Leica IIIg
There you are. You're Leica in the early 1950s. You've produced some of the best and most iconic 35mm rangefinders the world has or will ever see. To top it off, you've just introduced the world to the Leica M3 and its new bayonet-style lens mounts. Do you have any more tricks up your sleeve? Yes. The Leica IIIg.
Introduced in 1957 and remaining in production through 1960, the IIIg was to be the last of the M39 screw mount bodies. It was also to be the most advanced of the series of cameras.
The IIIg still used the dual windows on the back of the camera that were common on the screw mount Leicas. The window on the left allowed for fine focusing via the camera's rangefinder. The right-side window is for framing your subjects and has two frameline options: 50mm and 90mm. In a first for Leica screw mount bodies, these lines would move to help the shooter compensate for parallax when focusing on closer subjects.
The IIIg also sports the brightest viewfinder of any screw mount Leica. Unlike many of the earlier Leicas that had a smaller viewfinder, the IIIg lets in more light and makes framing quick and easy.
The last technological change for the IIIg came with the introduction of automatic flash synchronization. Gone were the two flash ports on the back of the top plate. Instead, using flash synchronization became as easy as selecting the correct lightning bolt on the shutter speed dial.
These changes would become standard on the Leica M mount cameras, which raises the question: Was the IIIg really the last of one era of Leica or actually the first of another? In a world where both is often not an option, perhaps the Leica IIIg really has the best of each.
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