In the fall of 2017, Sean Cranor and I flew out to Chicago for what was then the LHSA fall conference. It was my first time attending, and at 25 I was easily the youngest person in the room. The trip carried more weight than I realized at the time and I look back at it rather fondly.
Looking back, we were deep in a secret project with Leica on the M246 Monochrom “Your Mark” Black Paint special edition, a run of just 80 cameras worldwide. While we were in Chicago, we visited our friend Nick Horween at Horween Leather, the Chicago tannery his family has run for five generations. We were there to document behind-the-scenes for the “Your Mark” project and to review the leather samples that would eventually appear on both the Oberwerth Your Mark bag and the covering of the M246 “Your Mark” camera itself.
The “Your Mark” wasn’t the only piece of black paint Leica history taking shape that fall. At the 2017 conference, LHSA announced a collaboration with Leica on a 50mm APO-Summicron-M in the classic rigid chassis style, finished in high glos black paint. The run was limited to only a handful of units worldwide. You’ll still occasionally see this lens surface in silver chrome or black chrome finish, but the black paint version has become more rare and of course more desirable.
The lens pictured here is something else entirely. It is one of only three prototypes produced before the lens entered production in 2018, and the engraving on the aperture ring, P01/03, identifies it as the very first prototype ever made.
Its provenance is largely unknown, but the lens tells its own story. Substantial brassing has already worked through the black paint, and a quiet patina has settled in across the body. This one has been used. It has been carried. The look it has earned is the kind no collector can fake.
A few details worth noting. The bottom of the lens, near the “Made in Germany” engraving, carries the LHSA emblem. Only a few years after this lens was released, LHSA rebranded as LSI, the Leica Society International, making this one of the last collaboration pieces produced under the original LHSA name. Seeing the old logo still engraved on the bottom adds another layer to Included with this lens is the original clip-on brass and black paint vented hood, and features the red lettering and markers that distinguish the edition.
For me, this lens carries the weight of a specific moment: my introduction to the Leica Society International (LSI, then LHSA), which has grown into an ongoing appreciation of their events, conferences, and culture. It also calls back to a project still in motion at the time, a visit to the Horween tannery, and a bygone era of black paint special editions tied to meaningful moments in Leica culture. For any collector, this lens carries the weight of being prototype number one of a very small run (only 100 of these where probably made). Either way, it is an exceptional piece, and a genuine part of modern Leica Historica.