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

Leica minilux zoom

Leica · Fixed lens · 24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back · 1998

Also known as: Leica Minilux Zoom · Leica minilux zoom 18036 · ライカ ミニルックス ズーム

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
minilux zoom, titanium (order no. 18 036) 35mm compact 1998 — No figure published, and no serial block can be isolated for it — see the serial notes below, which are the whole problem
minilux zoom, black 'Bogner' edition (order no. 18 060) 35mm compact 1999–1999 — A limited set; no quantity published
  1. Lowercase by Leica's own styling, as on the minilux it grew from: sold as the Leica minilux zoom, never Minilux Zoom. The capitalised form is an alias for search, not the name.
  2. The serial evidence for this camera is not thin, it is contradictory, and that is the entry's one genuinely new thing to say. Three known minilux zoom bodies sit inside three blocks that Leica's own published serial list labels Minilux, R8 and CM Zoom respectively. No block in that list is labelled Minilux Zoom at all. The Leica Wiki, having compiled this, gives the total assigned to the model between 1998 and 2006 as unknown, and declines to add the blocks up. Nobody can currently say how many were made, and nobody can currently date one from its number either.
  3. The zoom is the one camera in the family that keeps its settings, and the two sources that describe the behaviour flatly contradict each other. Leica's own archived product page advertises storing preferred functions permanently. Joshua Wilfred Sekar, reviewing the camera at joshfred.com on 21 February 2026, names the retained settings: flash mode and exposure compensation, held across a power cycle. Kamerastore's side-by-side of the three Leica compacts says all three forget the flash mode at power-off. Flash mode is the function both name, which rules out the reconciliation this entry previously offered — that the memory covers only what the photographer chose to store. One of the two accounts is wrong and nothing consulted here decides which.
  4. Leica sold it as a Highlight Set, order number 18 048: camera, case, battery, an album, a Faber-Castell pencil and the LEICA CF flash unit, 18 541. The pencil is not a joke on the company's part; it is on the archived product page.
  5. Pope John Paul II was presented with a minilux zoom in 1999, reported in Popular Photography that October. It is the sort of detail that survives because nothing else about the camera's distribution was written down.
  6. The external flash is metered oddly. When the CF is fitted the camera suppresses the internal unit, assumes a guide number of 20 in metres, and sets the aperture from the measured subject distance rather than from any reading of the flash — which means a third-party flash of a different guide number is being exposed for a light output it does not have. Sol Campbell set this out on photo.net in October 2000 and it has not been contradicted since.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • No aperture priority. The minilux offers it and the zoom does not — the dial that would have set the aperture sets the focal length instead
  • Hot shoe, and the LEICA CF flash sold alongside it: guide number 20 in metres at ISO 100 against 13 for the built-in unit
  • Zooming finder, 0.33× at 35mm to 0.57× at 70mm, covering about 83% of the frame
  • Top shutter speed 1/250, against 1/400 on the non-zoom minilux
  • 375 g without a battery — 45 g heavier than the minilux, and visibly thicker at 44 mm
  • Minimum focus 0.7 m, the same as the minilux despite the longer end of the zoom

minilux zoom, titanium (order no. 18 036):

  • All-titanium surface with no leather panels anywhere; the minilux and the CM both have leather
  • A lens barrel that projects from the body and takes a separate cap
  • An ISO hot shoe on the top plate
  • The lower coaxial dial drives the zoom instead of selecting the aperture

minilux zoom, black 'Bogner' edition (order no. 18 060):

  • Black titanium paint with a matching black Bogner case

Serial-range notes

2435801–2455800
20,000 numbers that Leica's published list assigns to the Minilux and dates 1998. The Leica Wiki's minilux zoom page records body 2445882, inside this block, as a Minilux Zoom. Either the list's product label is wrong or the two models were numbered together.
2475301–2477300
2,000 numbers that Leica's list assigns to the R8, an SLR. Body 2475547, inside the block, is recorded as a Minilux Zoom.
2967801–2982800
15,000 numbers that Leica's list assigns to the CM Zoom and dates 2003. Body 2968893, inside the block, is recorded as a Minilux Zoom.

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back
Finder
Real-image zooming finder with markings for the autofocus field, parallax compensation at close range and the panorama format; LED displays for flash, focus and metering · 83% coverage · no rangefinder image
Shutter
electronically controlled leaf shutter · 1/250 to 99 s, plus B and T; the SLOW and flash-off modes switch to B automatically. English Wikipedia's family infobox gives 1–1/400 for the whole minilux line, which is the non-zoom figure — see `disputed` · self-timer
Film advance
motorised loading, advance and rewind, with mid-roll rewind
Back
hinged; date imprinting only with the accessory databack
Meter
Centre-weighted, with the metering angle following the focal length. Exposure compensation −2 to +2 EV in 1/2 EV steps, and an exposure series fired by holding the release down. DX film speed ISO 25–5000; non-DX and slower films default to ISO 100.
Designed by
Meinzer Manfred — camera design, credited alone by the Leica Wiki where the minilux is credited to Schaefer with Meinzer
Weight
375 g
Dimensions
124 × 69 × 44, or 47.5 deep with the databack (Leica Wiki) mm
Country
Japan
Accessories
LEICA CF flash unit, order no. 18 541 — guide number 20 (m, ISO 100) · Highlight Set 18 048: camera, case, battery, album, Faber-Castell pencil and the CF flash · Databack · Panorama Adapter

Magnification runs 0.33× to 0.57× across the zoom range, so it is narrower than the minilux's 0.35× at the wide end and wider at the long end. Kamerastore describes the eyepiece as physically larger than the minilux's and about the same apparent size.

Where sources disagree

First year
  • 1998 (English Wikipedia; Pascal Heyman, Leica Pages; Kamerastore)
  • 1999–2006 as the production era (Leica Wiki)

Better supported: 1998

Three independent sources give 1998 and one of them, Heyman, is the Leica Wiki's usual neighbour on catalogue matters. The Leica Wiki's own serial page attributes a 1998-dated block to a Minilux Zoom body, which argues against a 1999 start on its own evidence. `year` is set to 1998 on that basis rather than left open.

Speeds, fastest
  • 1/250 (Leica Wiki, from Leica's technical data; Kamerastore, which measured the difference against a minilux in hand)
  • 1–1/400 + B (English Wikipedia's minilux infobox)

Better supported: 1/250

Not really a conflict of evidence. Wikipedia's infobox covers the whole minilux family in one row and prints the non-zoom figure; the article body does not claim 1/400 for the zoom. Recorded because the infobox is what a search returns.

Exposure modes
  • Program only, with shift; the aperture-priority mode of the minilux is gone (English Wikipedia; Leica Wiki, whose mode list has no aperture priority; Kamerastore)
  • Program or aperture-priority (English Wikipedia's family infobox; ephotozine's specification listing)

Better supported: Program only

Same problem as the shutter speed: the infobox describes the family and the prose describes the camera. Every source that discusses the zoom specifically says the aperture-priority mode was dropped, and gives the reason — the dial that set the aperture on the minilux sets the focal length here.

Body finish
  • Titanium, as the minilux (English Wikipedia; Leica's own archived page, which says titanium body)
  • Titanium paint (Leica Wiki)

Better supported: Unresolved

A small difference with a real consequence for identification, since a painted finish wears differently from bare metal. Leica's marketing copy calls it a titanium body; the Leica Wiki's data row calls it titanium paint. Nobody consulted here has cut one open.

What reviewers say

History

The minilux zoom is filed as a variant almost everywhere and behaves like a different camera. It keeps the titanium, the leaf shutter, the 0.7 m minimum focus, the CR123A and the general shape of the minilux, and then changes the three things a photographer would actually notice. The Summarit is replaced by a 35–70mm f/3.5–6.5 Vario-Elmar of seven elements in six groups. The aperture-priority mode is gone, because the lower coaxial dial that selected the aperture now drives the zoom. And the top shutter speed drops from 1/400 to 1/250 — two-thirds of a stop — on a lens that is already a stop slower than the Summarit at its wide end, f/3.5 against f/2.4, so the two losses compound rather than cancel.

Two things were added. One is an ISO hot shoe, which the minilux does not have, sold with the LEICA CF flash: guide number 20 in metres at ISO 100 against 13 for the built-in unit. Whether it was the first on any Leica compact is a claim that gets made and that nothing consulted here supports, so it is not made on this page. The other addition is a memory — Leica’s archived page for the camera advertises storing preferred settings permanently. Here the sources contradict each other outright. Joshua Wilfred Sekar, reviewing the camera in February 2026, names flash mode and exposure compensation as the settings it holds across a power cycle; Kamerastore, testing a minilux, a CM and a zoom together, says all three forget the flash mode when switched off. Those are the same function, and the two accounts cannot both be right.

The surface is the fastest way to tell one from a minilux at a distance: the zoom has no leather anywhere, and the lens projects from the body and needs a cap. It is 375 g without a battery against 330 g, and 44 mm deep against 39 mm. The finder zooms with the lens, 0.33× to 0.57×, covering about 83% of the frame — and, like every camera in this family, shows the photographer nothing but two lamps.

The counting is worse here than on any other page in this section, and it is worse in an interesting way rather than an empty one. There is no absence of serial data; there is serial data that contradicts itself. Leica’s published serial list has no block named Minilux Zoom. The Leica Wiki, compiling numbers off known cameras, records body 2445882 inside a block the list calls Minilux and dates 1998, body 2475547 inside a block the list calls R8 — a single-lens reflex — and body 2968893 inside a block the list calls CM Zoom and dates 2003. Having assembled that, the Leica Wiki gives the model’s total assigned numbers for 1998 to 2006 as unknown and refuses to sum the blocks. The right conclusion is the one it draws: this camera cannot presently be counted, and an individual body cannot presently be dated from its number.

Nor is the launch year settled. Wikipedia, Pascal Heyman’s Leica Pages and Kamerastore all say 1998; the Leica Wiki’s own production era says 1999 to 2006, against its own serial evidence. What is documented is thinner than the specification sheet suggests: a black Bogner-set edition in 1999 with no quantity published, a Highlight Set bundled with a flash and a Faber-Castell pencil, and a minilux zoom presented to Pope John Paul II in 1999, which Popular Photography reported because there was nothing else to report.

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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 wanted — shot with a Leica minilux zoom? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

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Related: Leica minilux

Sources (12)

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.