#Leica m7 serial numbers year serial number
#Leica m7 serial numbers year series

He and his wife spent the war hiding in forests to escape the Nazis, arrived at the DP camp with just the clothes on their backs, and arrived at Ellis Island virtually penniless. His daughter believes he must have bartered for it in a DP (displaced person) camp at the end of the war, and simply kept it as a memento. Her father died more than 20 years ago, in all likelihood totally unaware of the rarity of what he had. This one is going into a safety deposit box tomorrow. I know i never saw a Hektor lens version. This is the camera that started 35mm photography. I can't wait to load some film into it and take some photographs! The rangefinder seems accurate and superimposes nicely.

Could use a bit of grease on the lens, and a careful dust-cleaning from the exterior. No dirt inside, and no flaking antireflection paint. Shutter speeds sound right on (it was stored uncocked), and when I shone a light through the lens with the diaphragm open, the focal plane shutter looked pristine. Some very minor wipe marks on the lens, A small ding on the lens mount. The lens seems clear, no fungus (no coating to attract and culture it!) and no delamination of the lens cement. Although about as worn as most used Leicas I have seen, it is otherwise in fabulous shape. Today, I snapped these images of the Leica. Then she looked further in the box, and after another exchange of email'd pages, I determined she also has the Leitz accessory vertical rangefinder. (A Leica expert subsequently confirmed that, despite the serial number, this is in fact one of those 1330 cameras). (It is said that the name was chosen by Professor Max Berek who developed the lens because his dog's name was 'Hektor.') Due to this small number, these cameras are not exactly cheap today.'

#Leica m7 serial numbers year series

The exception is a small series of 1330 cameras made in 1930/31 that were equipped with the faster 2.5/5 cm 'Hektor' lens. 'I mentioned that I (A) cameras mostly had a 3.5/5 cm lens. While the 'normal' Elmar had a nearest focusing distance of 3 ft (1 m), some export cameras were equipped with a lens that could focus down to 1.5 ft (0.5 m).

#Leica m7 serial numbers year serial number

A depth-of-field scale on this lens was introduced with serial number 46,000. 'Beginning with serial number 1300 (1926), a four-element lens was used that was to become a Leica standard lens: The Elmar 3.5/50 mm. Due to these low production numbers, both types are extremely expensive today and probably out of most collectors' reach. (With the introduction of interchangeable lenses, initially made to fit one particular body, later freely interchangeable, the camera became the I (C).) The first 144 I (A) had a five-element lens called 'Anastigmat.' This lens was called 'Elmax' in the next 713 cameras.

'The I (A) has a non-interchangeable lens, mostly a 3.5/50 mm. She found one of the 60,000 Leica I(A) cameras. I quickly emailed her a Leitz camera history page for identification - and low and behold, she picked out the earliest pre-Leica brand production Leitz models, the I(A). And it was very short - Hektors I knew were were LONG. 'Hektor'? - that was the name given to a pair of old screw-mount pre-war telephoto lenses - but she said this one didn't unscrew. Leitz' 'Wetzlar' and with a 'Hektor' lens - but no 'Leica' marking. A friend was going through an old box of stuff from her late father, who survived the Holocaust, and down at the bottom she found 'an old black camera.' And she called me.