By Porter Lang
Start with the film. Cinema film runs down through a movie camera, and each frame is small. Turn it on its side, so that it travels horizontally, and each frame can be twice as wide. That is the whole trick behind the camera this piece is about, and everything else follows from it.
The man and the firm
Leica’s own history page says that in 1849 Carl Kellner founded the Optical Institute in Wetzlar, which Ernst Leitz joined in 1864. From 1865 Leitz ran it in his own name, and the firm rose to the front of the world microscope industry. Oskar Barnack came to Leitz in 1911, first as a precision mechanic and soon as head of development for cinema and measuring technology.
He was also an amateur photographer. Leica’s page says his asthma meant he could not carry the large, heavy cameras of the time, and Wikipedia says the same, adding that he proposed cutting the size and weight of cameras so he could take pictures on his travels. So he built a smaller one.
What he built
Leica says that in 1913 and 1914 Barnack developed a smaller, lighter camera of equally high image quality, the Ur-Leica, which he named “Liliput”. It was, the firm says, the first camera to use 35 mm cinema film in landscape format. Wikipedia gives the geometry. Barnack adapted 35 mm cine film for stills, moved it horizontally, and so extended the frame to 24 x 36 mm with a 2:3 ratio, instead of the 18 x 24 mm of cameras that ran the film vertically. A larger negative could be enlarged to a sharper print, but only if the lens was good enough to cover it.
Wikipedia says existing Leitz and competing Zeiss lenses were either too large or did not cover the new frame, and that the first suitable lens was a 50 mm f/3.5 design based on the Cooke triplet, which later evolved into the Elmar series. We repeat that as the article states it. Our reading, as a practical point: the film format and the lens were one problem, not two, and the frame size only mattered because someone made a lens to fill it.
The first picture, and a date that will not settle
DPReview, a photography news site, describes the first photograph as a crowd of shoppers in front of the Binding at the Eisenmarkt in Wetzlar, and says a plaque marks the spot. It gives 1913 for the picture, as the plaque does, while the page’s own summary gives 1914. Leica’s page says “1913/14” for the development, and Wikipedia’s picture caption says 1914. We show all of them and choose none.
The Leica Oskar Barnack Award site, run in his name, says that from 1914 he took numerous photographs with the prototype. It says his series on a flood in Wetzlar in 1920 is considered the first reportage series shot with a 35 mm still film camera. Wikipedia says he made the first news image with a 35 mm camera, showing a flood of the Lahn at Wetzlar, and gives no year. These accounts are close but not identical, and the award page is run by the firm.
From prototype to product
The prototype was not the product. Leica describes a “0 series”, a small run of prototypes made to test the idea under real conditions. Cameras went to photographers, employees and experts. Only a few survive, and the shutter, viewfinder and lens differ from the series cameras. Wikipedia puts a number on it: in 1923 Barnack convinced his employer, Ernst Leitz II, to have 31 pre-production cameras made. Leica’s page gives no count. Wikipedia adds that the prototypes had a mixed reception.
The decision to go on was a risk. Leica says nobody could foresee how a full-frame 35 mm camera would sell, production costs were high and many managers and engineers were sceptical in 1924. It attributes to Ernst Leitz II the words “I hereby decide: we will take the risk.” That is the firm’s telling of it, and we have no second source for the wording.
The launch
According to Leica, the first series Leica I went into production at the end of 1924 and was shown at the Spring Trade Fair in Leipzig in 1925. Wikipedia agrees on the fair and says that in 1924 the camera was named Leica, from Leitz Camera. Leica says that between 1925 and 1930 around 57,000 units were made in various designs, and that Leica I number 126 is the first camera in the serial number list. It was originally supplied to a customer in Brazil and is now back in the company’s collection.
Leica credits the camera with letting Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa develop a new, spontaneous way of seeing and says it made 35 mm the global standard. Those are the firm’s claims about its own history, and we pass them on as such.
Dates in order
- 1849: Kellner’s institute in Wetzlar, according to Leica.
- 1911: Barnack joins Leitz, according to Leica.
- 1913 or 1914: the Ur-Leica and its first picture, according to Leica, DPReview and Wikipedia.
- 1920: the Wetzlar flood series, according to the Barnack Award site.
- 1923: pre-production cameras, according to Wikipedia and Leica.
- 1924: the decision, and the name Leica, according to Leica and Wikipedia.
- 1925: Leipzig fair, according to Leica and Wikipedia.
What kind of sources these are
Leica’s history page is the manufacturer’s own account, and the Barnack Award page belongs to the same company. DPReview is a photography news site. Wikipedia is open to anyone to edit. We read no museum or independent archive, so the firm’s version of events has little to check it against.
What we left out
We left out the auction results the firm quotes, all prices, and any buying advice on old cameras, which the sources do not give.
Quick answers
What was the Ur-Leica? Leica’s history page calls it the camera Oskar Barnack developed in 1913 and 1914, the first to use 35 mm cinema film in landscape format.
What size is a Leica 35 mm frame? According to Wikipedia, Barnack’s design moved the film horizontally, giving a 24 x 36 mm frame with a 2:3 ratio.
When was the Leica I launched? Leica says the Leica I entered series production at the end of 1924 and was presented at the Spring Trade Fair in Leipzig in 1925.
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