WHEN ICONIC CAMERA DESIGN MEETS LEGENDARY CAR DESIGN

When Leica and Zagato – two unique brands in their own right – came together to create a new product, amazing things happened. German engineering married Italian design. The best of both worlds, right?

 

 

Even if you’re not really a photography enthusiast, the name Leica will definitely ring a bell. Few brands are as iconic as the one with the red dot. The fact that founder Oskar Barnack was one of the first to design a compact 35mm camera may have something to do with it. The same can be said of Zagato. The Milan-based design house has put its name on some of the most legendary cars the world has ever seen and, to this day, Zagato continues to come up with some of the most ground-breaking designs.

 

 

 

As with most of the cars that Zagato works on, the project started out with a donor model. The donor model in this case is the Leica M10, which is the latest iteration of the iconic Leica M-series camera featuring every conceivable modern technology combined with the style and robustness that has been Leica’s trademark for more than fifty years. Andrea Zagato set about radically changing its design without touching the general functioning of the camera. First off he replaced the leather grip and replaced it with finely grooved aluminium and added a handgrip to it to improve its ergonomics.

 

Apart from design, Zagato likes to combine his vision with a light touch, which is why he chose the materials used to create the camera which make it 70g lighter than the standard camera.

 

 

 

And last but not least, Zagato helped to develop a customised lens to go inside the camera. For the manual focus ring, he replaced the little handle with a double-bubble handle – the double-bubble being a Zagato trade mark.

 

Like everything Zagato has ever touched, exclusivity is key and a limited number of 250 cameras will be made.