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

Leica I (Model A)

Ernst Leitz · Fixed lens · 24×36mm on perforated 35mm cine film, 36 exposures · 1925

Also known as: Leica I Model A · Leica A · Leitz Leica I · Leica I (A) · ライカI型A

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Leitz Anastigmat 50mm f/3.5 Leica fixed 1925–1925 — 144 cameras (Leica Wiki); camera-wiki says 174
Leitz Elmax 50mm f/3.5 Leica fixed 1925–1926 — 713 cameras (Leica Wiki); camera-wiki says 1,000
Elmar 50mm f/3.5 Leica fixed 1926–1936 — 56,548 cameras — all but a fraction of the run
Hektor 50mm f/2.5 Leica fixed 1930–1931 — 1,330 cameras
Leica Luxus (gold, lizard skin) Leica fixed 1929–1931 — The serial list shows a batch of 15 at 34803–34817 in 1929; Luxus bodies also appear outside that block
  1. Leitz Photographica's results put numbers on how steeply the fitting decides the price. In Auction 46 an Anastigmat, no. 225, catalogued as 'The 100th Leica', made €132,000 against a €100,000–120,000 estimate; in Auction 47 Anastigmat no. 249 made €90,000 against the same estimate. Elmax cameras in those sales ran from €9,000 (no. 706) to €18,000 (no. 871, as an outfit). Ordinary Elmar cameras made between €1,560 and €4,320. The same body in a different skin is a different market again: an Elmar 'Calfskin' made €38,400 against €12,000–14,000.
  2. The Luxus is the outlier by two orders of magnitude. Auction 44 sold a Luxus outfit for €288,000 against a €240,000–300,000 estimate; Auction 47 sold a Luxus special outfit — gold fittings, deep red lizard skin, with matching Leitz 3×20 Luxus binoculars, a gold-plated cable release and a gold-plated rangefinder — for €360,000, the second highest hammer price of that sale.
  3. PetaPixel, reporting the 47th auction, states that the Luxus was made between 1929 and 1931 and that only 95 were produced. That is roughly three times the figure this entry carries, and no source consulted here reconciles the two.
  4. Leitz Photographica catalogued Elmax no. 254 as the earliest camera known to exist, its lot note recording that "production of the 'Elmax' Leica I Mod. A with 5-element Elmax started around no.250" and describing it as a first version similar to the Anastigmat cameras. It made €48,000 against a €20,000–25,000 estimate. A start around 250 is consistent with the Leica Wiki's 144 Anastigmats beginning at 131, which would run out at 274.
  5. Not every Anastigmat camera is still a Model A. Leitz Photographica's 47th auction sold, as lot 71, a camera catalogued "Leica IIf no.190": its lot note records the body as delivered on 20 February 1925 as a Leica I Model A with an Anastigmat lens, returned to Leitz for repair in 1949, 1951 and 1954, and then "upgraded to IIf specifications (black dial) without slow speed, but keeping the original serial number", with the lens "most probably, still the very rare original 5-elements Anastigmat lens, here mounted in an unnumbered chrome Elmar housing". It made €3,360 against a €4,000–5,000 estimate. Two things follow: any count of surviving Anastigmat cameras has to allow for bodies rebuilt into later models, and an exact delivery date of 20 February 1925 for a camera inside the 131–1000 block supports reading that block's 1924 date in the serial list as the year of manufacture rather than of sale.
  6. The 45th auction extends the price ranges recorded above at both ends. Elmax no. 284 made €22,800 against a €12,000–14,000 estimate, above the €18,000 top of the Elmax range given here; two Elmar cameras made €7,200 and €1,800, the first well above the €4,320 ceiling; and the Hektor fitting gets its first figures — €3,840 for a standard example and €3,120 for a nickel-plated one.
  7. Mike Eckman gives the camera's shutter as 1/20 – 1/500 rather than the 1/25 – 1/500 recorded here.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • No rangefinder of any kind: focus is set by scale, and Leitz sold the FODIS rangefinder as a separate accessory to sit in the shoe
  • Lens permanently mounted — the camera cannot take another
  • Aluminium body with black-lacquered brass top and base plates, nickel-plated knobs and a vulcanite covering

Leitz Anastigmat 50mm f/3.5:

  • Lens engraved LEITZ ANASTIGMAT — the name Leitz used before the Elmax

Leitz Elmax 50mm f/3.5:

  • Lens engraved LEITZ ELMAX 1:3.5 F=50mm
  • Five elements in three groups — the Elmar that replaced it has four

Elmar 50mm f/3.5:

  • Lens engraved ELMAR; four elements in three groups
  • Ten sub-versions are recognised by collectors, the standard reference being von Einem

Hektor 50mm f/2.5:

  • Lens engraved HEKTOR 1:2.5 — a full stop faster than the Elmar

Leica Luxus (gold, lizard skin):

  • Gold-plated fittings with lizard-skin covering in place of vulcanite
  • Leitz code word LELUX

Serial-range notes

131–1000
The first batch, dated 1924 in the Leica Wiki's list though the camera is a 1925 release: Anastigmat and first-version Elmax cameras share the block.
34803–34817
A run of fifteen listed as Elmar plus Luxus — the only Luxus batch the list isolates.
5434–5700, then a jump to 6301
A gap of 600 numbers in 1928 that no source consulted explains. Leitz assigned numbers in blocks and did not always fill them.

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on perforated 35mm cine film, 36 exposures
Finder
Optical viewfinder, no rangefinder · no rangefinder image
Shutter
focal plane, cloth · 1/25 – 1/500 and Z (time)
Designed by
Oskar Barnack — camera · Max Berek — lenses
Dimensions
133 × 39 × 65 mm
Country
Germany
Original price
$81 (Burke & James advertisement, US, 1931) (today $1,670)

Figures we worked out rather than found: 144 + 713 + 56,548 + 1,330 = 58,735 — the variant counts sum exactly to the printed total, which no source states · The gap between the printed total and the assigned serial numbers is 249

Where sources disagree

Cameras built with each lens
  • 144 Anastigmat, 713 Elmax, 56,548 Elmar, 1,330 Hektor (Leica Wiki)
  • 174 Anastigmat, 1,000 Elmax, approximately 57,000 Elmar, 1,330 Hektor (camera-wiki)

Better supported: The Leica Wiki figures

Only the Hektor count agrees. The Leica Wiki's four numbers sum to exactly 58,735, the total it prints for the model, which suggests they were derived from one another; camera-wiki's are rounder and have no such arithmetic behind them.

Total production
  • 58,735 cameras (Leica Wiki, model page)
  • 58,486 serial numbers assigned (Leica Wiki, its own serial list, for 1925–1930)

The same page carries both figures, 249 apart. The serial list stops at 1930 while the camera was sold until 1936, so the shortfall is not simply unsold stock.

What reviewers say

History

The Model A is the camera that decided 35mm film was worth using for photography rather than for making films. Oskar Barnack had built the working prototype years before, and Leitz spent the early 1920s arguing internally about whether to sell it; the camera that finally went on sale in 1925 is a small aluminium box with a collapsible lens fixed permanently to the front, a focal-plane shutter running from 1/25 to 1/500, and no way to measure distance at all. Focus was set by the scale on the lens barrel. Leitz sold a separate rangefinder, the FODIS, to sit in the accessory shoe, and photographers who wanted to know their distance bought one.

Four lenses were fitted across the run, and which one a camera carries is the fact collectors ask first. The earliest 144 have Max Berek’s five-element design engraved LEITZ ANASTIGMAT; the next several hundred carry the same optics renamed ELMAX, a contraction of Ernst Leitz and Max Berek. Berek then simplified the design to four elements, and that lens — the Elmar — accounts for essentially the whole production: some 56,548 cameras against a total of 58,735. A faster 50mm f/2.5 Hektor was offered near the end of the run on 1,330 cameras. Around thirty gold-plated, lizard-skinned Luxus bodies were sold as luxury goods, and enough have been faked since that no example should be bought on its looks.

The numbers themselves are worth reading carefully, because the sources do not agree and one of them does not agree with itself. The Leica Wiki gives the four lens counts above, and they sum to precisely its stated total, which suggests the total was built from them rather than found in a ledger. camera-wiki gives rounder figures — 174 Anastigmats, a thousand Elmaxes, “approx 57,000” Elmars — that agree only on the Hektor. And the Leica Wiki’s own serial list, printed below its production figure on the same page, accounts for 58,486 numbers assigned between 1925 and 1930, 249 short of the total it prints, while the camera stayed on sale until 1936. The list also dates its first block, serials 131 to 1000, to 1924 — the year the cameras were built, a year before anyone could buy one.

What remains open is most of what a collector would want settled. No source consulted reconciles the two totals, or says how many Luxus bodies were made in all rather than in the single batch of fifteen the serial list isolates, or explains the 600-number gap in 1928 between 5700 and 6301. The ten recognised sub-versions of the Elmar camera rest on von Einem’s classification, which is a book rather than a page, and which this site has not yet consulted.

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.

Example photos

Sample photo taken with the Leica I (Model A)
Leica I (Model A), serial 5193, 1927, with the Elmar — Kameraprojekt Graz 2015, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Sample photo taken with the Leica I (Model A)
Leica I (Model A) with the accessory rangefinder — Kameraprojekt Graz 2015, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sample photo wanted — shot with a Leica I (Model A)? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $1,700 across 11 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $1,100–$2,200). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 2 days: unchanged from $1,700.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-09-11$1,700$1,100–$2,20011
2026-09-06$1,700$1,100–$2,20011

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

Show 13 more listings

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

Related: Leica I (Model B) Compur · Leica I (Model C)

Lenses for this body: Elmar 5cm f/3.5 · Hektor 5cm f/2.5

Sources (11)

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.