Glass Bodies a variant-level encyclopedia of vintage lenses and cameras by iwillpat

Leica CL

Ernst Leitz · Leica M mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film · 1973

Also known as: Leica CL · Leitz Minolta CL · Compact Leica · ライツミノルタCL

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Leica CL Leica M 1973–1976 1300001–1335000
1425001–1440000 		65,000 serial numbers assigned across three blocks
Leitz Minolta CL Leica M 1973–1976 — No separate figure published
50 Jahre (1975 anniversary) Leica M 1974–1975 — 3,500 cameras (Leica Wiki)
  1. Both published copies of the CL serial list descend from the same Leitz records and differ in what they add. CameraQuest prints assignment dates to the day — 16 July 1971, 25 February 1974, 7 June 1974 — and says the raw data came from Leica through Horst Braun; Leica Wiki prints year spans, computes the batch totals itself, and adds the prototype and CLE flags. Neither is a production record.
  2. The first block was assigned on 16 July 1971 by CameraQuest's dating, two years before the camera was announced — an ordinary consequence of allocation running ahead of manufacture, and a reminder that the earliest date in the list is not the model's launch.
  3. No serial evidence separates the Leica CL from the Leitz Minolta CL. The two badges drew on the same blocks, and no source consulted gives a range, a prefix or a break that distinguishes the Japanese-market camera from the rest.
  4. The eight-digit serial 14351760 printed in the Leitz Photographica catalogue for the 50 Jahre camera above is one digit longer than any number in either published copy of the list, whose CL blocks are all seven digits. Whether it is a catalogue slip is not resolved by any source consulted, and no reading of it is asserted here.
  5. What it undercut, in the same 1974 US list: the CL with its 40mm Summicron-C was $525, the M5 with a 50mm Summicron $1,182. The cheap Leica cost 44% of the expensive one, which is the commercial fact behind everything else on this page.
  6. Mike Eckman puts about 35,000 of the 65,000 in the first year alone, and reads the 65,000 as excluding the Leitz Minolta-branded cameras — which would make the combined run larger than the serial blocks on their own suggest.
  7. The metering cell is 7.5mm across and reads about 7% of the frame (Casual Photophile) — a narrow, nearly spot-like pattern for 1973. Flash sync is 1/60.
  8. Price realised: a 50 Jahre camera described as "special number 499-L," 1975, mint with box, strap, case, instructions and guarantee card, made €1,920 including buyer's premium at Leitz Photographica Auction 9, lot 160, against a €1,200–1,400 estimate. The catalogue prints its serial as 14351760 — eight digits, one more than either CL block in the Leica Wiki's list.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • Much smaller and lighter than any M: 121 × 76 × 32mm and 365g against the M5's bulk
  • A metering cell on a swinging arm in front of the shutter, the M5's system in a smaller body
  • Frames for 40mm, 50mm and 90mm — the 40mm matching the Summicron-C sold with it

Leica CL:

  • COMPACT LEICA engraved on the top
  • Vertical shutter travel and a meter cell on a swinging arm, as on the M5

Leitz Minolta CL:

  • Leitz Minolta CL marking in place of Leica CL

50 Jahre (1975 anniversary):

  • Leitz crest on the front below the LEICA engraving

Serial-range notes

the block, not the camera — how to read the Leitz list
The rule for any Leica, and the thing most readers get wrong. Leitz did not number cameras as they came off the bench; it allotted blocks of numbers to a model, and the date printed against a block is the day that block was assigned. Find the block the number falls in and the date it carries is the earliest the camera can be, not its birthday. Numbers assigned in the last week of a year were often built early in the next; a block was not always used up; and a block allotted to one model sometimes turned out to carry another, which is why five CL prototypes sit in blocks the same table assigns to the M3 and M2 of 1961. A Leica serial gives a period and a model, and should be taken as a rough guide rather than a date.
1425001–1440000
The third block, and the one most often missed: 15,000 numbers, which CameraQuest's copy of the Leitz list dates to 7 June 1974 and Leica Wiki spans 1975–76. It is the last CL allocation, and it closes out the model.
1300001 · 1395001 · 1425001 — the three starts, and 65,000 numbers
Three blocks and no more were ever allotted to the CL: 1300001–1335000, 1395001–1410000 and 1425001–1440000, 65,000 numbers in all. That is a count of numbers, not of cameras. Leitz assigned blocks without always filling them, so 65,000 is the ceiling on CL production rather than a production figure, and no source consulted converts it into one.
1395001–1410000, disputed
The two published copies of the Leitz list disagree about this block. Leica Wiki labels it 'Leica CL (50-yr)', 1974–75, 15,000 — which is where the entry's 15,000-against-3,500 problem comes from. CameraQuest's copy, from raw data it says Leica supplied through Horst Braun, labels the same 1395001–1410000 plainly 'CL', assigned 25 February 1974, and gives the 50 Jahre cameras no block of their own at all. On that reading the anniversary cameras are mixed into ordinary production, which is what CameraQuest warns happens to special models: they got less notice at the factory than they later got from collectors.
499-L, and the edition numbers of the 50 Jahre
The anniversary cameras carry a second number that is not a serial. The Leitz Photographica catalogue for auction 9, lot 160, describes a 1975 example as 'special number 499-L' — three digits and a letter, separate from the body serial and running only across the edition. It is the same habit as the M5 jubilee's letter-and-number marking, and it is one explanation for why the factory list gives the 50 Jahre no block of its own: the edition was counted outside the serial sequence rather than inside it.
1022095 · 1022732 · 1036248 · 1036506 · 1036718
The five CL prototypes, marked Leitz Minolta CL, and a worked example of why the list is a guide rather than a register. They fall inside 1022001–1022700, assigned to the M3 in 1961, and 1036351–1037950, assigned to the M2 in the same year — numbers a decade older than the camera they are engraved on.
1300001–1335000
35,000 numbers, 1973–74: the main production block.
1395001–1410000
15,000 numbers marked as the 50-year cameras, against an edition size of 3,500.
1002274
Flagged in the CL's own list as a Leica Minolta CLE — a different, later camera.

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film
Finder
Combined viewfinder and coupled rangefinder with a metering needle · 40mm, 50mm, 90mm framelines · automatic parallax correction
Shutter
focal plane, cloth, vertically running · 1/2 – 1/1000 and B
Meter
Through-the-lens metering from a CdS cell on a swinging arm, the M5's arrangement in a smaller body; needle display in the finder.
Weight
365 g
Dimensions
121 × 76 × 32 mm
Country
Japan
Original price
US$525 with the 40mm Summicron-C (1974 list, Mike Eckman)

Figures we worked out rather than found: 65,000 numbers assigned in four years — twice the M5's entire production, in a cheaper camera · The 50 Jahre block is 4.3 times the stated edition size

Where sources disagree

50 Jahre edition size
  • 3,500 cameras (Leica Wiki, variants line)
  • A 15,000-number serial block, 1395001–1410000, marked 50-yr in the same page's list

Better supported: 3,500 for the edition

Either Leitz reserved four times the numbers it used, which is common in these tables, or the block contains ordinary CLs alongside the anniversary cameras. The page does not say.

Who made it
  • Leitz, designed in Wetzlar
  • Minolta, built in Japan

Better supported: Both, and the entry is filed under Leitz

A Leitz design manufactured by Minolta under agreement, sold under both names. This site lists it as a Leica because the mount, the specification and the design are Leitz's; the country field records Japan.

What reviewers say

History

The CL is the small Leica, and the compromised one. Leitz designed it, Minolta built it in Japan, and it sold under two names — Leica CL in most of the world, Leitz Minolta CL in Japan — with the same body, the same mount and the same 40mm Summicron-C in front of it. At 365g and 121mm wide it is a fraction of an M5, and it carries the M5’s cleverest idea: a metering cell on a swinging arm that reads light in front of the shutter and retracts as it fires.

Commercially it did what the M5 could not. Something like 65,000 numbers were assigned in four years, against 33,000 M5s in the same period, and the CL is the reason a lot of people own an M-mount camera at all. Inside Leitz it was more awkward: a Leica assembled in Japan, sold beside German-built cameras it undercut, in the years when Wetzlar was already in trouble.

Its finder shows frames for 40, 50 and 90mm, which is the honest limit of a rangefinder this size, and the 40mm frame is why the Summicron-C exists in that focal length. Longer or wider lenses mount and work; you simply cannot see what they are doing without an accessory finder.

The serial list has two things worth flagging. The 50 Jahre anniversary edition is given as 3,500 cameras, but the block marked 50-yr runs to 15,000 numbers — either a large reservation that was mostly unused, which these tables do constantly, or a block holding ordinary cameras alongside the anniversary ones. And five cameras flagged as CL prototypes carrying the Leitz Minolta mark sit in 1961 serial blocks the same table assigns to the M3 and M2, a decade before the CL existed. Prototypes get numbers where numbers are free.

Expand Collapse

This history is AI-written, from the sources listed at the foot of the page. Where the record is silent it says so rather than filling the gap — but no human wrote these sentences.

Photographs

Leica CL
Leica CL with the Summicron-C 40mm f/2 — Daniel*D, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Leica CL
Leica CL — JamesPFisherIII, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $800 across 43 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $500–$1,000). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 3 days: unchanged from $800.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-09-11$800$500–$1,00043
2026-09-09$800$500–$1,00043
2026-09-06$800$500–$1,00043

Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.

Show 85 more listings

eBay links are affiliate links. If you buy through one, Glass Bodies earns a small commission from eBay at no cost to you. It does not change which listings appear, their prices or their order — those come from the search and the sort described above.

Listings updated 2026-09-11. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.

Related: Leica M5 · Minolta CLE

Lenses for this body: Summicron-C 40mm f/2 · Elmar-C 90mm f/4 · M-Rokkor 40mm f/2 · M-Rokkor 90mm f/4 · M-Rokkor 28mm f/2.8 · Elmarit 28mm f/2.8 (v2, 1972) · Super-Angulon 21mm f/3.4 · Tele-Elmarit-M 90mm f/2.8 (the thin one)

Sources (8)

Every page here is assembled from public sources, and the gaps are real ones. If you own this camera, know a serial number I'm missing, or can see where I have it wrong, tell me — corrections, serials and sample photos are all worth having.