Leica Five - Out Of The Closet

It is only a matter of time before it happens. And I suspect it will happen here in the store - or next door at the Shoot Workshop.


As soon as the new Leica M camera - the Type 240 - comes onto the market someone is going to buy it. Possibly with a lens - indeed I would welcome them using a lens with it - and it is to be hoped that they will take a new lens with them. I know Saul and the rest of the team will be working diligently to encourage them to take a lens as well as the body. But a body will get sold.

And then the purchaser will look over the Leica instruction book and literature and discover that the little electronic slot under the hot shoe is actually a port and that an electronic viewfinder can be plugged into it. This effectively gives a mirrorless single lens camera that looks through the optics like a DSLR. And one of these viewfinders will be sold.

And then all hell will break loose as the owner of the world's most elegant Leica starts to find all the old M-mount and screw-mount lenses that he can and tries them onto the front of the camera. There will be a festival, if you can have one of those in optical charnel house, of sad old Leica-mount things that have mouldered for decades in the bottom of rotting camera bags. Every aluminium nightmare that Dad picked up when he was stationed in Aden will be dug up and clapped on. It will be a race to see which horrible telephoto is next. For all we know new forms of fungus will be discovered growing on the surfaces of these lenses that will be a boon to science

Oh, there will be a few high points because there are still a few old Tele-Elmarits and Telyts out there and they will work - but there will be a lot of ugly experimenting as well. I dread the sound of it when someone discovers that the $ 8600 camera does not make a perfect image with the Meyer lens or the collapsible 50mm uncoated Elmar with the mushrooms growing out of it...And when the mushrooms start migrating into the M-series ( 240)...Ohh.

Leica are to be applauded for making their equipment so compatible with their equipment for so long, but I am praying that the worst of the closet discoveries will be put BACK into the closet.