Leica Celebrates 100 Years

I’ve been a Leica fanboy for over a decade now. That means I spend way too much money for a camera body and lens that has far less features than the ones produced by Nikon or Sony. My daily driver is the M10, which sold for about $7,000 new. It was replaced by the M11 which is closer to $9,000. Considering the fact that you can buy a more fully featured, used Nikon D850 for about $1,500 it can be hard to understand why anyone would buy a Leica.

The Leica community is accustomed to not being understood. Most people think of the user base as dentists with money to burn who want to boast of owning a camera that few working professional photographers can afford. That demographic exists, but there is another group of users that is worth noting. And it is these users, that the company celebrated on the weekend of May 05, 2025. It was the 100th year since the production of the Leica 1 and its amazing to see how little progress Leica has made in the M system in that time period. And that is a good thing.

The weekend featured speakers that are well known in the world of Leica -people who set the direction of the company and people who actually design the lenses and bodies. There were rare cameras on display and attendees to the free event could borrow the camera or lens of their choice for a 2 hour long photo walk hosted by photographer Bill Brown. I love events like these because I talk about cameras all day long. Truth be told, I’d rather talk about cameras than actually go out there and shoot. So I was there mostly to talk to other photographers and maybe try out a lens or two. They were giving out Leica-branded chocolates, so I stuck around long enough to justify grabbing a second helping.

One of my favorite parts of the event was when I did a brief interview segement where I talked about why I love the brand. Using a line I stole from George R.R. Martin, I said, “I love Leica because my camera does everything I need it to do and it doesn’t do anything else.” We are in an age of technology where no one seems to have mastered their devices. Remember the old days when no one could figure out how to program a VCR to record a tv show? We haven’t made much progress in technological mastery. I own a Tesla and I’m good at driving from point A to point B in it, but I have no idea what all the apps are for that are avaialbe in one of the menus. Sometimes I’ll ask to see someone’s camera and maybe something is set differently that I would like. When I ask them to change that setting, its rare that they know how to do it.

It takes about 5 minutes to master the operation of Leica rangefinder. If the prices were lower, these cameras would be perfect for teaching photography, They aren’t ideal for taking pictures because there is a limitation built into the system that prevents the camera from focusing closer than about an arm’s lenght away. The lack of autofocus makes the camera a poor choice if you capture a moving child or any sort of action. But even with those limitations, some of my best photographs have been taken on a Leica M camera and I dream of the day when I use only an M series body for all my work. At this point, I don’t want to turn down paid work that demands I use my full featured Nikon Z9.

One of the speakers at the event was Ralph Gibson who said one of the 6 great decisions of his life occured mor than 50 years ago when he first used a Leica M camera and decided he would never use any other camera. I’m looking forward to the day when I have the courage to make that same decision.