A new book was recently released: Barnack’s first Leica – The second life of a forgotten historic camera. Amazon US already has the book in stock (still not available at Amazon UK, Amazon Germany and Amazon France). A review of the book can be found at LHSA:
“Dr. Kisselbach’s book on this early Leica prototype, known as Barnack’s Handmuster, is a very readable, enjoyable history of what is, for all intents and purposes, the progenitor of the Null-Series Leicas. It differs from them only in that it was ostensibly hand constructed by Barnack, and because of its early date (ca. 1920) lacked some of the niceties of even that experimental series. What Dr. Kisselbach has done, and illustrated in this book, is unprecedented for any of the other early Leica prototypes, which are venerated almost as sacred objects by their owners: he has had it CLA’d, fitted with a special clutch mechanism to offset some shutter issues, and taken a prodigious number of photos with it, much as Barnack himself would have done. These photos are on color print film, are used to illustrate much of the book, and indicate how this prototype can make images almost indistinguishable from those of a modern Leica.”
The LHSA recently translated and published Ulf Richter’s book “Oskar Barnack – From the Idea to the Leica” (limited edition – only 100 copies are available):
“Ulf Richter spent years assembling the material to allow him to write this outstanding book on the life of Oskar Barnack and the development of The Camera that Revolutionized Photography. The book contains many photographs of the early Leica cameras, pictures associated with Barnack’s life, illustrations from Barnack’s workbooks, and detail drawings of the camera mechanisms. The Appendix contains copies of selected patents and an extended selection of references. An interesting fact is that the Lecia M10 is essentially the same size as the Leica I (A).”
It seems that the Leica M10: The Expanded Guide was republished on April 1st, 2018, I am not sure if any changes were made:
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More Leica books can be found here.
