The Leica IIIg was the last of the screw-mount Leica cameras. It was made from 1956 to 1960. It was the most popular “user” Leica screw-mount camera (according to McKeown’s Price Guide to Antique and Classic Cameras / 2001-2 Edition).
This is a blog about the Leica IIIg Instructions we have recently acquired. You won’t be seeing the entire instructions page-by-page. Instead you will be seeing select pages that are all reasonably unique to the IIIg. Just a warning, the book has some water damage.
In you first good look at the IIIg you are taught how to hold the camera. The stress is on holding the camera steady.
On the facing page you were shown how to hold the camera vertically two ways. Which way would you have chosen?
The reflected frame finder for the 50 mm (5 cm) adjusts automatically for parallax as you focus. It also has smaller inset corners that show the framing for the 90 mm (9 cm). There were accessory finders for other lenses you had to mount in the accessory shoe.
The rangefinder has a focus control for those with less than perfect eyesight. You are also taught how to use the rangefinder “spot” for utmost accuracy. One of the huge advantages of rangefinder cameras—as opposed to Single Lens Reflex cameras—is the ability to focus exactly in very dim light.
The viewing system of the IIIg is also quite unique, with separate but very close together focus and viewing eyepieces. From the front you can also see the viewfinder is almost centered on the taking lens’s axis.
Although just four lenses are shown the bottom right section of the page lists all 12 optics available. Note particularly the 28 mm wide is f/5.6, there are four 50 mm lenses and the 400 mm Telyt is f/5.
Some of the Leica standard 50 mm taking lenses could be collapsed. It allowed you to make the camera thinner so it could be tucked into large pockets or purses.
Being a bottom load camera the loading instructions take two pages. The Leica had a special cassette you could load from bulk film that when open inside the camera allowed the film to pass into the camera without having to pass through a felt light-trap. The Leica could be loaded with factory spooled films too.
Although it seems complicated, the two pages of the process of loading become standard quickly. It does make loading other cameras seem a lot easier!
Having two shutter speed dials (slow and fast), two types of sync required for flash bulbs (FP and M) and electronic flash (X) and incredibly two flash sync speeds to chose from makes a complicated page of instructions! Note also the film rewind set lever just to the right of the two shutter speed dials. The shutter release button also has a dot that rotates as the film is wound.
Even the Leica flash connection is unique. It locks the cable into the camera. It also places a large plug right next to your eye (just saying). Also admire the flash bracket/bulb flash unit. One of the cult attractions of Leica has always been the accessories you could add to the camera.
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