The Leica CL is widely celebrated as one of Leitz’s best rangefinder designs.
Produced with the help of Minolta – which sold its own version of the camera as the Minolta CL – the camera was released in 1973 as a smaller cousin to the Leitz’s prestigious range of M-mount cameras.
The CL is an M-mount rangefinder, just much smaller than the celebrated likes of the M3 and M6 but much smaller in size. It was often paired with the 40mm f/2 Summicron-C lens, for which framelines were always present in the viewfinder. It also had framing for 50mm and 90mm lenses
Much favoured by street shooters, the CL remains a more affordable M-mount option some 50 years after it was first released.
Leitz ended up making more than 65,000 CLs and Minolta another 20,000 of their version. But Photo Arsenal Worldwide, a camera store based in Austria, has a Leica CL currently for sale which is very rare indeed – possibly the only example ever made.
The camera, currently available on their site and their eBay store, is a “snapshot” version of the camera, based around a wide-angle 28mm Rokkor-M lens made by Minolta.
The camera lacks the built-in viewfinder of the Leica CL and Minolta CLE and instead has an attachment for a 28mm viewfinder.
Boris Jamchtchik, who runs the store, told Kosmo Foto he believes it is the only example of the camera to have been made.
He said: “The Leica factory sold many items from the Leitz Museum to a Thai collector named Surat Osathanugrah in 2008. Before he passed away, he sold many items from his collection to other collectors. In this case, it was sold to a collector in the EU.
“The camera works like all Leica CL models, but it does not have a viewfinder and rangefinder. It requires manual focus when using the wide-angle lens to take a picture,” Jamchtchik added.
He said the camera – which is listed on eBay for €60,000 (£51,400) – is in fully working condition and has been tested with film.
Jamchtchik said he has never seen another example of the camera: “It is likely that only one prototype was made.”
I'm a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).
I’m doing everything I can to promote film photography in the 21st Century, and help it survive and thrive. If you want to write something for Kosmo Foto, please drop me a line at foto.dowling@gmail.com.
Interesting article and a fantastic looking camera/lens combo, but just a little bit more than I would like to spend!
I’m much happier with my 1981 Minolta CLE, with its 28, 40, and 90mm framelines and lenses.
Intriguing to hear Mr. Osathanugrah’s name being mentioned here. He was a Thai photographer who published quite a few BW photobooks on life in Bangkok. Didn’t know he has since passed on.