Photography Culture

This is What a Leica M3 Looks Like When Stripped Down

Chris Gampat
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08/14/2014
1 Min read

Last Updated on 08/14/2014 by Chris Gampat

Leica M3 Cutaway (5)

The Leica M3 is one of the more popular Leica M cameras around even today. Indeed, they still work and many photographers reach for them because of the lack of electronics, beautiful ergonomics, excellent build quality, and relative simplicity to them. Leicas were used by photojournalists for years, and indeed they’re very revered cameras. But images of a stripped down Leica M3 have been circulating around the web for a little while showing us the internal workings.

If you’ve ever built a working camera before (and I tried to with the Lomography Konstruktor) you’ll know that the wind level and the shutter cocking mechanism are designed to work with one another. Additionally, the shutter dial is actually an extremely complicated piece of machinery that interacts directly with the shutter mechanism. In order for it to work properly, the dial needs to be screwed in very tightly and securely.

The Leica M3 took on the bayonet M mount that we know and use today vs the older Leica screw mount. This made changing lenses easier and sometimes simpler. With an adapter, the screw mount lenses can mount to this camera.

Check out more images after the jump.

Via Shooting Film, Leica Shop Vienna’s eBay, Neotype

Leica M3 Cutaway (8)

Leica M3 Cutaway (7)

Leica M3 Cutaway (6)

Leica M3 Cutaway (5)

Leica M3 Cutaway (4)

Leica M3 Cutaway (3)

Leica M3 Cutaway (2)

Leica M3 Cutaway (1)

camera cut away leica leica m Leica M3 m mount stripped down
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.