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

Leica M4

Ernst Leitz · Leica M mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film, loaded through the base onto a fixed three-pronged spool · 1967

Also known as: Leica M4 · Leica M4-M · Leica KE-7A · Leitz M4 · ライカM4

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Chrome Leica M 1967–1975 — 47,522 cameras (Leica Wiki)
Black chrome Leica M 1971–1975 — 6,775 cameras (Leica Wiki)
Black lacquer Leica M 1967–1975 — 4,889 cameras (Leica Wiki)
Olive lacquer Leica M 1970–1970 — 31 cameras, serials 1266101–1266131
Motor-capable (M4-M) Leica M 1968–1975 — 855 cameras (Leica Wiki)
Ernst Leitz Canada Leica M 1967–1975 — 650 cameras (Leica Wiki)
KE-7A (US military) Leica M 1972–1972 — No figure published
Jubilee (50 Jahre) Leica M 1975–1975 — 1,750 cameras (Leica Wiki)
  1. Leitz Photographica dates the olive run to a single day: all 31 olive M4 cameras were delivered to the West German military on 28 December 1970, and some of them carry no Bundeswehr engraving at all. Auction 46, lot 239 — body 1266123, graded A/B, engraved Bundeswehr on the back of the top plate and sold with Elmar 2.8/50mm number 2473084 — realised €456,000 including buyer's premium against an estimate of €240,000–280,000 and a €120,000 start.
  2. The record stands higher still. An olive Bundeswehr M4 took €540,000 including buyer's premium at the 41st Leitz Photographica Auction on 26 November 2022, against an estimate of €300,000–350,000; the auction house called it the highest price ever paid for a military-green M4 and likely the most expensive military camera ever sold at auction. An olive M3 in the same sale realised €228,000 and a green ever-ready case for the M4 €18,000.
  3. Leitz Photographica's own lot descriptions do not agree with each other on the size of the olive run: catalogue entries in Auctions 27 and 28 say thirty M4 cameras were finished in olive green for the Bundeswehr within numbers 1266101–1266131, while the later entries in Auctions 41 and 46 say thirty-one, some without the engraving.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • A rewind crank angled out of the top plate, in place of every earlier M's knob
  • A fixed three-pronged take-up spool: film is dropped in rather than threaded onto a removable spool
  • Frames for 35, 50, 90 and 135mm in the M2's 0.72× finder

Chrome:

  • Chrome-plated brass

Black chrome:

  • Black chrome plating, which does not brass at the edges the way lacquer does

Black lacquer:

  • Black paint over brass, listed in the serial tables as Schwz Lackiert

Olive lacquer:

  • Olive paint

Motor-capable (M4-M):

  • Baseplate coupling for the Leica motor; listed in the tables as M4 mot

Ernst Leitz Canada:

  • Canadian markings; assembled at Midland

KE-7A (US military):

  • Black finish, US military markings, supplied with the ELCAN 50mm f/2

Jubilee (50 Jahre):

  • Anniversary engraving marking fifty years since the Leica I of 1925

Serial-range notes

1185001–1185150
100 motor-capable cameras — the first M4-M block, in 1968.
1266101–1266131
The 31 olive cameras, a block exactly as wide as its batch.
1185270
Flagged inside an M4 block as a black-paint Leica M1 — the same camera the M1's own page calls out from the other direction.
1175001–1443170
60,691 numbers assigned across 34 rows, 1967–1975 — 1,474 more than the four finish counts on the same page add up to.
the ELC blocks
Canadian-marked rows total 1,450 cameras, against the 650 the model page gives for ELC production. The table is the harder evidence: those rows are individually dated blocks.

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film, loaded through the base onto a fixed three-pronged spool
Finder
Combined viewfinder and coupled rangefinder, parallax corrected · 0.72× magnification · 35mm, 50mm, 90mm, 135mm framelines · automatic, selected by the lens · automatic parallax correction
Base length
68.5 mm
Effective baselength
49.32 mm
Shutter
focal plane, rubberised cloth · 1s – 1/1000 and B
Designed by
Heinrich Janke — camera · Hans-Kurt Uellenberg — camera
Country
Germany

Figures we worked out rather than found: 47,522 + 6,775 + 4,889 + 31 = 59,217 cameras across the four finishes · The serial table assigns 60,691 numbers — 1,474 more than the finishes account for · ELC blocks total 1,450 against a stated 650: the model page understates Canadian production by more than half · Black in any form is 19.7% of the M4, against 2.0% of the M2 and 0.57% of the M3 · The 31 olive cameras are 0.05% of the model

What reviewers say

History

The M4 is the M that stopped changing its mind. It takes the M2’s 0.72× finder and adds the 135mm frame, so all four focal lengths a rangefinder can reasonably handle are there; it replaces the rewind knob with an angled crank; and it throws out the removable take-up spool that every Leica since 1925 had used in favour of a fixed three-pronged one that the film leader simply drops into. Loading a Leica had been a party trick since Barnack. After 1967 it was quick.

Nothing else about it is new, and that is the point. Photographers who argue about which M to own usually end up here, because the M4 is where the line stopped adding and stopped subtracting.

It is also the most varied M to collect. Chrome accounts for 47,522 cameras, black chrome for 6,775, black lacquer for 4,889 and olive lacquer for exactly 31 — a block of thirty-one numbers containing thirty-one cameras, which is as clean as anything in these tables ever gets. Nearly a fifth of the model is black in one finish or the other, against two per cent of the M2 and half a per cent of the M3, so the black M4 is the first that is genuinely a production colour rather than a special order. Ernst Leitz Canada built 650, and 855 cameras were made motor-capable.

Then there is the KE-7A, built for the US armed forces in black with the ELCAN 50mm f/2 from Leitz Canada — a camera designed to work in dust and cold, and now collected as a set with the lens it was issued with. The Jubilee edition of 1,750 cameras closed the model in 1975, marking fifty years since the Leica I.

One entry in the serial list is worth noting for what it says about these tables generally. Camera 1185270, sitting in the middle of an M4 block, is a black-paint Leica M1 — and the M1’s own page calls out the same camera from its side. The two pages agree, which after the Barnack tables is a small relief.

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 M4
Leica M4 with the Summicron 50mm — ElioAngelo, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Leica M4
Leica M4, top plate: the canted rewind crank — Christopher Robin Roberts, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $2,400 across 25 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $2,000–$3,000). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 2 days: down 4% from $2,500.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-09-11$2,400$2,000–$3,00025
2026-09-06$2,500$2,000–$3,00030

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

Show 62 more listings

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

Related: Leica M2 · Leica M3 · Leica M4-2 · Leica M4-P · Leica M5 · Leica MD · Leica MDa

Lenses for this body: ELCAN 50mm f/2 · ELCAN 66mm f/2 · Elmarit-M 135mm f/2.8 (v1, with spectacles) · Elmarit-M 135mm f/2.8 (v2, 1964) · Elmarit 28mm f/2.8 (v1, 1965) · Elmarit 28mm f/2.8 (v2, 1972) · Elmarit 9cm f/2.8 · Hologon 15mm f/8 · Noctilux 50mm f/1.2 · Summicron 35mm f/2 (v2) · Summicron 35mm f/2 (v3) · Summicron 50mm f/2 (v3) · Summicron 90mm f/2 (v2, 1963) · Summilux 35mm f/1.4 (v2, pre-ASPH) · Summilux-M 50mm f/1.4 (v2, 1961) · Super-Angulon 21mm f/3.4 · Tele-Elmar 135mm f/4 · Tele-Elmarit 90mm f/2.8 (the fat one)

Sources (5)

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.