz even consider addressing this new market, despite lack of experience and patents in the reflex segment? This was the big question in Wetzlar. The M embodied an attitude, a style and a culture and, last but not least, the entire production infrastructure was built around it. Nevertheless, market pressures could soon no longer be ignored.

Ultimately, Ludwig Leitz, the director of the development department, approved the change from observing the market to active involvement. The risks, however, were considerable. The world was bound to expect something rather special from the company that had developed such groundbreaking cameras as the M3.

Nothing less than a giant stride. An innovative reinterpretation of the single lens reflex concept.

1965 saw the presentation of the Leicaflex, with very little that was new. It may have had an exceptionally bright viewfinder, a complex mirror return mechanism to reduce vibrations and a fastest shutter speed of 1/2000th of a second – but a CdS cell that offered only external rather than TTL metering made the Leicaflex appear strangely old-fashioned, even on the day of its market launch.

The beginnings of Leica reflex photography were therefore shadowed by the apparent indifference of engineers who were fundamentally believers in a quite different photographic culture. Throughthe-lens (TTL) metering first appeared in the Leicaflex SL in 1968, a camera that uniquely offered spot metering and, together with the SL2 (1974), is still regarded as one of the jewels of precision engineering amongst SLR cameras. But what was the point – as the company’s Japanese rivals offered cameras that were cheaper, offered more functions and a much wider range of lenses?

Eventually, the collaboration with Minolta offered an opportunity to access attractive features like aperture priority exposure at a reasonable cost. Built at the factory of the new subsidiary in Portugal

from 1976, the Leica R3 was based on the Minolta XE-1, but had a shutter designed

by Leitz and constructed by Copal. With the R3, Leica had finally made up the ground lost to its rivals in the SLR segment – which, in turn, added fuel to the management’s view that the time had now come to drop the M-System. (See page 77.)

With the R4 (1980) to the R7 (1992– 1997), the models built on the Minolta chassis successively offered the Leica clientele all the latest state-of-the-art features (except autofocus!) and simultaneously demonstrated the company’s independence by the addition of significant details. An increasing number of components were produced in the company’s own facilities and, in the R segment, too, Leitz/Leica began to make its mark with the traditional virtues of ergonomics and precision. For example, particular emphasis was placed on the optimisation of film flatness, a hot topic in the 1980s, and, especially for Leica, one that brought extra kudos in view of the reputation of the lenses – and, over the years, the R-System produced numerous exceptional lenses.

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The Digital-Modul-R for R8 and R9 cameras (2005): for a short time, the ability to use a film system camera for digital photography was a tempting concept. The significance of the DMR digital back is in its role as a catalyst for Leica’s digital strategy

Then, the digital revolution began. Leica had seen it coming, but nevertheless hoped that the numbers of film connoisseurs would be sufficient to ensure survival as a niche product. All the more so due to the fact that the development of the R8 had exhausted the company’s resources to such an extent that a completely new digital SLR was unthinkable. So why not develop an interchangeable digital back as an alternative to unite the best of both worlds? The idea was realised in the Digital-Modul-R, featuring a 10 megapixel sensor from Kodak and software programmed by Imacon, the medium format specialists, which was met with enormous enthusiasm when it appeared in 2005.

The Leica R8 (1996): the costly development of an independent, cutting-edge, single lens reflex concept – sadly without autofocus

On the other hand, Leica’s timing could have been much better. The megapixel stakes in the DSLR segment had developed so much momentum that the specifications of the DMR proved to be outdated as soon as it appeared. Too few persuasive arguments for the propagation of scenarios in which photographers

would switch back and forth between film and digital workflows were evident. At the same time, there was still the problem that purely manual focusing would have to be made a very attractive proposition to get photographers to switch to a ‘digitalised’ R-System.

That is why the Digital-Modul-R remained only a footnote, the final gasp of the company’s R-System – albeit a footnote that would pave the way in an entirely different context and lead to the digitalisation of the Leica rangefinder camera and serve as the initial impulse for Leica’s biggest technological tour de force – the development of a completely new digital system, the Leica S2.

7

Saga Sig, Leica S, Summarit-S 70 mm f/2.5 Asph.

Model: Karolina Waz, Elite London

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Let’s take the risk, the S-System will be built …

The S-System is doubtless Leica’s biggest technological tour de force ever.

A digital system for the most stringent demands of professional photography – developed from scratch. A system that likewise addresses two user-groups, medium format studio photographers and 24 × 36 mm SLR users who depend on mobility and rapid responsiveness. That it provides both groups with precisely what they need is revolutionary.

Chapter 7: the Leica S-System

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Leica S, actual size. The minimised naming convention of 2012 was accompanied by further refinements of its electronics and autofocus performance and its already incomparably intuitive user interface in comparison to the S2 launched in 2008

Déjà vu – a compact and versatile system with an entirely new recording format, an astonishing product and, most of all, something no one at the time would have expected from Leica.

When the S2 was premiered at the Photokina in 2008, it was only four years since Leica had been making headlines of another kind – the company was then on the brink of collapse due to a chronic shortage of capital. And now came a product with innovative potentials that certainly showed parallels to the Barnack camera that began a new era in photography in 1925. Only that the interest shown

by the world of photography this time around was by far greater than the initial reactions to the Leica I. This lay in the assertive message with which the colossal investments in the development of this system was linked.

Just what has defined the part of brand history that proved to be crowned with enduring success? In that it established a new photographic culture with the screw mount and the M Leica instead of copying existing products in an existing market. In that it not only delighted lovers of photography with instruments of exquisite quality, but also offered professional photographers an ideal tool matched precisely to their respective needs. For instance, the charisma of the M-System that endures to

the present day is not least due to the fact that, for many years, it was the preferred tool of the classical photojournalists.

The creation of a new standard in the field of professional photography as it defines itself today – that was the confidently formulated objective that Leica intended to achieve with the S-System.

The preliminaries to this involved a merciless analysis of the market situation and the company’s own positioning. An analysis that also revealed that it would not be a good idea to place trust in the R-System as a starting point. There >

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were already more than enough digital single lens reflex cameras with autofocus in Leica’s traditional domain of 24 × 36 mm photography (see also page 82).

If Leica was aspiring to be recognised again as a market-player with the abilities to offer a convincing product to those who earn their livelihood with photography, it meant breaking entirely new ground.

Naturally, something like this could not mean the betrayal of a legendary legacy – quite the opposite: the ambitious strategy could only bear fruit if Leica were successful in transferring the charisma of the brand in all its facets as a promise of quality and functionality in a package attractive to professional circles.

Intensive discussions with photographers revealed, on the one hand, that for what their clients demand today – for

Chapter 7: the Leica S-System

The technical drawing illustrates the ray path through the S-Lens, conceived from the beginning for the integration of a central shutter, to the mirror, which diverts a portion of the light to the autofocus sensor, and, finally to the pentaprism of the camera that was realised in a battle for the reduction of every possible millimetre. The central shutter (bottom) and its spring mechanism with the function of an energy accumulator is a jewel of precision engineering

instance product or fashion shoots in a wide range of contexts, in the studio or on location, and with the possibility of refining the details of the finished photos as desired – 24 × 36 mm photography had reached its natural limits. What’s more, these discussions revealed that traditional medium format studio equipment was often enough too unwieldy and inflexible.

The latter also had to bear the burden of a historic legacy, namely that its lenses were designed for use with roll film.

This meant, for example, having to accept a certain ‘built-in unsharpness’ that compensated for the insufficient flatness of larger film formats – despite the breathtaking detail in medium format exposures, a property that had become more and more intolerable in connection with today’s costly digital commissions.

All in all, this revealed a tempting opportu-

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Since 2012, the fast lenses of the S-System with focal lengths from 24 to 120 mm have also been available in an alternative version with a central shutter

nity for Leica to plant a new crop on an old field by devising a system that would combine the best of both worlds – of the 24 × 36 mm format and the medium format.

A system that would be dedicated to digital in all its components from the very beginning of its development. The performance of its lenses could be attuned from the start to the zero-tolerance characteristics of a sensor and its cover glasses.

That Leica had no resources tied up in other professionally oriented systems was an advantage that allowed the creativity of the designers to run free.

The 30 by 45 mm sensor – slightly smaller than typical medium formats and which even Oskar Barnack considered the ‘most wonderful aspect ratio’ of 2:3, would support the envisaged construction of a camera compact enough for use in the field

and, what larger formats offered in the way of theoretical advantages in resolution would be more than made up for by the state-of-the-art design of the high-performance S-lenses.

It sounds almost like Oskar Barnack’s concept of ‘big pictures from small negatives’. Indeed, Leica actually was able to rely on any number of traditional strengths in the realisation of the S-System concept.

Naturally, in lens design, but also in the art of reductionism – the construction of extremely compact systems with a highlyintuitive and inviting interface design that guarantees the sheer pleasure of photography without further explanation, right from the start.

What, until now, had never been one of Leica’s core competencies, but, in the past, had been realised with varying success in strategic partnerships, were the areas of system electronics and digital image processing. The ambitious objective to similarly integrate these areas in

the creation of a complete and complex digital system made exclusively with proprietary developments and in line with self-defined quality standards, brought the establishment of entirely new departments in the company – an investment that went far beyond the specific needs of the S-System. The technologies to be developed for this lighthouse project were to break new ground for a fundamental renewal of the entire product portfolio and had to be designed to be scalable to find later use in the fulfillment of the demands of future product families – a resource-conserving platform strategy, ideally adapted to the needs of a medium scale enterprise.

Nevertheless, the design specs listed for the constructors of the Leica S were extensive. For example, one task was the development of an autofocus system >

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from scratch. What’s more, all S-Lenses should also be made available in versions with an integrated central shutter – essential for establishing the S-system in the classical domain of medium format photography, but a challenging task, as well.

The ability to shoot not only with the central shutter of the lenses, but also with the focal plane shutter in the camera body,

Chapter 7: the Leica S-System

‘As little as possible and as much as it needs’ – this was the guiding principle for the design of the interface and the entire camera. Manfred Meinzer, its designer, had previously been involved in the development of a potential R10, and the target was practically the same: the S2 should look like a 24 × 36 mm camera. The iterative process of reduction took almost a year. The outcome was not only an extremely intuitive and logical handling and control concept, but also a camera that was even lighter and more compact than many a counterpart in the 35 mm segment

is a unique feature of the S-System. The most important advantage of a central shutter is that it allows flash photography at much shorter shutter speeds than the sync speed of a focal plane shutter and allows much finer control for the dosing of light.

Despite the fact that Leica’s experience with central shutters was limited to the Compur-Leica, made in small numbers 80

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years ago, to enable low shutter speeds of down to one second, Leica decided to develop and construct the shutter for the S-Lenses entirely in-house.

That it eventually took four years until the CS-lenses for the S-System were ready for delivery clearly illustrates the complexity of the task, for the realisation of which the market offered nothing in the way of suitable components. The central shutter design was to have a large internal diameter to enable the realisation of fast lenses but, at the same time, had to be extremely compact. It was also to have an exceptionally short top shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second.

One of the biggest headaches was the installation of a power source in the incredibly tight space available. At least until the groundbreaking idea of replacing bulky condensers with a mechanism driven by springs came about. An intricate construction transfers the potential energy of the springs to the shutter blades – an electric motor is needed only for cocking and electronics only for shutter speed control. The tensioned-spring principle contributes significantly to the extremely compact dimensions of the shutter. In conjunction with high-tech materials guaranteeing frictionless interaction of all moving parts, this led to a masterpiece of the arts of precision engineering in the true Leica tradition – constructed for at least 100,000 cycles.

The autofocus system of the S bears the name Correfot II. This name symbolises the accomplishment of a concept that was born in the 1960s when Leitz developed a patentable idea for measuring distances by means of optically splitting incoming light to fall on two strip sensors and superimposing – correlating – the signals from them. That strip sensors didn’t exist at that time, and that the idea remained only an, admittedly, groundbreaking brainwave, was one thing. That the numerous Leitz patents for AF-sensor

technologies subsequently developed never came to fruition, due to a lack of suitably compact drive components and the lack of a visionary and courageous attitude on the part of the management, was the other. So the world would have to wait until the S2 appeared to see Leica with its own autofocus concept. One that is in a class of its own. Not necessarily in terms of fast responsiveness for sport photography, but certainly in terms of precision.

What the cross-sensor detects is automatically temperature-corrected and communicated to the lens, which then activates its AF motor to apply the appropriate focusing travel. The drive is a compact bell-rotor motor especially made in Switzerland that is able to precisely shift the system to any of 2,400 detection positions to set the precise focusing distance. On the other hand, the system for distance determination employs a method that appeared on the radar of sensoring research only a couple of years ago and is based on the magneto-resistive effect – in short, the change in electrical resistance when a magnetic field is applied. Despite so much in the way of automated hightech, it must also be mentioned that Leica also invested particular care in ensuring that the S-Lenses can be focused as smoothly by hand as R-System lenses.

And, finally, the brain of the S-System – a dual-core processor by the name of Maestro. It is responsible for the entire image processing chain – from sensor control to writing and storing files. That it can also create extremely high quality JPEGs from data directly from the 37.5 megapixel sensor is a unique feature in the medium format segment, and, in the design of this computing genius, this feature, too, called for application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). In contrast to the digital signal processors like those in the M8 and M9, which have to be ‘taught’ image specific function by software, the functions here are cast directly in the silicon, which makes ASICs extremely fast and simultaneously reduces programming effort. The result of this is a highly efficient module

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for the versatile and lightning-fast realisation of immensely complex and computationally intensive image creation processes, e. g., to process one image while simultaneously writing the data of the previous one to the memory card.

For Leica, the Maestro processor, developed in collaboration with Fujitsu, the semiconductor specialists, possesses the character of a strategic investment in the future. The realisation of the S-System, which creatively broke down the borders between 24 × 36 mm and medium format and demonstrated that Leica was no longer a straggler in the age of digital photography, was only the beginning. It was soon followed by the Leica M. However, the almost infinitely scalable Maestro processor stands for a modular approach that, in principle, allows the development and construction of complete, state-of-the-art, photographic systems that go far beyond Leica’s traditional excellence in the fields of optics and precision engineering – with proprietary resources. In this, it symbolises a farewell to the meanwhile dominant luxury brand image of the company and the beginning of a renewed identity as a premium-technology brand in the photographic segment.

The S-System is Leica’s first system solution to specifically target the needs of professional photography. It is a system dedicated exclusively to optimum and efficient digital workflows. The unique sensuality, always an intrinsic element of the brand’s other products, is felt only to a homeopathic degree in the Leica S. Instead, it marks the transition to a culture of close, if not, in a sense, intimate and permanent, exchange with a discerning community of users whose impulses motivate a constant and dynamic stream of refinements and services that not only promotes the establishment of the system in what is also for Leica a new segment, but is also an inspiration to the creative and innovative strengths of the brand.

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A recordbreaking aura

Imprint

LEICA FOTOGRAFIE INTERNATIONAL Special Edition 100 years of Leica, 2014 LFI PHOTOGRAPHIE GMBH Springeltwiete 4, 20095 Hamburg, Germany ISSN: 0937-3977 www.lfi-online.de, mail@lfi-online.de EDITORS IN CHIEF: Inas Fayed, Frank P. Lohstöter ART DIRECTION: Brigitte Schaller

Barnack’s note books do not reveal for whom the camera with the number 116 was intended, perhaps for educational purposes, perhaps not. The identity of its current owner is also publicly unknown. What we do know is that the anonymous bidder was prepared to pay the record sum of 2.16 million euros for it at a WestLicht auction in 2012. No other camera previously brought such a high price as this rare example of the first evaluation series, constructed between March and July of 1923. This is also an example of the stuff from which the Leica legend was made.

Camera No. 116 from the first 0-series of 1923.

The Galileo finder is a later addition

CONCEPT & COPY: Olaf Stefanus FINAL EDITING: Oliver Holzweißig , Bernd Luxa LAYOUT: Thorsten Kirchhoff TRANSLATION: Wieners + Wieners The magazine, and all individual articles and illustrations it contains, are protected by copyright and may not be utilised for other purposes without the permission of the publisher.

Leica is a registered trademark – 25128 SOURCES

Benser, Walther: Mein Leben mit der Leica. Lindemanns, Stuttgart 1990 | Berek, Max: Plauderei über die Entstehung der Leica. In: Kühn-Leitz, Knut (ed.) 2009, pp 60–68 (1st edition 1948) | Kemp, Wolfgang: Foto-Essays. Schirmer/Mosel, Munich 2006 | Kisselbach, Hans-Günter: Barnacks erste Leica. Lindemanns, Stuttgart 2008 | Kühn-Leitz, Knut (ed.): Max Berek. Schöpfer der ersten Leica-Objektive, Pionier der Mikroskopie. Lindemanns, Stuttgart 2009| Netopil, Lars: Prototyp Leica.

Exponate aus dem Werksmuseum und andere wichtige Einzelstücke. Leica Historica, Wetzlar 2010 | Osterloh, Günter: 50 Jahre Leica. M. Heel Verlag, Königswinter 2004 | Osterloh, Günter: Der Schöpfer der ersten Leica-Objektive. In: Kühn-Leitz, Knut (ed.)

2009, pp 69–109 | Puts, Erwin: Leica Compendium. Imx, Houten 2009 | Puts, Erwin: Leica Chronicle. Imx, Houten 2012 | Richter, Ulf: Die Entwicklung der 5-cm-Objektive zur Leica. In: 25 Jahre Leica Historica. Wetzlar 2000 | Richter, Ulf: Oskar Barnack – von der Idee zur Leica. Lindemanns, Stuttgart 2009 | Vollrath, Wolfgang: Die Entwicklung von Leica-Objektiven damals und heute. In: Kühn-Leitz, Knut (pub.) 2009, pp 120–147

PHOTO CREDITS

Pp 82–83: Jonathan Adams | pp 64–65: © Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson | pp 10–11, 14–15, 17 b. r. and 18, 19: Bernd Ebsen/Leica | pp 8, 9, 12, 13, 16, 17 except b. r., 62, 64 t.: Daniel Flaschar/Leica | All frontal views of Leica cameras and lenses: Alexander Göhr/Leica | pp 46–47: Sung Soo Lee | pp 24, 25, 27, 29, 33, 36 t. r., 37 t. r., 50, 51, 60 b., 61 t., 68, 74 b., 76 b. r., 77 t., 78 b.: Leitz Archives | pp 4–5: Constantine Manos | p 31 b.: Lars Netopil | pp 20–21: Lothar Rübelt, with the kind permission of WestLicht | pp 90–91: Saga Sig | pp 26 b., 31 t., 35 t., 36 t. l., b., 37 t. l., b., 58 b., 60 t., 69 r., 72, 76 b., c. r.: Eddie Siu, with the kind permission of Lars Netopil Classic Cameras | pp 52, 53 t., 55 t., b. r., 56, 58 t., 59, 69 l., 75: Liesel Springmann/ Leitz | p 70: Olaf Stefanus | pp 38–45: The estate of Hedda Ulzenheimer, with kind permission of WestLicht | p 98: WestLicht

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