1932 Leica Standard
Toronto. My good friend and PHSC member, Celio Barreto, sent along this February 21st article from Kosmo Foto, “The WW2 Leica buried by a German soldier’s widow” The Leica in question is a rare 1932 Standard model.
In prior years, unconverted Leica cameras (including the leaf shuttered model “b”s) had a fixed 5cm lens with a “hockey stick” shaped infinity stop on the body. In 1932, Leica made a model with interchangeable lenses. As the distance from film to lens at the time was not standardized, each extra lens was sold with the camera and engraved with the last three digits of the camera body it was intended to fit for an accurate and consistent rangefinder setting.
Late the same year, the film to lens distance was standardized at 28.8mm making any camera body made thereafter and any lens interchangeable. When the bayonet M series arrived post war, it had a thicker body BUT a 1mm shorter film to lens distance of 27.8mm giving rise to the rings that allowed screw-mount lenses to fit M mount cameras.
