Apart from the price – €22,000, or $29,000 – all you need to know about the photographic ambitions for Leica's new M9 Titanium special edition is in this paragraph:

[T]he Leica logo has been restyled and is elaborately hand-engraved in pure resin, inlaid with white enamel, sealed with clear varnish and then polished and positioned centrally - directly above the lens.

Yup, a whole paragraph about the hand-made logo – just the thing to get a collector's acquisitive juices a-flowin'. There are actually some interesting innovations in the Walter de'Silva-designed camera, but these will go unnoticed by actual photographers as this M9 is not designed for them.

As you will guess from the name, the camera (along with its accompanying Summilux-M 35mm ƒ1.4 aspherical lens) is made from titanium. If you look at the comparison image above, you'll see that the body is also a lot cleaner and more streamlined (appropriate, as de'Silva works for Audi). Gone is the little window that lets light illuminate the famous bright-line viewfinder, replaced by an LED-lit frame in the viewfinder. Also missing are the two strap-lugs, replaced by a hand-strap, which eliminates the need for the leather grip on the camera's right-side.

Finally, and perhaps best, is a new holster which slings over a shoulder and around the waist (pictured below). This holds the M9 vertically at your side, ready to be yanked out by that strap. Fortunately, this holster is included with the kit. One small note, considering the designer's day-job. You could actually buy a brand-new Audi A3 for less than this camera.

It's hard to know what Leica's engineers think about this. On the one hand, the M9 special edition brings some very clever additions to the camera. On the other hand, it is clearly a product of the marketing department, and will go straight from store to storage case or bank vault. If I had designed this, I'd be pissed that nobody could use it. It would be like someone paying me a fortune to write a post here on Gadget Lab and then filing it away for nobody to read. Wait. That sounds pretty good...

Leica M9 Titanium [Leica]

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