This morning Leica impressed a packed audience at Photokina with a host of new announcements. First it unveiled the Leica M-A, the brand’s new analogue model – an entirely mechanical 35mm rangefinder camera.
With the £3100 M-A, Leica has done away with all things digital, including a monitor (the camera has a “large, bright viewfinder with automatic parallax compensation”), exposure metering and batteries, meaning photographers can concentrate purely on the photographs they’re taking, says the company. The Leica M-A is available in two finishes – silver chrome and black chrome – and will be on sale from October.
[bjp_ad_slot]Leica also announced the Leica M Edition 60, a commemorative version of the Leica M-P digital camera (Type 240), with a Leica Summilux-M 35 mm f/1.4 ASPH lens.
Concentrating on the “bare functions required for digital photography”, the limited-edition camera celebrates photography’s fundamentals: shutter speed, aperture, focusing and ISO sensitivity. With this in mind, Leica has replaced the camera’s display screen with an ISO selector dial. Exposures are saved as raw data in DNG format. The Leica M Edition 60 is available from Leica stores from October.
Underlining its commitment to medium format photography, Leica has released the new Leica S (Type 007), featuring a new Leica CMOS sensor and Leica Maestro II image processor. With a burst rate of up to 3.5fps, and 4K video recording, the Leica S seeks to “set new standards for professional medium-format action photography”, says the company. The new S-System also features an integrated GPS module, which records geographical positioning data. It is is due to launch next year for an expected price of under £19,000.
This article was amended on Wednesday 17 September.
Stay up to date with stories such as this, delivered to your inbox every Friday.