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Home Donate New Search Gallery Reviews How-To Books Links Workshops About Contact Leica IIIf Screw Mount (1950-1957) © 2010 KenRockwell.com. This page best with Corporate S regular and bold activated. Intro Specs Performance Deployment Usage Recommendations Repairs LEICA IIIf (15.230 oz/431.8g with film, about $400 used) shown mit collapsible LEICA SUMMICRON 50mm f/2. enlarge. You can get these at these direct links to it at Adorama and eBay (see How to Win at eBay). It helps me keep adding reviews of ancient equipment when you get yours through these links, thanks! Ken. December 2012 LEICA Reviews LEICA Lenses All Reviews Sample images: Route 66, February 2011 Great for: Ultra-high quality images from the smallest and lightest possible camera. The LEICA IIIf is one of the least expensive ways to get into the LEICA system. The IIIf looks so crazy and ancient that no one will give you a hard time photographing with it. Superstitious people who confuse DSLRs with weapons are not afraid of the IIIf. Not great for: Action, automation or fast shooting. The LEICA IIIf works great, but for practical photography, it requires about twice as many knobs and settings to do the same thing as a modern fully-manual camera requires. Introduction top Intro Specs Performance Deployment Usage Recommendations Repairs The screw-mount LEICA IIIf is significantly smaller and lighter than any Leica M camera. It's so light that I often forget it's with me. The LEICA IIIf is often quieter than LEICA M cameras, so in other words, it does what they do best, but even better. It is many times quieter than the noisy digital LEICA M9. The IIIf weighs only two-thirds as much as a typical LEICA M. It weighs only half as much as most DSLRs, and less than one-third what a pro DSLR weighs, and delivers better image quality. It is the same shape as LEICA M cameras, but is it slightly smaller in every dimension. LEICA M cameras are bigger than screw- mount cameras, and digital M cameras have gotten even slightly bigger. Adorama pays top The LEICA IIIf is an excellent sixty-year old camera. It sold for the dollar for your used gear. equivalent of $3,500 in its day. Facts, like "1/1,000 second shutter speed" or "longer rangefinder Search Amazon: base length," are facts, but subjective observations, like "easy to use" must be taken from your own point of view. This review takes three tacks simultaneously, for three different kinds of people: Shooters If you just want a camera to shoot, the LEICA IIIf shoots silently, but requires moving and setting about twice as many dials and levers as more recent manual cameras to make even the simplest Search all B&H settings. I use these stores. I can't vouch for ads Consider the LEICA IIIf for careful nature, travel and landscape below. photography, but a LEICA M3 (or Nikon FM or F6) is a much better choice if you're traveling with people who won't wait for you to make all the settings for each snapshot. Leica X2 The IIIf has many advantages over newer cameras, but much as 1399€ cars of its day required you to know how to set a manual choke Auf Lager, 48 and drive a three-in-the-tree manual transmission, the IIIf demands Stunden the same attention. (Actually, people who bought the IIIf had their own drivers, or drove Mercedes-Benz, which already had fuel Lieferung 3 injection back then, thus no chokes.) Jahre Garantie, Gratisversand The Early 1950s Most of this review steps back to the 1950s, when this was the most extraordinary camera ever developed, and was the most impossibly expensive dream camera that everyone wanted. Even at $3,500, the new LEICA IIIf was so popular that is was on backorder for the first couple of years. I find it more fun to write about the IIIf from the perspective of its own time, when the incredible automatic flash synchronizer was an amazing first. Today for shooters, it's incredibly complicated, manual and backwards compared to an M3 or any other current camera. Orthodox Leica Adherents These cultists are people who believe that everything should be done as it was during the life of The Prophet, Oskar Barnack. Anything newer, like parallax correction or levers instead of knobs for film transport, is needless frivolity. This unnecessary fluff detracts from their religious photographic devotions, and are therefore seen as the work of the Devil. These frills must be expunged. For these devoted followers, the IIIf is the crowning achievement of The Prophet's Vision. The IIIf is as He, The Creator of modern photography, intended photography to be. Rear, LEICA IIIf. expand. Bottom, LEICA IIIf. expand. The LEICA IIIf Top, LEICA IIIf and collapsible LEICA SUMMICRON 50mm f/2. expand. The LEICA IIIf is LEICA's most popular screw-mount camera, having made about 180,000 of them. The IIIf was a rumored secret as late as Summer 1950. People were told not to wait for a new camera, and just buy the IIIc. Then for Christmas 1950, Leica broke the news about the brand-new must-have IIIf. It is quieter than many LEICA M models, and certainly quieter than any of the digital LEICA M cameras. It's easy to shoot the LEICA IIIf digitally. The LEICA IIIf has a 1.5x magnified rangefinder with a longer effective baselength than most Leica M cameras to give more precise focus, and therefore sharper pictures. The LEICA IIIf's rangefinder has significantly longer effective base length than any digital Leica M like the LEICA M9. The magnified rangefinder and the viewfinder are two separate windows. You look through one to focus, and move your eye to the other to compose and shoot. LEICA IIIf rangefinder and viewfinder windows. enlarge. The 1.5x rangefinder telescope often needs its own focus adjusted so that you can see it most clearly so that you can in turn focus the camera. This adjustment is the little lever around the rewind knob. The LEICA IIIf has a smaller, but brighter, viewfinder than any LEICA M. This is because the IIIf's viewfinder is separate from the rangefinder, so it doesn't need the darkening that newer cameras need to ensure contrast against the rangefinder spot. The rangefinder is a separate magnified window. The LEICA IIIf was the hot new ultra-expensive camera that everyone dreamed would be under their Christmas tree in 1950. The IIIf is the most advanced true screw mount Leica. It incorporates 37 years of continual advancements from Oskar Barnack's first 1913 prototype. The LEICA IIIf adds another first, a dedicated film-type indicator integral with the film- advance knob. It indicates in ASA and Weston, and indicates either color or black- and-white. An option was to have DIN readings instead of Weston along with the ASA indications. The newer screw mount IIIg (1957-1960) came after the introduction of the LEICA M3 (1954), and incorporates some frivolous features, like parallax correction and multiple framelines, back-filled from the M series. Orthodox Leica fanatics refuse to allow these frills on their cameras. With the LEICA IIIf, you have to use accessory finders for any lens other than 50mm. This is not a problem, since the best photographers use nothing but a 50mm lens anyway. Accessory finders are a pain. Orthodox shooters are quick to point out that the main reason Leica invented the M series with multiple-frameline finders was so that Leica could sell more lenses, not because it lead to better pictures. The LEICA IIIf it is a great picture-taker, however it is far more primitive than anything else you're likely to want to shoot. The IIIf is the most advanced Orthodox screw- mount Leica, but it's still 60 years old. The sort of people who love the IIIf are the same sort of people who prefer shooting muzzle loaders and black powder: the results are the same, but you have to do a lot more yourself. The LEICA IIIf is great for nature and landscape shooting, but I'd want to shoot something more modern, like a LEICA M3, M6 or M7 (or a DSLR) if anything moves. You have to reset the frame counter to zero manually for each roll of film, however it is much larger and easier to read than automatic-resetting counters. Since you always can see the entire frame counter dial, it's easy to see the "roll at a glance." Today, you'll need to trim the leader of each roll of film to load film easily. The "f" in IIIf stands for flash The must-have feature of the new IIIf is perfect flash synchronization at all speeds up to 1/1,000 with both flashbulbs as well as both kinds (delayed and undelayed) of electronic flash. Even with perfect sync (timing), you'd loose part of your photo at speeds faster than 1/50 with electronic flash, but with FP flashbulbs, it's easy to shoot at any speed up to 1/1,000. A new flash synchro-contact point (flash sync terminal) is on the back of the camera, below the accessory shoe. The synchronizer cord that comes with the new flash unit locks to the connector when rotated 90.º Automatic flash synchronization was a big deal in 1950. The month before, you had to buy and calibrate external synchronizers with three-way contacts to go between your cable release, shutter button and flash unit to get the flash to fire at the correct instant for even focal-plane shutter exposure.

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