SEAL flashed one on a recent stroll through Central Park with his children. Dakota Fanning huddled with hers on the set of her film “Very Good Girls.” Elisabeth Shue brought hers out at the Toronto International Film Festival last year.

The latest status symbol in Hollywood, it seems, is not the 8 p.m. reservation at the Tower Bar, but the Leica M-system range finder, a retro-chic camera that has become the accessory of choice for the celebrity class on red carpets, film sets or vacation.

Let hoi polloi snap away on their iPhones. In an era when full-size cameras are supposedly becoming obsolete, stars advertise their cognoscenti credentials by being seen with a war horse of 20th-century photography that many design fans now embrace as an art object, one that you seemingly need a movie star’s budget to afford.