Oskar Barnack's private Leica sells for $21M – Australian Pictures

Oskar Barnack’s private Leica O-Series No. 105 has bought for 14.4 million euros ($21.7 million AUD) at public sale, making it the most costly digicam ever bought. 

Sold on the latest Leitz Photographica Auction, Barnack’s Leica bought for almost 5 occasions its highest estimation, and in doing so smashed the earlier file of the world’s costliest digicam. That was held by an 0-Series No. 122, which bought on the 32nd Leitz Photographica Auction in 2018 for two.4 million euros (together with purchaser’s premium).

According to Leitz, the 0-Series, a batch of prototypes, holds particular attraction for collectors. Before the Leitz Camera (‘Leica’ for brief) went into sequence manufacturing within the mid-Twenties and made the 35mm format the brand new commonplace for skilled photographers, roughly 20 examples of the 0-Series had been manufactured.

Only round a dozen of them are estimated to nonetheless be in existence at present. 

This specific 0-Series No. 105 just isn’t solely distinctive due to its rarity, it was additionally one of many private cameras of Oskar Barnack – the inventor of 35mm pictures whose title adorns the viewfinder of the digicam.

Another public sale spotlight was an analogue Leica MP with the serial quantity 5630769 and matching Leica Elmar-M 1:2.8/50. The digicam and lens stem from a cooperation between Leica Camera AG and Leitz Photographica Auction, with the ornamental steel exterior elements of the digicam coated with a layer of actual gold by electroplating. It bought below the hammer for 72,000 euros. 

You can see all the outcomes from the latest public sale on the Leitz website.