The key design goal of the R8 project was to design and build a new 35mm single lens reflex camera as if it were an entirely new type of camera product. This massive investment of time and resources into designing an SLR camera was a wild departure for Leica, a company which hadn’t designed their own SLR for twenty years (the R3 through R7 were much more traditional SLR cameras which Leica built around chassis provided by Minolta). This long design cycle was chiefly led by industrial designer Manfred Meinzer, with assistance from Alfred Hengst, and a team of designers who were largely new to Leica or pulled from outside of the camera world. What is the Leica R8?ĭesign of the Leica R8 began in 1990, with public availability finally occurring in 1996. *In 1986, Leitz changed their name to Leica and moved their manufacturing from Wetzlar to Solms, Germany – they moved back to Wetzlar in 2014. And though it’s definitely not perfect, and it may still look weird in 2020, and though it’s not necessarily better than the best professional-grade cameras from Canon and Nikon, the EOS-1V and Nikon’s F6, it certainly deserves a mention whenever we talk about really great 35mm SLRs. This suggests that the Leica R8, while arguably ugly, might just be an excellent camera. From the day it was unveiled at Photokina in 1996, the R8 has been maligned because of its looks, with some contemporary reporters going so far as to dub it “the Hunchback of Solms.”* What’s most informative about this nickname, however, is that it all but disappeared after these same reporters spent some time shooting and reviewing the R8. And when I say “weird looking,” I’m being diplomatic.
Let’s get it out of the way – the Leica R8 is a weird looking camera.
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