Leica Camera AG

What they do

Leica Camera AG designs and builds cameras, lenses, binoculars and rifle scopes, and licenses its name and optical know-how to smartphone makers. Its roots go back to the optical institute founded by Carl Kellner in Wetzlar in 1849, which Ernst Leitz took over in 1869. The company moved to nearby Solms in 1986, when it adopted the Leica name, and returned to Wetzlar in 2014, where the Leitz Park campus houses production and a visitor centre.

Why it matters

Oskar Barnack's Leica I, presented at the Leipzig Spring Fair in 1925, was among the first practical cameras to use standard 35 mm cinema film with a 24 by 36 mm frame. A small, quiet camera with excellent lenses changed how photographers worked, making reportage and street photography possible on a new scale. The M3 of 1954 introduced the Leica M bayonet and a combined rangefinder and viewfinder. The M system has continued ever since, now in digital form, with lenses from the 1950s still usable on new bodies.

Products to know

• Leica M: the rangefinder system launched with the M3 in 1954.
• Leica Q: compact full-frame cameras with fixed lenses.
• Leica SL: mirrorless system cameras.
• Sport optics: binoculars and rangefinders.

The German angle

Wetzlar is one of Germany's historic optics towns, and Leica remains its best-known name. The company was delisted from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in 2012 and is privately owned by Andreas Kaufmann's ACM Projektentwicklung and Blackstone. Note that Leica Microsystems, the microscope business, is a separate company owned by the US group Danaher.