Leica news, before it happens

I recently toured Owlkrown’s facility in Miami, expecting a boutique operation (their slogan is “Made in Miami”). What I found was a working machine shop.

The equipment is the part I keep thinking about. Mazak Integrex multitasking centers, plus Haas, Doosan, and Tsugami Swiss machines: capital equipment that usually earns its keep on aerospace and medical parts, running instead on camera grips, base plates, adapters, eyecups, and shutter toppers. Aluminum, solid brass, and 17-4 stainless go in as bar stock, and then each part takes coolant-on cuts, roughly a dozen tool changes, dimensional QC, and polishing before anyone will let it out.

Put plainly, that is an absurd amount of machine for an object this small. It is also the only way to hold the tolerances a Leica body demands, because the part either indexes to the camera or it does not, and no finishing step can rescue a plate cut loose.

The other half of the building is quieter. Leather cut and assembled by hand for the strap side of the catalog. One room measures tolerance in microns; another measures it by eye and feel, and the same product line comes out of both.

Previous coverage of Owlkrown products can be found here (some Owlkrown products are also sold at B&H Photo).

Here are some of the prototypes of their new modular FlexPlate for Leica SL3/S/P cameras with dual memory card & Airtag pockets:

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