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Is this Leica original,please help,thanks


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Good evening,to all members of this beautiful Forum.

My name is Mario,I am new,and I need your help please,to evaluate the originality of this Leica.

Sorry if i create a wrong topic,I don't know where to post.

Thanks to all who could help me.

2ly4qc2.jpg

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Actually. some people specifically collect the "Leica-faked" FEDs. (At appropriate prices, of course). They're like PEZ dispensers - some sophisticated, some ugly, some just - bizarre, but in any case a large variety of colors and finishes and claddings and markings. Fun.

 

And - they're named for a famous spy. Not many "Allen Dulles" or "James Bond" camera brands out there. ;)

 

(Although, on second thought, I guess "M" qualifies :D :D :D)

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I always wonder if this Leica Copies made just for fun, as gag, or to deceive someone.

 

There are two main types of Leica Copy. Firstly, there are those which illegally purport to be a Leica like the example shown above. In this case it does not look like any camera ever made by Leica. There are also those which are marked 'Leica' made to look exactly like Leicas ( from the exterior) but which are not Leicas and I saw some of these in fairly 'minty' condition being sold for ridiculously high prices  in the 'tourist trap' area of Arbat Street in Moscow last March. About a week later I saw a shop in St Petersburg filled with genuine FSU Leica Copies, such as FEDs and Zorkis. The owner of the shop explained to me that many Russian people still cannot afford vintage Leicas and were quite happy to use the FSU copies. I bought a very nice Jupiter 3 ( Zeiss Sonnar copy) from him. Leica Copies were made in many different parts of the world including the US, UK, France, Italy and Japan. Some of those look much more like a Leica than the example shown above, but all of them carry the correct name or brand of the maker such as Canon, Kardon, Leotax and Reid. Some of them are very fine cameras which copied Barnack's original brilliant design. Cameras like the one shown above also copied aspects of Barnack's design, but were largely designed to take money off unsuspecting tourists or people who had not taken the trouble to find out about what genuine Leicas look like. Some well known camera collectors have very substantial collections of the second type of 'genuine copies' and such models are often sold for large sums at Westlicht and other auctions.

 

William

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I doubt anybody makes fake Leicas from scratch; it's much easier to adapt an existing camera. Between the 30s and the 50s, Soviet factories manufactured pretty close copies of the Leica II, but they were originally not intended to deceive, and would have been engraved with FED or Zorki branding. These models are the best starting points for a faker, who just has to erase the original engravings and replace them with 'Leica' engravings. By the mid-50s, the FED and Zorki factories had started to innovate, and the designs began to evolve away from simple imitations of the Leica, though they were often uglier. These later models are also sometimes converted to 'fake Leicas', though the results are far less convincing, since the base cameras look much less like Leicas to start with! Yours appears to have started life as a Zorki C:

 

http://www.sovietcams.com/index.php?1648627993

 

It's common when converting to a fake to strip the chrome back to the brass, as here, so the camera looks a bit like a rare gold-plated Leica 'Luxus' (and I suppose saves the faker from having to re-plate if grinding off the Soviet engravings has removed the original chrome). New and exotic body coverings are also common (is that a wood veneer?).

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It probably started out like this one, which I have had repaired recently. It is now a fine picture taking machine.

 

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William

 

 

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