The Gizmon iCA makes your iPhone 4 or 4S look a lot like an old Leica IIIf. The case is made out of 32 different polycarbonate components, and even contains a lens mount that will allow you to use optional lenses for your iPhone camera. It’s even got a working shutter button and an optical viewfinder. So the case is not just for show (though the big fake lens in the middle is.) There’s even a tripod mount on the bottom of the case. They eventually plan on offering an external flash, a remote shutter and other accessories for the iCA as well.

The Gizmon iCA costs $65 (USD) at Four Corner Store, and it’s available in white, black and brown. The strap costs another $30 and the lenses – a macro or a fisheye, sell for an extra $45. That seems like quite a lot to spend on a case. The SuperPopCam app that is supposed to work well with the case sells for $0.99, though it’s compatible with any iPhone photo app.

[via TechCrunch]

The Leica Lens Holder M screws into the tripod mount. So you can have one lens on the camera itself and another one in reserve. The placement of the second lens also makes it useful as a handle:

Leica even suggests that “the setup could even be used as a miniature tripod.” That’s one expensive – and fragile – tripod.

You can order the Leica Lens Holder M from Amazon for $200 (USD). And get a tripod if you still don’t have one before you’re tempted to use your lens as a substitute.

[via PetaPixel]

For just $400 (USD), the gadget-pimping company will customize the color of your camera’s seven major parts – front, back, top, lens body, lens face, hot shoe insert and port door – as well as that of the lens cap. As with other ColorWare services, you can choose from a variety of colors and a glossy or soft finish.

If you’re still planning to buy a D-Lux 5, have a look at it’s vanilla form now. Looooooook. Don’t like it as it is? Then get a brand new and custom colorized D-Lux 5 from ColorWare for $1,200. That’s not too bad if you think the customization is worth the price, since the camera itself costs around $800 nowadays. Then again, $1,200 can get you a significantly more powerful camera.

[ColorWare]

Now these works of art might just be that–works of art. But Matthew Nicholson is taking it to the next level by coming up with a working papercraft Leica camera.

The man behind this cool creation has a tutorial in the works on building and working your own papercraft Leica. At first, I assumed that there probably was some digital camera of some sort hidden within the paper case but I quickly discovered that I was wrong.

The papercraft Leica is old school, meaning you’ve got to load some film into it before you can start snapping away.

Cool, huh?

[via Gizmodo]

The rings were modeled after parts off the Leica 50mm Summilux lens. The groom’s ring was the focusing ring, and the bride’s was the aperture ring. The rings aren’t the only cool things the jewelry making friend whipped up though.

He also constructed a very realistic looking metal Leica camera that is used to hold the rings. The guy’s ring slips over the bottom of the faux lens, and the woman’s on the top. This is really cool and I bet the jewelry maker could sell these things if he was so inclined.

[tokyo camera style via Petapixel]

A wealthy collector from Asia decided that this camera was worth a lot more than its estimated price, which is between $500,000 and $650,000. The auction took just 2 minutes, and a private collector almost put down two million for this camera.

Here’s a video of the action-packed auction:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

And I thought that Hasselblads were expensive. Apparently, this camera was one of the first exported to New York in 1923.

I guess some people have money to burn, but even if I did, I’d never spend this much on a camera that will probably sit in some display case somewhere and sold once again in a few years. Ah well, the life of the rich and famous.

[via Leica Rumors]

The new camera is called the V-Lux 30, and it will sell for $749 (USD). That is a lot of money for a point-and-shoot that has no interchangeable lenses, but in the Leica realm, that is a downright bargain. For that much loot, you get a 15.1MP sensor with a 16x zoom lens. The camera can record HD video at up to 1080i resolution and use the full 16x zoom range doing it.

The camera also has a 3D mode of some sort and integrated GPS. That GPS allows for geotagging images and the camera has a POI database to help guide you on your travels. The rear LCD is a 3-inch touchscreen allows touch control and has a resolution of 460K pixels.

The Leica V-Lux 30 should be available sometime this June.

The concept is called the Leica i9 for iPhone 4 and it is not an official concept for Leica or Apple. It’s just something that the designers over at Black Design have dreamed up that looks really cool. The concept is inspired by Leica’s pricey M9 camera with black or brown leather around it and the iPhone 4 docks in the back of the camera.

I guess the idea of the iPhone back there is to make it easier to use the apps that are available that will let you take better photos. There are light meters and all sorts of other apps available. The faux camera would have a 12MP image sensor if it were real – which it is not.

Yes, Leicas are really nice cameras, but to be frank, I’d rather buy a car than an ostrich skinned camera, and I’m sure that plenty of people think the same. Spending $3,000-$20,000 (possibly even more) on a Leica seems ludicrous. The Panasonic GF1 Lumix and GF2 are perfectly capable of taking similar shots for a lot less money.

If I’m going to spend a couple of grand on a new camera, it will be a Nikon DSLR, D3X or D700 not a Leica.

[via HypeBeast via Ubergizmo]

Some geeks went on a factory tour at the Leica works and watched an M9 get build from the ground up to the finished product. The extensive hand-building process is pretty cool and spans about 17 minutes. If you have always wondered what goes into the construction of a camera that costs that much, now is your chance to see.

The videos are broken into two parts and you can watch them both here:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

I fully expected a camera that costs that much to be assembled by topless supermodels or something, but they just built in a plain clean room by people wearing hair nets.

[via A Continuous Lean]

The toy camera’s innards were not replaced – it has a resolution of 3 megapixels and can store 80 images.  It’s case was made to look more respectable is all. Schfio Factory better get to work on this one too.[via PetaPixel]

You can get the Leica Monovid 8×20 Monocular at B&H for $500 (USD). For half a grand, you’d better have something worth having a closer look at. Like chicks at the beach marine life.

[via Uncrate]

The new Lumix DMC-FX100K offers a whopping TWELVE megapixel resolution. For those of you who are counting every tiny dot, that’s 4000 horizontal pixels by 3000 vertical pixels. To put that in perspective, this camera can snap pictures at almost five times the resolution of a high definition 1080p big screen television. With detail like that, you’ll probably be able to blow up your images to wall size before you have to worry about seeing those pesky pixels.

The $399 camera features a Leica 28mm wide angle lens, and something called “extended optical zoom” which allows you to jump up beyond the 3.6x native zoom all the way up to 7x. However, you can only go to 7x if you drop down to three megapixel resolution. Still, it’s a nice feature in a pinch. Also along for the ride is Panasonic’s MEGA optical image stabilization system which should remove all but the worst jostling during picture taking.

The FX100K also offers a couple of rapid shooting modes, including an 8 frame-per-second burst mode, and a 15 frame-per-second (1280 x 720) widescreen video capture mode. Based on the excellent reviews that other recent Lumix cameras have gotten, this is definitely one to watch.

[Order this item from Amazon]

The D-Lux 3 is a compact 10-megapixel digital camera with 4x optical zoom. It offers support for both compressed JPEG and uncompressed RAW format images for the ultimate in picture quality (if you can afford a big enough SD card). The Leica can shoot 4:3, 3:2 and 16:9 ratio images, and the widescreen 2.8″ diagonal display lets you view full 16:9 images at their maximum size. It’s loaded with both automatic scene settings for ease of use as well as pletiful manual settings including aperture, shutter speed, color balance among others. The D-Lux also features an optical image stabilizer to keep your images sharp in challenging situations. Keep in mind that Leica cameras aren’t for cheapskates – expect this camera to retail for about $1000 (street prices will likely be a bit less.)

[via Chip Chick]