LEICA Barnack Berek Blog: LEICA T (TYP 701) : ONE OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PHOTOGRAPHIC CAMERAS EVER MADE

By José Manuel Serrano Esparza

The 16 megapixel Leica T, one of the most beautiful photographic cameras ever made, designed by Maike Harberts (Product Manager of APS-C Cameras at Leica Camera AG) in 2014, was granted important Awards for Best Design During 2015, among them the prestigious IF Gold Award in the Product Category and the TIPA (Technical Image Press Association) 2015 Award for Best Design.

To all intents and purposes, these prestigious awards meant a very significant international recognition to the Leica T, an APS-C camera featuring huge personality, exceedingly reduced size and weight, minimalist shapes, smooth and rounded surfaces, great beauty of lines and a state-of-the-art constructive level, since it was manufactured from a block of aluminium which was milled by the most advanced precision CNC machines currently existing in this scope and very sophisticated techniques, it all providing this photographic tool with a great solidity, unutterable feeling while being held in hands, remarkable sturdiness keeping an almost flawless appearance after years of intensive use and a truly imposing presence.

The back of the Leica T is dominated by a 3.7-inch fixed TFT LCD touchscreen with 1.3 million-dot resolution working as a smartphone and displaying an icon-based control menu system incredibly easy to learn and customize.

Minimalism to spare at the service of the decision making by the photographer, in a camera that lacked integrated viewfinder, very advanced electronics, lightning autofocus speed and image stabilizing systems boasted by different models of cameras from other brands of the APS-C domain (nowadays the most disputed one in the photographic market) clearly superior in those sides.

But it wasn´t a hindrance at all for the Leica T to be able to create great images (as a matter of fact, a very high percentage of the most iconic pictures in history were made with simple cameras regarding their electronic specifications but excellent in optomechanical quality), and it can be an exceptional photographic tool in the hands of a professional photographer or advanced amateur, firmly backed by its impressive constructive quality, sturdiness and working reliability, in symbiosis with Leica TL lenses sporting a very accurate and more than sufficiently fast AF along with superb optical quality, with the added chance of using the comprehensive range of ultraluminous Leica M lenses for 24 x 36 mm format through the special M-Adapter T, which utterly supports functions like exposure metering, aperture priority mode and manual settings.

Here we can see the Leica T coupled to a 9 elements ( two of them aspherical ones ) in 6 groups Summicron-TL 23 mm f/2 ASPH, with difference the best equivalent to 35 mm lens in the world for APS-C format, delivering exceptional values of resolving power and contrast, together with an excellent bokeh and whose MTF curves place it between the Summilux-M 50 mm f/1.4 ASPH and the Apo-Summicron-M 50 mm f/2 ASPH in terms of optical performance.

The M-Adapter T greatly expands the operative possibilities of the Leica T and enables to get a stunning image quality connecting the wide assortment of highly luminous Leica M lenses featuring an amazing degree of miniaturization for its full frame format, with very small size and weight and an exceedingly reduced front lens diameter, in such a way that they thoroughly synergize with the uncommon compacity of the Leica T, keeping the proportions and preserving its exceedingly reduced dimensions.

Here we can see a Leica T camera with a Summicron-M 35 mm f/2 ASPH, equivalent to a 52.5 mm f/2 ASPH lens (almost identical to the focal length of 52.3 mm featured by Summicron-M 50 mm f/2) and whose optical performance in association with the 16 megapixel Sony CMOS sensor is excellent as a traditional standard lens.

The beauty of this binomium is difficult to explain with words.

A professional photographer using a Leica T attached to a Noctilux-M 50 mm f/0.95 ASPH, equivalent to a 75 mm f/0.95 ASPH, which both as a portrait lens and as a spawner of pictures with available light shooting handheld, even under the most extreme luminic conditions, has no match in the APS-C scope.

Close-up of the high resolution electronic viewfinder attachable to the Leica T sliding it into the hotshoe. In spite of not being metallic, it is made in high quality plastic and is very light, with a conspicuous and very practical futuristic profile enabling to get pictures with the camera at eyes height instead of looking through the large back screen, and enhancing its fully professional use, with the added advantage that its swiveling design makes possible to shoot with the VF oriented upwards and the camera located at the height of the chest, in those situations needing maximum discretion.

Leica T in professional configuration with Summicron-TL 23 mm f/2 ASPH coupled to its excellent shade and with the Visoflex EVF inserted in the hotshoe.

The design of the Leica T (Typ 701), fruit of the collaboration between Leica Camera AG and Audi, was undoubtedly from the viewpoint of elegance and contours allurement one of the highlights of the worldwide photographic industry in 2014, and painstaking attention was paid in it to every detail, with a stunning finish and polishing of the aluminium which has been the benchmark hitherto and increased very much the production cost of the camera body.

It is therefore a product built on the keynote of an uncompromising quality, only reachable by means of abundant mostly handcrafted manufacturing stages in combination with state-of-the-art machines and technologies within this field, not entering megapixels wars or the adoption of electronic advances that albeit being relevant and useful, are not indispensable for the creation of good pictures.

A professional photographer shooting handheld indoors without flash with a Leica T coupled to a Noctilux-M 50 mm f/0.95 ASPH (equivalent to a 75 mm f/0.95ASPH) through the Leica M-Adapter T.

The photographic possibilities of this pretty compact combination ( in spite of the weight of 700 g and dimensions of 7, 3 x 7, 51 mm featured by the Noctilux lens ) when it comes to creating images with available light and getting a great level of detail and contrast in them, even in contexts of extremely low luminosity, are commendable.

But the historical and conceptual significance of the Leica T went even far beyond, because it was fruit of a brilliant initiative by

Dr. Andreas Kaufmann, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Leica Camera AG and main entrepreneurial driving force in the genesis of this gorgeous camera, as a homage to the Ur-Leica (created by the genius Oskar Barnack in 1914 and the first camera using the 24 x 36 mm format)

on the occasion of the 100 Years of Leica Photography event celebrated in Wetzlar in May 2014.

This way, the similarity of shapes and lines of the Leica T is more than remarkable regarding Oskar

Barnack´s Ur-Leica, with the exception of the grabbing zone of the Leica T forward right area, which

features a protrusion to do it more ergonomic.

However incredible it may seem, the digital Leica T from XXI Century included abundant DNA from the Ur-Leica made by Oskar Barnack in 1914, a revolutionary photographic camera whose fundamental cornerstone of very small size and exceedingly low weight body in association with a tiny lens delivering very high optical quality and great images would enable the photographers (since the launching into market of the Leica I by Ernst Leitz II during the 1925 Leipzig Spring Fair) to make a much more agile and dynamic kind of reportage photography, shooting hand and wrist in every environment and exposing small negatives of the then called 24 x 36 mm " miniature format ".

But the huge influence of the Ur-Leica from 1914 throughout the XX and XXI centuries hasn´t only been on photography, but also on design and concepts belonging to the realm of technology, architecture, art, and many other fields.

Not in vain, when Steve Jobs presented the iPhone 4, he said:

" You gotta see this in person. This is beyond the doubt, the most precise thing, and one of the most beautiful we´ve ever made. Glass on the front and back, and steel around the sides. It´s like a beautiful old Leica camera ".

Steve Jobs referred to the screwmount Leica cameras manufactured between mid twenties and 1960, all of which had got a common forefather: the Ur Leica.

The Leica T design features an uncommon exquisiteness.

In this image of its upper right panel you can see from left to right: the stereo microphones, the built-in flash hidden inside the camera body, the shutter release button, the on/off switch concentric with the shutter release button and which has got a third position to activate the aforementioned flash, the small button for recording Full HD 1920 x 1080 video at 30 fps and the two control wheels that enable to select the desired f stop and speed in manual mode, with the further possibility of customization of the left wheel to modify the most used options and settings such as ISO, exposure compensation, white balance, focus mode, self-timer and flash mode.

The integration of flash, grooved control wheels and button for video recording inside the camera body boasts an indescribable precision, with a praiseworthy mechanizing of the command dials and shutter release button, enhanced by the finish and level of perfection of the aluminium which are truly extraordinary.

Sean Cranor, CEO of Camera West and one of the most experienced dealers of top-notch quality photographic products from different brands in the world.

From the very moment of its presentation, he grasped the remarkable historical significance, unmatched level of craftsmanship, excellent optomechanical quality of lenses, far-reaching design and exceptional timeless beauty of the Leica T, a camera he strove after making it known through different seminars and events, among them the Leica T Party held at the Leica Boutique in Rancho Mirage (Riverside County, California) along with other training courses at his Camera West shop located in Walnut Creek (East Bay area, near San Francisco), which paid off.

Here we can see him holding a Leica T with Vario-Elmar-T 18-56 mm f/3.5-5.6 ASPH zoom (equivalent to a 27-84 mm f/3.5-5.6 ASPH) and the nice silicone strap stretched.

Sean Cranor holding the smart proprietary locking pin connecting the strap to the Leica T through a click into the camera.

If we add to all of it that the Leica T, one of the photographic tools better substantiating the Das Wesenliche (Focus on Optical Perfection, Intuitive Handling and Great Design as essential ingredients) principle, was the first digital camera of the German photographic firm featuring the breakthrough highly versatile and efficient large size bayonet L Mount as mainstay of the Leica APS-C System, with an inner diameter of 51.6 mm and an exceedingly short flange distance of only 20 mm, subsequently used among others by the 24 x 36 mm format Leica SL mirrorless EVF camera, the APS-C format mirrorless EVF Leica CL with integrated viewfinder, the 24 x 36 mm format mirrorless EVF Panasonic Lumix S1 and Panasonic Lumix S1R cameras, in spite of its lack of a built-in EVF, the absence of any image stabilization system and the raft of further electronic advances present in umpteen digital mirrorless APS-C format cameras made by other firms, the huge historical significance of the Leica T camera as a pioneering technological platform and groundwork test bench for the spreading of the L-Mount and the alliance between Leica, Panasonic and Sigma born during the Photokina 2018 in Köln (Germany) seems apparent.