Leica is celebrating its 100th birthday by launching an entirely new camera system. Born out of a design partnership with Audi, the unibody Leica T is an APS-C-sensored minimalistic masterpiece.
Each interchangeable-lens camera starts out as a 3.5-pound brick of aluminum. After the unibody design is milled by a machine, it’s finished by hand. While the Leica T doesn’t take a century to hand-polish, it does take a very long time: 45 minutes per camera, according to the company. After the entire process is complete, that 3.5-pound hunk of metal is reduced to a sturdy 3.35-ounce frame. The unused aluminum is melted back down and reused for subsequent T-series cameras.
The new T series will sit right in the middle of Leica’s current camera hierarchy--below the company’s S series and M series, and above the Leica X and Lux lineups. It has an entirely new lens mount, but Leica says there will be a separately sold adapter that will accept Leica-M glass. With the new T-mount lenses, the camera has a focal-length multiplier of 1.5X.
The camera’s slick and spartan design touches extend to its control layout and touchscreen interface. Clutter is kept to a minimum, thanks to an on/off dial that doubles as a flash release, two unmarked dials that offer context-aware adjustments for exposure settings and programmable functions, and a drag-and-drop touchscreen menu that lets you rearrange and delete settings as part of your customized “My Camera Menu.”
Its APS-C sensor is a 16-megapixel Sony chip, and the Leica T comes with built-in Wi-Fi connectivity and a sidecar mobile app that gives you remote-control, remote live-view, and wireless image sharing. The silver version of the camera will be available first, on May 26, while a black version of the Leica T is slated for a late-July release.
One more innovative design element: The camera’s strap connectors simply click and lock into the sides of the camera body; you don’t need to tie or buckle anything. The clickable strap system was also a collaborative industrial-design effort with Audi. The Leica T comes with a black clickable strap, but different colored straps will also be available separately.
While this is a “mid-range” camera for Leica, expect to pay a premium for the marque. The Leica T won’t be available in a kit option with a lens--Leica says it's expecting the M-lens adapter to be mighty popular--but the combination of the body and a T-mount lens is expected to be around $3,600. Two T-mount lenses will be available around the late-May launch date: a 23mm/F2.0 prime lens and a 18-56mm/F3.5-F5.6 zoom lens.
Update: Pricing has just been announced for the Leica T camera and its lenses. The Leica T camera body is available for pre-order at $1,850, while each of the two lenses—the 18-56mm and the 23mm—go for $1,750 apiece. The mount adapter for Leica-M lenses is priced at $395.
