Pixiq

I dunno about you, but if you’ve got seven thousand dollars to spend on a camera body, your initial thought might not be ‘rangefinder’. Nonetheless, the hand-built Leica M9 has been on waiting lists ever since it was launched – and now, Leica have teamed up with the top pencil-pusher over at Volkswagen to design an even more exclusive one, carved out of titanium.

This special edition is strictly limited to just 500 cameras worldwide, and is offered as a set together with a LEICA SUMMILUX-M 35mm f/1.4 ASPH. lens (which costs about half as much as the camera body again) , whose exterior metal components are also manufactured from solid titanium.

On the new Leica, all visible metal elements of the camera body are made from solid titanium, and then treated with a hard coating applied by a specialised company in Switzerland. Scratch-resistant, sapphire-crystal glass is used as a protective cover for the camera screen

Basically, the original Leica M9 was already the Rolls Royce of digital rangefinders; so this one is a Roller rolled in titanium and sapphire glass.

Groovy. Best start saving now; although Leica tellingly ‘forgot’ to add a price tag to the press release, which leads me to believe that I may not be the target audience of this little gem.