The

Leica Leica Camera AG () is a German company that manufactures cameras, optical lenses, photographic lenses, binoculars, rifle scopes and microscopes. The company was founded by Ernst Leitz in 1869 (Ernst Leitz Wetzlar), in Wetzlar, Germany. ...

M mount is a camera

lens mount A lens mount is an interface – mechanical and often also electrical – between a photographic camera body and a lens. It is a feature of camera systems where the body allows interchangeable lenses, most usually the rangefinder camera, singl ...

introduced in 1954 with the Leica M3, and a range of

lenses A lens is a transmissive optical device which focuses or disperses a light beam by means of refraction. A simple lens consists of a single piece of transparent material, while a compound lens consists of several simple lenses (''elements ...

. It has been used on all the Leica M-series cameras and certain accessories (e.g. Visoflex reflex viewing attachment) up to the current film Leica M-A and digital Leica M11 cameras. This lens mount has also been used by Epson, Ricoh, Minolta, Konica, Cosina Voigtländer, Rollei, Carl Zeiss AG and Rollei Fototechnic on some of their cameras.

Overview

The Leica M mount was introduced in 1954 at that year's Photokina show, with the Leica M3 as its first camera. The 'M' stands for ''Messsucher'' or rangefinder in German. This new camera abandoned the M39 lens mount in favour of a new bayonet mount. The bayonet mount allowed lenses to be changed more quickly and made the fitting more secure. Other innovations introduced by the M3 included a single window for the viewfinder (for composition) and the rangefinder (for focussing). With a double-stroke

film A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

advance lever (later models have a single-stroke lever). The M3 was a success and over 220,000 units were sold, by the time production ended in 1966. It remains the best-selling M mount camera ever made. The M3 uses

135 film 135 film, more popularly referred to as 35 mm film or 35 mm, is a format of photographic film used for still photography. It is a film with a film gauge of loaded into a standardized type of magazine – also referred to as a casse ...

(or 35 mm film), with the canister being loaded behind a detachable bottom plate. The M3 was followed by many other M mount cameras, released over 40 years, with many of the basic concepts remaining in these designs. With the introduction of the Through-the-lens metering (TTL) in the Leica M5 and the

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Technology and computing Hardware *Digital electronics, electronic circuits which operate using digital signals **Digital camera, which captures and stores digital i ...

Leica M8 being the most notable innovations since then. The lenses for the M mount were also introduced in 1954 and were based on the earlier M39 thread mount. Almost all M mount lenses are Prime lenses. These lenses are divided by Leica based on their maximum aperture number (also known as f-number). They are distinguished by their names: File:Leica M3 mg 3673.jpg, M mount female part of the bayonet on a Leica M3 body. The mechanical sensor seen inside the top of the mount is the rangefinder coupling arm File:Leica M3 mg 3671.jpg, M mount male part of the bayonet on the Leica Elmar 90mm . File:Leica M3 mg 3685.jpg, The Leica M3

shutter speed In photography, shutter speed or exposure time is the length of time that the film or digital sensor inside the camera is exposed to light (that is, when the camera's shutter (photography), shutter is open) when taking a photograph. The am ...

dial, film advance lever,

shutter button In photography, the shutter-release button (sometimes just shutter release or shutter button) is a push-button found on many cameras, used to record photographs. When pressed, the shutter of the camera is "released", so that it opens to capture a ...

and the frame counter. File:Leica M3 mg 3628.jpg, The Leica M3 ASA dial, purely decorative reminder of the Film speed showing DIN and ASA comparison dial. File:Leica Camera.svg, Leica "red dot" logo.

M Mount camera bodies

Film cameras

Digital cameras

Professional

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Monochrom

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Other manufacturers

* Epson R-D1 by Epson *

Minolta CLE The Minolta CLE is a TTL-metering automatic exposure aperture-priority 35 mm rangefinder camera using Leica M lenses, introduced by Minolta in 1980. Leica and Minolta signed a technical cooperation agreement in June 1972. One of its results ...

by Minolta *

Hexar RF The Konica Hexar RF is a 35 mm rangefinder camera which was sold by Konica. It was introduced to the market on 13 October 1999. and subsequently discontinued (apparently without official notice) some time before the end of 2003. The camera used t ...

by Konica *Bessa R2A, R3A, R2M, R3M, R4M and R4A by Cosina Voigtländer * Rollei 35 RF by Rollei Fototechnic *Recent Zeiss Ikon rangefinder camera by Carl Zeiss AG * Ricoh GXR by Ricoh

Overview

M Mount camera bodies

Film cameras

Digital cameras

Professional

Entry

Monochrom

No display

Increased resolution

Other manufacturers

M mount lenses

Other manufacturers

See also

References

External links