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

Leica IIIg

Ernst Leitz · LTM mount · 24×36mm on perforated 35mm cine film, 36 exposures · 1957

Also known as: Leica IIIg · Leica IIIg ELC · Leitz Leica IIIg · ライカIIIg

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Chrome (Wetzlar) LTM 1957–1960 — The bulk of 41,583 cameras
Ernst Leitz Canada (ELC) LTM 1956–1958 — At least 1,780 across four blocks in the serial list — 380, 400, 800 and 200
Swedish military, three crowns (black arctic) LTM 1957–1960 — No figure published
Bayonet mount LTM 1957–1960 — A few (Leica Wiki, no figure)
  1. The Swedish contract has a figure and a range after all. Leitz Photographica's catalogue states 125 IIIg bodies in black paint for the Swedish military, serials 987901–988025, "additionally engraved with the three 'Crowns of Sweden' on the rear side of the top plate," alongside 100 black-paint IIIf bodies. The entry's three-crown variant previously carried no figure.
  2. Price realised: serial 988003 — the third Swedish camera made, delivered to Brandt of Stockholm on 25 May 1960 with a matching chrome collapsible Elmar 2.8/5cm no. 1495721, condition B/A — made €43,200 including buyer's premium at Leitz Photographica Auction 45, lot 231, against a €40,000–45,000 estimate. A second data point beside the Leica Wiki's €56,000 in 2015.
  3. A resolution for the 825001 contradiction, from outside the Leica Wiki: Mike Eckman states that no production Leica IIg was ever made, only a few prototypes, and that the IIg prototype held in the Leitz Museum at Wetzlar carries serial 825001 — the same number the Wiki's list also opens a 1,000-camera IIIg block with.
  4. Eckman's totals disagree with the Wiki's on both ends: 41,589 cameras made 1957–1967, against 41,583 made 1957–1960 here. Six cameras and seven years apart, from two secondary sources with no factory ledger between them.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • A viewfinder far larger than any earlier Barnack, with bright frames for 50mm and 90mm and parallax correction
  • A film reminder dial on the back — an idea taken from the M3
  • LEICA engraved on the front of the body: the first Leica to carry the maker's name there

Chrome (Wetzlar):

  • Chrome-plated brass top housing

Ernst Leitz Canada (ELC):

  • Ernst Leitz Canada markings; assembled at Midland, Ontario

Swedish military, three crowns (black arctic):

  • Three crowns engraved; black finish

Bayonet mount:

  • An M bayonet in place of the 39mm thread, on a Barnack body

Serial-range notes

825001–826000
1,000 cameras dated 15 June 1956 — a precise day rather than a year, and a full year before the model's usual introduction date.
825001 and 825015
Flagged as IIg cameras: a rangefinder-less variant the Leica Wiki calls rare and does not otherwise describe. Its note prints 825001 twice, once as a IIIg block start and once as a IIg, so one of the two entries is wrong.
934241
Flagged as a IIIg made at Wetzlar (ELW) inside a Canadian-marked range.

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on perforated 35mm cine film, 36 exposures
Finder (main)
Enlarged optical viewfinder with parallax-corrected bright frames for 50mm and 90mm · no rangefinder image
Finder (rangefinder)
Coupled split-image rangefinder with a separate eyepiece
Shutter
focal plane, cloth · 1s – 1/1000 and B, with the geometric series of the late IIIf
Designed by
Adam Wagner — camera · Wilhelm Stein — camera · Friedrich Gath — camera
Dimensions
136 × 39 × 65 mm
Country
Germany
Original price
US$186 body, $244.50 with the 5cm f/3.5 Elmar, $342 with the 5cm f/2 Summicron (1957 list, Mike Eckman)

Figures we worked out rather than found: The four ELC blocks in the serial list total at least 1,780 Canadian-assembled cameras · About 4.3% of the model is identifiable as Canadian from the serial table alone

Where sources disagree

First year
  • 1957 (Leica Wiki, production era)
  • 1956 — its own serial list opens with 1,000 cameras dated 15 June 1956, and lists four more 1956 blocks

Better supported: 1956 for manufacture

Nearly 11,000 cameras in the list carry 1956 dates, which is too many to explain as pre-production.

What reviewers say

History

The IIIg exists because people had lenses. The M3 arrived in 1954 with a bayonet, a combined viewfinder and rangefinder, and every argument on its side; the screw mount was finished as a design direction on the day it appeared. But there were thirty years of screw lenses in circulation and customers who had no intention of replacing them, so Leitz spent 1956 and 1957 putting the M3’s best idea into a Barnack body and sold 41,583 of the result.

The idea is the viewfinder. Every earlier Barnack framed through a small squinting window; the IIIg’s is large, with bright frames for 50mm and 90mm that shift as the lens is focused to correct parallax. It still has two eyepieces — this is a Barnack body, and the rangefinder keeps its own window — so it does not do what the M3 does. It does everything else the M3 does that could be fitted into this shape. There is a film reminder dial on the back, borrowed outright, and for the first time the name LEICA is engraved on the front of the camera.

It is also the first screw Leica that Oskar Barnack did not design. He had been dead twenty years; the IIIg is credited to Adam Wagner with Wilhelm Stein and Friedrich Gath.

Around the ordinary chrome cameras sit the ones worth stopping for. Ernst Leitz Canada assembled a substantial share at Midland — four identifiable blocks in the serial list, 380 plus 400 plus 800 plus 200, so at least 1,780 cameras, about one in twenty-three. A black three-crown version was made for the Swedish military and is the most valuable regular-production screw Leica there is: the Leica Wiki records one at €56,000 in 2015, against a few hundred for a chrome body. And a few were built with an M bayonet instead of the thread, which is the oddest object in the whole range — the camera the M3 superseded, wearing the M3’s mount.

Two entries in the serial list contradict each other. Serial 825001 is printed both as the first camera of a 1,000-strong IIIg block and, in a footnote, as one of two rare IIg cameras — a rangefinder-less variant the page mentions and never explains. One of those two statements is wrong, and the page does not say which.

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 IIIg
Leica IIIg beside a Contax IIa — jiulong, via Openverse (flickr) (BY-SA 2.0)
Leica IIIg
Leica IIIg advertisement, 1957 — Nesster, via Openverse (flickr) (BY 2.0)

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $1,100 across 29 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $750–$1,500). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 4 days: unchanged from $1,100.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-09-11$1,100$750–$1,50029
2026-09-10$1,100$750–$1,50030
2026-09-09$1,100$330–$1,50031
2026-09-06$1,100$130–$1,50032

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

Show 65 more listings

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

Related: Leica Ig · Leica IIIf · Leica M3

Lenses for this body: Elmar 5cm f/2.8 · Summaron 2.8cm f/5.6 · Summaron 3.5cm f/2.8 · Summicron 35mm f/2 (v1, eight elements) · Summicron 50mm f/2 (v1 collapsible · v2 rigid and Dual Range) · Summilux 50mm f/1.4 (v1, 1959) · Super-Angulon 21mm f/4

Sources (6)

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.