Leica I SN°4321 modified and Summar 5cm F2 - 1927 -

Brand : Leica
Country : Germany
Period : 1927
Type : 35mm Film Camera
Condition : Really good and fully functionnal
Size :
Serial Number : 4321
Status : Sold


The Leica I, arguably the most important camera in photography's history.

From the invention of photography - in the first half of the 19th century - until 1925,  photography was a bulky activity. 
Cameras available at the time were big, heavy, fragiles and the photographs were mostly taken on fragile glass plates.

But in the early 1920's, in Wetzlar Germany, a visionary engineer named Oskar Barnack had the brilliant idea to use the 35mm film format available for cinema as the light sensitive support for photography, claiming that technology was now advanced enough to enlarge the small picture later in post production and provide the final physical image.

He build a camera around this idea and the result was the first 35mm (What is now known as full frame) commercially available camera. A lightweight, compact and extremely versatile tool that will launch the brand Leica and the whole photojournalism movement that followed.

The camera you are seeing here is an early Leica I, build in 1927, only 2 years after the debut of production.

This exemple as 2 particularities, not only, the serial number is just 4 digits which is early and rare but it's also the funny 4321 sequence.

As often done at the time, this camera was born as a Leica I mod A but later modified by Leica, probably in 1930, in order to give it the Leica II specifications (integrated rangefinder, ...).
It is here presented with a Summar 5cm F2 built in 1938 and various accessories.