If you look carefully at the lefthand strap lug in this photograph you can just see that it is wearing thin. The lens is a late-model 50mm f/2.8 Elmar-M collapsible. The M4-2 and M4-P models had a die-stamped top plate and no self-timer. Note the engraved top plate and the self-timer lever, matching the frameline lever with the white infill. The even rarer black-paint M4 is on the top of the tree. Conversely, Wetzlar M4s were largely in silver chrome with the result that black is normally more expensive. Canadian M4-x cameras were predominantly produced in black chrome, so the few silver chrome relicts command a small premium. It’s quite a story.Īdding to the confusion is that secondhand prices are all over the place, everything depending on which model is in focus and, above all, on the finish of the body. It’s not only the three main models, M4, M4-2 and M4-P, it’s the split manufacture between Wetzlar and Midland, Ontario, not to mention the brief sabbatical while the portly but advanced M5 rose and fell. While I have a good general knowledge of the Leica story, from Barnack to Q, the M4 saga has always been difficult to follow. Photo Frank Dabba Smithįunny he should ask that. Black chrome M4s command a premium over the more common silver chrome - and the few Canadian-made examples are rarer still. This was one of 2,500 M4s manufactured at Midland, Ontario, at the tail-end of the M4 production. The used prices at the end of the article are revealing…Ī few days ago I was asked by Amateur Photographer’s assistant editor, Geoff Harris, for background on the Leica M4 in connection with an M4 50th-anniversary article he was putting together for an up-market yachting magazine.įrank Dabba Smith’s Canadian-made M4 in black chrome. Bear in mind that this was written from the perspective of 2017. So, let’s have another look at the story of the M4. The article was subsequently published in the LHSA’s magazine and attracted great interest. We published this article at the time and it throws a light on the complicated history of the M4, a camera that was superseded by the M5 and then reinstated in Canada as the saviour of Leica. The Leica M4 was fifty years old five years ago.
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