By Ked · June 2026
June 2026
For most of the 1950s Leica bet that the rangefinder was the serious photographer's camera and the single-lens reflex was a fad. By the early 1960s that bet had gone badly wrong: Nikon's F had taken the professional market, the reflex let you use long lenses, macro, and fast wides that a rangefinder simply could not, and Leitz was conspicuously absent. The Leicaflex generation, three hand-built Wetzlar bodies made between 1964 and 1976, was Leica's answer. It was late, expensive, magnificently over-engineered, and ultimately too costly to keep building, which is the whole arc of this story. These are the bodies that launched the R-mount, and on the used market today they are the cheapest way to own a hand-made Wetzlar Leica.
The first Leicaflex, called the "Standard" only in hindsight to separate it from its successors, arrived in 1964, years after the Japanese SLR had matured. Leica built it the way it built everything in that era: to a standard rather than a price. It is dense, beautifully finished, and notably heavy. The mechanical focal-plane shutter runs from 1 second to 1/2000s plus Bulb, with flash sync at 1/100, and the whole camera works without a battery.
The one thing it did not do well was meter. Rather than read light through the lens, the original Leicaflex used an external CdS cell on the front of the pentaprism housing, a meter that sees a fixed angle of roughly 90mm regardless of the lens fitted. Put a 50mm or a 90mm on the body and it reads sensibly; put a 21mm or a 400mm on and the metered patch no longer matches the picture at all. The finder compounds the issue: it is bright but uses a microprism aid with no ground-glass matte across the rest of the screen, so focusing anywhere but the center is awkward. This was already behind the TTL-metered Japanese competition on the day it launched, and it is the single biggest thing to understand before buying one. Many owners today simply meter with a handheld or phone app and enjoy the body for what it is.
Leica answered the criticism quickly. The Leicaflex SL of 1968 put the meter where it belonged, behind the lens. "SL" stands for Selective Light, Leica's name for its through-the-lens selective metering: a CdS cell reads a roughly 7mm central spot of the frame at full aperture, keyed to the microprism circle in the finder, and you match a needle. This was Leica's first TTL meter in any SLR, and in fact its first TTL meter in any camera at all, and it transformed the body from a flawed curiosity into a genuine working tool. The timing is worth dwelling on, because the rangefinder-centric Leica story usually skips it: in 1968 the M cameras were still meterless, their owners clipping a selenium or CdS Leicameter onto the accessory shoe, and through-the-lens metering did not reach the rangefinder line until the M5 of 1971, three years after the SL. It then arrived in the classic compact M body only with the M6 of 1984. So the Leicaflex SL, not any M, was where Leica first put a meter behind the lens. The shutter carries over from the original, 1 second to 1/2000s plus Bulb, sync at 1/100, all mechanical.
The SL is the Leicaflex that working photographers actually shot in period, and it was made in the largest numbers of the three, which makes it the most available and least expensive today. Two practical notes for buyers: the red plastic lens-release button is a known weak point that cracks with age, and the CdS meter, now more than fifty years old, is frequently out of calibration or dead, so confirm it responds if you intend to rely on it. A rare motorized SL MOT variant was also produced for users who needed a motor drive.
The SL2 is the best of the Leicaflex line and the shortest-lived. Leica took the SL and improved the things that mattered: the meter became markedly more sensitive in low light, the finder got brighter, and, crucially, the mirror box was redesigned to clear the deeply protruding rear elements of the new ultra-wide R lenses, the 16mm Fisheye-Elmarit-R and the 19mm Elmarit-R, that the SL and original Leicaflex physically cannot accept. It takes 3-cam R lenses. Everything that made the SL good, the SL2 does better.
It also cost a fortune to make. The SL2 was so expensive to manufacture that Leica is widely reported to have sold it at a loss, and that economic reality, more than any technical shortcoming, ended the hand-built Leicaflex line after barely two years. To keep an R-mount SLR in production at a viable price, Leica partnered with Minolta, and the next R body, the electronic R3 of 1976, was built on a Minolta chassis. The SL2 is therefore the last fully Wetzlar-built Leicaflex, the end of the hand-made SLR era, which is exactly why collectors prize it.
In 1975 Leica marked fifty years since the first production Leica of 1925 with a commemorative SL2, the "50 Jahre" edition. Leica made 1,750 of them. They are engraved on the pentaprism with a "50" wreathed in oak leaves and "JAHRE" beneath, and each carries a special serial of three digits preceded by a letter from the word LEICA. Most were finished in black chrome, with a smaller number in silver chrome. A correct 50 Jahre with matching markings and box commands a clear premium over a standard SL2, and because the value rides on those engravings, it is worth checking a specific example against known references before paying the premium.
The Leicaflex bodies established the R bayonet and its evolving "cam" system, the mechanical fingers that couple a lens to the body's meter. The original Leicaflex lenses are 1-cam; the SL era brought 2-cam lenses; the SL2 reads 3-cam. Crucially this is mostly backward and forward compatible: later 2-cam and 3-cam lenses generally mount and shoot on earlier bodies, and earlier lenses mount on later ones, though metering coupling depends on the cams present, and the ultra-wide 16mm and 19mm need the SL2's mirror box. The same lenses you buy for a Leicaflex also fit every later R body and adapt to any modern Leica SL, SL2, or SL3 and other L-Mount mirrorless body via the R-Adapter L. For what to put on one, see Leica R-mount primes on UsedLensTracker.
These are among the most affordable hand-built Wetzlar Leicas in existence, and as mechanical cameras they are robust and serviceable by R specialists. The recurring weak point across all three is the meter: a CdS cell from the late 1960s or 1970s that may be dead or miscalibrated, while the shutter fires on regardless, which is how a non-working meter quietly ends up in a sale. Confirm the meter responds, listen to the shutter across all speeds, check the finder for haze and the seals for decay, and on the SL check the lens-release button. If you want the cheapest entry, the SL is the pick; if you want the most refined body and don't mind paying for collectibility, the SL2 is the one; and if you specifically want the pre-TTL, externally-metered original experience, the Standard is yours.
See live prices and condition on the per-model pages: Leicaflex, Leicaflex SL, and Leicaflex SL2, each tracked daily. For where the system went next, see Leica R Cameras Explained: The Gateway Into the Leica System and, for the mechanical revival two decades later, Leica R6 and R6.2: The Mechanical R Bodies.