The list of Leica screw-mount camera users is as illustrious as it is diverse.  The older style Leicas, from Oskar Barnack's original design, were reportedly the only camera used by Henri Cartier-Bresson.  Future filmmaker, Stanley Kubrick, used a Leica IIIf during his time as a staff photographer for Life magazine.  What was it about this camera that attracted such a range of photographers?  Generally, that's a question asked only by someone who's never used one.   With their quiet shutters, smooth controls, and compact design, these were the cameras that helped photographers produce iconic images mostly by not getting in the way.

By the time the Leica IIIf was released in 1950, the earlier Leicas had already both paved the way and set the standard for what could and should be expected from a 35mm rangefinder camera.  The IIIf took all of the best advancements from the previous models and gathered them together into one camera: a separate dial for slower shutter speeds, a self-timer, and a flash synchronization dial that allowed users to adjust the time that either the flash bulb or electronic flash would be triggered.

Separate focusing and framing windows may look a little clunky at first, but with practice and using the focusing distance scale on the lens housing, shooting with the Leica IIIf becomes nearly effortless.  In a crowd on the street, the shutter is so smooth that it is often difficult to hear at all over the ambient noise.  And while it may seem overly complicated compared to modern cameras, setting the shutter speed, aperture, and framing the image easily becomes almost second nature.

Loading film into the Leica IIIf can be a rather tricky affair.  The most efficient way to load film involves trimming the leader lengthwise, so that the film can work its way around teeth on the advance mechanism.  This is one more thing that, with practice, becomes pretty easy.

One benefit that came from owning pretty much any Leica, was that Leica would upgrade your camera for any new features that came along after your purchase.  If a customer had purchased a Leica II, but wanted the dial that allowed for slower shutter speeds, that customer could send the camera back to the factory and have it added.  Because of this customization, it's not uncommon nowadays for a Leica screw-mount camera to have a serial number that indicates a model different from the features associated with that model.  Ultimately, finding the Leica with the features the photographer wanted proved easy.  It was usually much harder to get a current owner to sell the camera than it was to find the camera in the first place.

The Leica IIIf proved to be the penultimate Barnack-style Leica.  The IIIf's production run lasted until 1956 and was quickly followed up with Leica's IIIg in 1957, which shared many of the characteristics of the Leica M3.  While the IIIg is certainly rarer, the IIIf remains one of the most sought after cameras well into the 21st century.

ar/sd