Leitz 1938 accessory “RIFLE” with a modified mirror box and telephoto lens, plus a IIIb Leica – courtesy of Leitz Photographica Auction
Toronto. In the pre-ww2 days of film, the media was relatively slow and lenses were of generally smaller aperture, especially as the focal length increased. The result was to make it difficult to keep longer focal length lenses steady for hand held shots.
To solve this, manufacturers designed various accessories to hold their cameras steady with longer lenses. One of the rarest accessories was made by Leitz New York in 1938 and dubbed RIFLE The accessory was a rifle shaped support (what else in America?) for a telephoto lens, light box and camera. The whole outfit consists of the above components.
Less than a dozen were ever made and one outfit was recently auctioned reaching some $165,000 USD.
While such a find would be very unusual today, our 2025 events do offer to augment your collection, whether you favour film gear, digital gear, or photos. Next up in 2025 is our Trunk Sale on July 13th. See the poster here for details.
NB. The title was brought to mind by a line in the famous poem by Robert Service, “The Shooting of Dan McGrew“.
