Ur-Leica: Leica Prototype Clearly Demonstrating Purist Design
Ur-Leica went into serial production in 1925 as Leica 1 and was presented to the public at Leipzig Spring Fair in March 1925. The serial production of Ur-Leica had made some significant improvement over its prototype. The serial production, Leica 1, used a 50mm optical viewfinder which to date continues to set the standard for minimalist viewfinder design. The serial production also used a 50mm f/3.5 lens which also came to set a totally new standard for minimalist compact camera design as the lens actually collapsed into the camera body (i.e., the lens rotates down into the camera body), making the whole system very compact and portable, especially for tourists.
Contrary to bulky cameras of the time, the design implemented in Leica 1, enabled users to carry the camera in a jacket pocket and hence we see the beginning of a form of spontaneous journalistic activity that was often conducted for fun and as a hobby. Leica’s innovations are also an important hallmark of tourist photography as Leica’s simple, minimalistic design enabled people to carry a camera with ease when traveling.
After more than a century, even today you can put any one of the Leica screw mount cameras beside any one of today’s well respected semi-professional cameras, such as the 2011 revolutionary Fujifilm X100 and Fujifilm X-Pro, and immediately notice the commonalities in successful purist, minimalist design.
Fujifilm Revolutionized Digital Camera Systems in 2011 by Implementation a Purist Design and a totally revolutionary Dual Viewfinder System (Optical and Electronic Viewfinder) in a so-called Hybrid Viewfinder. The above picture shows the Fuji X100T, one of the classic purists digital camera designed in the contemporary period.