The Leica CL is a 35 mm compact rangefinder camera made by Leica with interchangeable lenses in the Leica M mount. It was developed in collaboration with Minolta and appeared in April 1973. It was released in the Japanese market in November 1973 as the Leitz Minolta CL. Both the Leica CL and Leitz Minolta CL were manufactured in Japan.
The Leica CL has a vertical-running focal plane shutter, with cloth curtains, giving ½ to 1/1000 speeds. There i...
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The Leica CL is a 35 mm compact rangefinder camera made by Leica with interchangeable lenses in the Leica M mount. It was developed in collaboration with Minolta and appeared in April 1973. It was released in the Japanese market in November 1973 as the Leitz Minolta CL. Both the Leica CL and Leitz Minolta CL were manufactured in Japan.
The Leica CL has a vertical-running focal plane shutter, with cloth curtains, giving ½ to 1/1000 speeds. There is a through-the-lens CdS exposure meter mounted on a pivoting arm just in front of the shutter, like the Leica M5. The exposure is manual and the shutter is mechanical. The shutter speeds are visible in the finder. The finder's framelines are for a 40mm, 50mm or 90mm lens. The 40mm frameline is always present and the 50mm or 90mm frame line is automatically selected upon mounting of the appropriate lens.
Today the CL is a superbly compact and quite cheap camera on which to mount M lenses, but it does not have a rangefinder as precise as that...
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