THE "MOTHER" OF ALL LEITZ MOTION PICTURE FILM CAMERAS

The Leicina Special is, for many filmmakers, the pinnacle of Super-8 cameras. This, and the fact of carrying the magical red dot of Leitz, which drives crazy the "nouveau riche" and Chinese people, means that 1,500 euros are currently being paid for a Leicina Special and, even more, for tested units, with good cosmetic condition, and original boxes... despite the fifty years that have passed since its manufacture.

The pinnacle of Super-8 cameras from Leitz

The origin of the design of the Leicina Special comes from the times of the 8 mm, when the historic Teutonic firm introduced, in 1960, the Leicina 8S, conceived by Wilhelm Schäfer in an immortal design that would be respected years later by Willi Goldberg for the models of Super-8: a very low viewfinder that allows the use of the forehead as a support, very important in handheld shooting at a time when stabilizers were not even imagined; using the forehead as a third point of support would be, in the seventies, copied by my friend Shigeo Mizukawa for the best 8mm type S camera, the glorious Fujica ZC1000, and also by Bauer, for several of his models.

Leicina 8S led to Leicina V and the Leicina 8 SV, with an Angenieux f 1-9 7-5 to 35 mm lens, which continued to be manufactured even a couple of years after the Super-8 was introduced.

One point that Leitz, inexplicably, never changed in all this years is the handgrip design: more than uncomfortable, it is a real torture to work with when shooting documentaries with the camera hand-hold for several hours.

The Leicina 8SV is a fully automatic 8 mm motion picture camera for double 8 roll films. It features a photo resistive exposure control device, an electric motor dive for 16 and 24 f.p.s. and a reflex focusing system.

The famous red logo that drives crazy to the Chinese.

Today, the Leicina 8SV leaves its archive container to form part of the Leitz glass showcase, at the Sellier Film Museum, of the Galician Cinematheque / IB Cinema.