Re: Leica M11-V to be announced (Now called Leica M EV1)
Nifty Fifty wrote:
Tariq Gibran wrote: catacore wrote: 1bwana1 wrote:
Unfortunately, after speaking with some Leica people I fear that if the EV-1 performs weakly sales wise that they will see it as a mediocre concept without demand. In fact I think it will more likely be from a mediocre effort and offering on Leica's part.
Was the last true unique Leica innovation that differentiates Leica from the rest of the industry really be the range finder 75 years ago with the first M camera?
Could not agree more!
In fact I was asking myself the very same question: what was the Leica's true innovative product? And the answer must be: the M3, released some 71 years ago. Not much, after that....
Just to keep things in perspective, I do believe Leica actually invented autofocus and later sold the patent rights to Minolta. They showed a prototype at Photokina in 76' but never commercialized it as they believed their customers preferred manual focus! I would say AF was a pretty big innovation in the history of photography.
1963: Canon introduced a prototype autofocus camera, but it never went into production.
1971: Nikon developed the first functioning in-lens autofocus system.
1977: The Konica C35 AF was the first mass-produced autofocus camera.
1978: The Polaroid SX-70 Sonar OneStep was the first autofocus SLR.
1985: Minolta launched the Minolta 7000 and 9000, the first 35mm SLRs with integrated autofocus, even before competitors introduced comparable systems
Leitz patented Phase Detection AF technology in the 60's. Perhaps all these companies had various AF technologies they were working on but the patents that Leitz held are the ones closest to what is used today. If you ask Google who invented AF, it's Leica. If you question ChatGPT about the details of AF, you get this:
Leitz (Leica) and the Birth of Modern Autofocus:
Leitz (the parent company of Leica) was indeed one of the pioneers of autofocus technology — long before it appeared in consumer cameras.
📍 Key Developments:
1960s–1970s: Engineers at Ernst Leitz GmbH (Leica) in Wetzlar, Germany, developed a passive autofocus system that used phase detection — the same core principle used in today’s DSLR and mirrorless AF systems.
1976: Leitz completed a fully functioning prototype autofocus SLR called the Leica Correfot.
It used an optical beam-splitting and phase-detection system to determine focus — much more sophisticated than the active infrared systems used by others at the time (like Honeywell’s).
1978: Leitz publicly demonstrated the Leica Correfot prototype at the Photokina trade show. It worked remarkably well, but Leica’s management decided the technology was “too electronic” and didn’t fit Leica’s mechanical philosophy — so they never released it commercially.
The Connection to Minolta
After deciding not to commercialize their autofocus research:
Leitz sold or licensed their AF patents to Minolta in the late 1970s.
These patents formed part of the technical foundation for Minolta’s AF SLR system, which culminated in the 1985 Minolta Maxxum 7000 — the first truly integrated, mass-market autofocus SLR.
This collaboration also fit into a broader Leica–Minolta partnership that had already produced joint products like:
The Leica CL (manufactured by Minolta in Japan)
The Minolta XE-7 / Leica R3 and Minolta XD / Leica R4 shared designs and electronics.
🧭 So, in summary:
Year Event Key Player
1960s–70s Leitz develops advanced phase-detection AF prototypes (Correfot system) Leitz (Leica)
Late 1970s Leitz sells AF patents to Minolta Leitz → Minolta
1985 First integrated AF SLR (Maxxum 7000) released Minolta, using AF tech partly based on Leica’s research
1980s onward Minolta leads AF SLR era, later influencing Sony Alpha system Minolta → Sony
🧠 Bottom line:
You’re absolutely correct — while Honeywell and Konica commercialized autofocus first, Leitz (Leica) arguably invented the modern phase-detect autofocus system and passed that technology to Minolta, whose Maxxum 7000 became the first successful AF SLR built on those foundations.
Oct 24, 2025 at 12:02 PM
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