The Leitz name continued to appear on Leica cameras up until 1986, when it was decided to concentrate all the company’s photographic activities under the Leica brand. The camera was finally launched in 1925 at the Leipzig Spring Fair and called the Leica, the name derived from ’Leitz camera’. “This small camera is an opportunity to create work for our employees – if it lives up to the promise I see in it – through the years of the Depression and to get them through the difficult times ahead.” Ernst Leitz II assumed control of the company and began to take more of an interest in Barnack’s camera, primarily because he believed diversification was the key to survival in Germany’s challenging economic climate, and he was concerned about the future of his workforce. The early work on the camera was overseen by Ernst Leitz Sr, but he died in 1920 when the project still only consisted of prototypes.
The basic design was refined a number of times prior to being put into production in 1924, but the big innovation was to use a film created from two 18x24mm cine frames to give an image area of 24x36mm, and so reduce the amount of enlargement required to make high-quality prints.Īn advertisement from 1925 for the new Kleinfilmcamera (Image credit: Leica) However, Leitz’s secret weapon was a compact and lightweight Kleinfilmkamera – a small format camera – which had been developed just prior to the First World War by one of the company’s talented optical engineers, Oskar Barnack. It’s perhaps not so surprising that most of Leitz’s senior managers were against the idea, forcing him not to make a risky-looking ‘executive decision’. What’s more, the plan was for a completely new type of camera never seen before.
The German economy was reeling from the effects of hyperinflation and extreme unemployment, and Leitz would be a newcomer in a market dominated by Zeiss and Kodak. (Image credit: Leica)Īnd it was quite a risk. Ernst Leitz II joined the family company in 1906 and famously, in 1924, gave the green light for the production of an all-new 35mm camera designed by Oskar Barnack to commence, introducing the world to Leica.
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