Photographer Franziska Stuenkel loves to shoot spontaneous city shots, so she needs a flexible camera that can be ready when Inspiration Strikes: her German-made Leica M11.
“I have to be very quick and cautious,” said the Berlin-based artist, capturing people's reflections through the windows, their outlines merged with the shape behind the glass.
The 51-year-old told AFP that Stuenkel's compact Leica is the ideal camera for work.
The Leica Brand is known for its pocket-sized and retro-styled equipment, which is a milestone as it is 100 years since the first commercial camera was shown to the public.
Founded by entrepreneur Ernst Leitz in 1869 in the city of Wetzlar in western Germany, Leica Company initially manufactured optical lenses and microscopes.
But it was not until 1925 that the Leica 1 camera was introduced at the Leipzig Spring Expo.
Leica Cameras continues to be the tool of choice for renowned photographers in the coming years, including legendary photographers Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Even today, pretty cameras with red dots still have their own in markets dominated by Japanese giants such as Sony, Canon and Nikon.
– “Best Photographer” –
British artist Alan Schaller said working with Leica “makes you a better photographer”.
Schaller has become so accustomed to manually adjusting aperture, shutter speed and light sensitivity that he says he can now “faster than any automatic device.”
For a hundred years, Leica cameras are still being hand-assembled at a factory in Wetzlar, north of Frankfurt.
In the dust-free assembly room, 70 workers with precision screwdrivers and anti-static tweezers are hand-made from over 600 parts of equipment.
It's a tough job “requiring a lot of experience,” said Peter Schreiner, head of camera components.
In another room nearby, the lenses are polished to less than one tenth before bonding and painting.
After a tough decade of the 2000s, Leica turned around by embracing digital cameras completely and now accounts for the vast majority of sales.
The company still made some simulation equipment – including the M6, M6, which is the cousin of the M11.
Leica CEO Matthias Harsch said sales are expected to hit a record 600 million euros ($660 million) in 2024/25, with an annual growth rate of nearly 10%.
-Leitz Phone –
Total global sales of digital cameras rose by only 4% last year to 6.8 billion euros, according to data from the GFK Consumer Research Institute in Germany.
