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The Leica I, II, and III Letter Variants
May 2026
In our previous post we covered the three Leica model families — the I (1925), II (1932), and III (1933) — that established 35mm photography as we know it. That post stuck to the big picture: how each family differs from the others. This one goes the other direction. Within each family Leica spent thirty years refining details, adding flash sync, smoothing the controls, and finally adding parallax-corrected brightlines just before the M3 arrived in 1954 and ended the screw-mount era. Those refinements are the letter variants — Ic, If, Ig, IIc, IIf, IIIa, IIIc, IIIf, IIIg, and a few rarer ones — and knowing what each one added is the difference between buying a usable shooter and buying a collector piece that gives you headaches.
What follows is a practical buyer's tour, family by family. The dates are approximate — Leica production runs overlap and many variants saw multiple sub-versions — but the broad strokes are well-established.
Leica I Family: The No-Rangefinder Bodies
Every camera in the I family shares one defining trait: no built-in rangefinder. You focus by scale, by experience, or with an accessory rangefinder slid into the cold shoe on top. That makes them more limiting than the II and III families, but it also makes them lighter, simpler, and often less expensive on the used market.
Leica I (Model A), 1925. The original. Fixed Elmar 50mm f/3.5 (or the earlier Anastigmat / Elmax on the first runs). No rangefinder, no flash sync, no interchangeable lens. Nickel-plated examples from the first couple of years are sought after by collectors; chrome bodies came later in the run.
Leica I Compur (Model B), 1926–1929. A rare variant fitted with a Compur leaf shutter in the lens rather than the focal-plane shutter. Roughly 1,500 made, mostly of interest to collectors. You'll see them on the market only occasionally and at prices to match.
Leica Standard (sometimes called Model E), 1932. The first I-body with an interchangeable lens — the 39mm screw mount that defines every later screw-mount Leica. Still no rangefinder, but lens changes are now possible. The Standard sits awkwardly between families because of this — same lens system as the II and III but the simpler I-body construction.
Leica Ic, 1949–1952. Postwar. Same die-cast body shell as the IIIc/IIc but stripped of the rangefinder. Two accessory shoes on top let you mount a viewfinder finder and a separate rangefinder if you want. Speeds 1/30 to 1/500 (early) or 1/25 to 1/1000 (later). Practical and affordable.
Leica If, 1952–1956. The Ic with flash sync added. Two main sub-variants: black-dial (1/30 to 1/500) and the more desirable red-dial (1/25 to 1/1000). If you're buying an If to actually use, look for the red-dial.
Leica Ig, 1957–1960. The final no-rangefinder Leica. Strap lugs, the longer "gezogen" top plate, slow-speed dial. The Ig is the most refined of the no-rangefinder bodies — and the rarest, because it was made for only three years before the screw-mount line ended entirely.
If you want a screw-mount Leica purely as a small, light scale-focus camera — for hyperfocal street shooting or as a take-anywhere body — an If red-dial or Ig is the sweet spot. You get the postwar build quality without paying for a rangefinder you weren't going to use.
Leica II Family: Rangefinder, No Slow Speeds
The II family is the smaller of the rangefinder lineages. Every II has a coupled rangefinder, interchangeable lenses, and no slow shutter speeds below 1/20 (or 1/25 on later bodies). If you don't need to shoot indoors hand-held, you don't necessarily need a III — a II is lighter, simpler, and often cheaper.
Leica II (Model D), 1932–1948. The original rangefinder Leica. The body shell evolved over the long production run, but the basic feature set — rangefinder, viewfinder, no slow speeds, no flash — stayed put. Nickel-trim examples from the early 30s are collector grade; chrome bodies from the late 30s and 40s are more abundant and more practical.
Leica IIc, 1948–1951. Postwar simplified body. Same die-cast shell as the IIIc but without slow speeds and without flash sync. Modest production run — fewer than 10,000 made. A bargain in the screw-mount Leica world if you find a clean one.
Leica IId, 1951–1952. The IIc with a self-timer added. Very small production run — a few thousand. You'll see them listed occasionally and they generally sell at a small premium over the IIc.
Leica IIf, 1951–1956. The IIc with flash sync. Like the If, there are black-dial and red-dial sub-variants — black runs 1/30 to 1/500, red runs 1/25 to 1/1000. The IIf is by some margin the most common II-family body on the used market and is a credible shooter if you don't mind the absence of slow speeds.
Note that there's no IIa, IIb, IIe, or IIg — the II family was simpler than the III family, and Leica didn't apply every refinement to it. The model jumps from II to IIc because Leica reset the lettering when the postwar die-cast body arrived.
Leica III Family: The Workhorses
The III family is where Leica did most of its refining. Six major letter variants and an entire war's worth of small changes inside each one. Of all the screw-mount Leicas, this is the family people buy most often as shooters because the combination of slow speeds, rangefinder, and (in later variants) flash sync is genuinely useful for general-purpose photography.
Leica III (Model F), 1933–1939. The original. Slow speeds via the front dial, diopter adjustment on the rangefinder, strap lugs. Two separate eyepieces still — one for the rangefinder, one for the viewfinder. Top speed 1/500. Chrome bodies are common; nickel-trim examples are scarce.
Leica IIIa (Model G), 1935–1940. The single change is significant: top shutter speed bumped from 1/500 to 1/1000. Everything else identical to the III. The IIIa was the workhorse of photojournalists through the late 1930s — a lot of historically important photographs were taken with one.
Leica IIIb, 1938–1940. The two eyepieces are moved much closer together. You still focus through one and frame through the other, but the eye-shift between them is much smaller. Subtle but real ergonomic improvement. Production was disrupted by the war, so IIIb examples are not common.
Leica IIIc, 1940–1951. Major construction change: the body shell becomes a one-piece die-casting, replacing the multi-piece assembly of earlier models. The body is slightly longer (about 3mm) to accommodate this. The IIIc was made through the war and into the postwar period — early war-era bodies (sometimes called "war-time" IIIc) sometimes have additional collector interest. As a shooter, the IIIc is reliable, common, and inexpensive.
Leica IIId, 1940–1946. The IIIc with a self-timer added. Very rare — a few hundred made. Almost entirely a collector item; you'll rarely see one come up at all.
Leica IIIf, 1950–1956. The IIIc with flash sync. Three sub-variants in order of production: black-dial (1950–52, speeds 1/30 to 1/500), red-dial (1953–54, speeds 1/25 to 1/1000), and red-dial with self-timer (1954–56). The red-dial variants are the most desirable shooters. The IIIf is the highest-production screw-mount Leica of all — more than 184,000 were made — so they're common on the used market and prices are reasonable for clean ones.
Leica IIIg, 1957–1960. The final screw-mount Leica and the most refined. Important additions: the viewfinder now has parallax-corrected brightlines for 50mm and 90mm lenses, a major step toward the M3 (which arrived in 1954 in parallel). The top plate is larger to fit the new viewfinder, the slow-speed dial is restyled, and the camera feels closer to a modern rangefinder in use. Only about 42,000 were made before Leica shut down the screw-mount line, so prices run higher than the IIIf. For a screw-mount shooter the IIIg is the best of the lot — and the most expensive.
What's on the Market Right Now
A current-inventory snapshot for the variants discussed above, as of May 2026 across active UsedCameraTracker listings:
I family — 44 Ic (median $686), 51 If (median $698), 25 Ig (median $1,145). The Ig is meaningfully scarcer and trades at a premium.
II family — 19 IIc (median $617), 5 IId (median $1,396), 69 IIf (median $599). The IIf dominates the II-family supply.
III family — 101 IIIa (median $639), 32 IIIb (median $697), 156 IIIc (median $792), 96 IIIg (median $1,087), and 279 IIIf bodies (median $674) — the IIIf is by a wide margin the most-listed screw-mount Leica in our database.
Which One to Buy
For practical use, the variants that come up most often as the buyer-friendly sweet spots are:
IIIf red-dial — the most-produced, most-supported, most-serviced screw-mount Leica. Flash sync if you want it, 1/1000 top speed, full slow speeds. Service parts are still available. Expect $400–$900 for a clean one with a recent CLA.
IIIc — same body and feature set as the IIIf minus the flash sync. Slightly cheaper. Often the best price-to-condition ratio in the screw-mount market.
IIIg — the most refined screw-mount, with parallax-corrected brightlines that genuinely change how the camera feels to shoot. Expect $1,200–$2,500 for a clean one. Worth the premium if you intend to use it.
If red-dial — the bargain entry into screw-mount Leica. No rangefinder, but the build quality and feel are identical to a IIIf. Around $300–$600 for clean examples.
What to avoid as a first buy:
Early nickel-trim bodies of any family — these are collector pieces and prices reflect that. They're not necessarily better shooters.
I Compur (Model B), IIId, and other rarities — interesting cameras but expensive and harder to service.
Anything described as "untested" with no recent CLA, unless you're prepared to budget $250–$400 to have one done. Eighty- to hundred-year-old shutters do not run accurately without service.
One Note on Lenses
The 39mm screw mount that every II, III, and Standard / Ic / If / Ig accepts is one of the longest-lived camera mounts in photographic history. Lenses made for the Leica II in 1932 fit a Leica IIIg from 1960, a Leica M3 with a thread adapter, and even modern Leica M digital bodies the same way. If you buy a screw-mount body, you have access to a deep and varied lens ecosystem — collapsible Elmars from the 1930s, Russian copies of those same lenses from the postwar Soviet years (FED and Zorki bodies typically came with Soviet-made Industar or Jupiter lenses, copies of Zeiss and Leitz optical designs), 1950s Canon and Nikon RF lenses (yes, those mount too), and modern Voigtländer and Zeiss optics. Browse the LTM lens listings on UsedLensTracker to see the range — you can fit any of them on any of the bodies in this post.
That ecosystem is part of the appeal of buying into screw-mount Leica. The camera is the gateway. The lenses are where the fun lives.
Browse the UsedCameraTracker listings for any of these variants by selecting the model from the dropdown — every variant covered in this post has its own bucket, so you can compare prices and conditions across our 1,500+ active screw-mount Leica listings.
