This Leitz, Leica R4 is a continuation of a line of Single Lens Reflex cameras first introduced by Leitz in 1964. A casual glance in your local photographic equipment store at the time would have revealed a worrying trend. The majority of the European manufacturers were simply gone. Virtually nothing English remained and the old German brands had vanished, largely absorbed into VEB Pentacon out of East Germany pumping out Prakticas. The Japanese had arrived, affordable Pentax Spotmatics and the hefty but capable Nikon F was eating into the press photographer market, a Leica stronghold. If that wasn't enough, there were many capable compact Japanese rangefinder cameras to satisfy the cheaper end of that market, not to mention Zorkis and Feds from the USSR. It must have looked very ominous for Leitz.

Although a rangefinder specialist, Leitz entered the SLR market in 1964 to head off the competition, or at least join in with a camera they called the Leicaflex. Whilst the Leica rangefinders were mimicked, copied or just supplied styling cues, it was never to be with their SLRs, they always seemed to be a tad behind the curve. One aspect was exceptional at least, the viewfinders were spectacularly bright. Roll on a few years to 1980 and the Leicaflex had evolved into this R4. Initially it didn't go too well, there being electronic issues with cameras, reportedly up to serial 1600000. It's certainly well built and the viewfinder inherits the super bright screen and prism of the predecessors. Construction is of course a cast body with pressed top and bottom. The shutter is a electrically governed vertically running metal blind, power supplied by two LR44s. Should you find yourself with a flat battery without a spare, the camera will function on the 100th sec. setting as a manual camera. The finish is, of course, typically Leitz - so beautiful, but wasn't produced in the usual factory, this example being built in Portugal. In company with many consumer cameras of this era, it has foam rubber light seals that deteriorate into a sticky mush. The seal around the film ident window is made of the same material and can be the source of a light leak, as can be seen in this camera's gallery.

This particular example was gifted to the museum by Claire Saunders in memory of her brother Stephen along with several other cameras from his collection in 2025. This one required new light seals after a first test film. We don't have a lens for it though, so it has a Tamron fitted with a suitable adaptor.

View other 35mm SLR cameras in this collection.