Glass Bodies a variant-level encyclopedia of vintage lenses and cameras by iwillpat

Leica M5

Ernst Leitz · Leica M mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film, loaded through the base · 1971

Also known as: Leica M5 · Leitz M5 · ライカM5

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Two-lug (early) Leica M 1971–1972 — No separate figure published
Three-lug (later) Leica M 1972–1975 — No separate figure published
Black Leica M 1971–1975 1287251–1288000
1289001–1291400
1347001–1354000
1356501–1360000
1363001–1365000
1375001–1378000
1383001–1384000 		23,150 cameras (Leica Wiki)
Silver chrome Leica M 1971–1975 1288001–1289000
1291401–1293000
1345001–1347000
1354001–1355000
1361501–1363000
1378001–1379000
1382601–1383000
1918001–1918020 		10,270 cameras (Leica Wiki)
Jubilee (50 Jahre) Leica M 1975–1975 — 1,750 cameras (Leica Wiki)
  1. Fifty pre-production cameras precede the model. Leitz Photographica has catalogued two of them as a "batch of 50 'Null Series' cameras made for evaluation": no. 1287005, described as the 4th Leica M5 produced, a 2-lug body, which made €1,200 including buyer's premium at Auction 33, lot 125, against a €2,000–2,400 estimate; and no. 1287022, the 22nd produced, a 3-lug body, which made €3,120 at Auction 42, lot 123, against a €4,000–4,500 estimate. Both lot notes print the batch's serial range as 1287001–1278050, which cannot be right as printed.
  2. The 22nd camera of that evaluation batch is catalogued with three strap lugs, which is the arrangement production cameras are usually said not to have received until 1972.
  3. A competing production count: Mike Eckman gives 33,900 M5s in total — 23,150 black chrome and 10,750 silver chrome — agreeing with the Leica Wiki on black to the camera, but 480 higher on silver, and so 480 above the 33,420 the two Wiki figures sum to.
  4. Wikipedia gives the same competing count independently of Mike Eckman — 33,900 units, 1287001 to a last serial of 1384000, 10,750 chrome and 23,150 black chrome — which makes the silver figure a disagreement between two published sources rather than one writer's arithmetic. Its range also stops at 1384000, excluding the twenty numbers allotted in 1992 that both copies of the factory list carry.
  5. CameraQuest's rows sum exactly to 33,420 and Leica Wiki's to 33,920 while printing 33,420 as the total. The 500 is accounted for: the Wiki carries a 1294001–1294500 block CameraQuest does not, gives it a batch of 3,500 against a 500-number span, and merges two black blocks of 3,000 and 4,000 into a single row of 4,000. The Wiki says as much in its own footnote — Gandy's batch total was used without recalculation.
  6. Serial numbers above 134xxxx are usually reckoned the more reliable cameras, Wikipedia says, the early shutter-speed-dial problems having been resolved by then. That is a note about condition rather than dating, but it is the one place where an M5's serial carries a practical consequence beyond its date.
  7. The finish blocks recorded against the black and silver variants are only those both published copies of the list agree on. Three are left out: 1287001–1287250, which CameraQuest treats whole as the 0-Series and the Wiki splits into 50 unmarked plus 200 chrome; 1296501–1300000, which the two assign to opposite finishes; and 1355001–1356500, which CameraQuest calls chrome and the Wiki marks as mixed.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • A metering cell on a swinging arm that drops in front of the film plane and retracts as the shutter fires
  • Shutter speeds visible in the finder, with a follow-pointer meter needle
  • Larger and heavier than any other M — the body is a different shape, not a restyled M4
  • A rewind crank in the BASE of the camera, not the top plate

Two-lug (early):

  • Two strap lugs, both on the same end, so the camera hangs vertically

Three-lug (later):

  • A third lug, allowing the camera to hang horizontally like every other M

Black:

  • Black finish — the majority of the model, which no earlier M can say

Silver chrome:

  • Chrome finish

Jubilee (50 Jahre):

  • Anniversary engraving for fifty years of the Leica

Serial-range notes

the block, not the camera — how to read the Leitz list
The rule for any Leica. Leitz did not number cameras as they were built; it allotted blocks of numbers to a model, and the date against a block is the day that block was assigned. Find the block a number falls in, read its date, and treat that as the earliest the camera can be rather than its birthday — numbers allotted late in a year were often built early in the next, blocks were not always used up, and a block assigned to one model sometimes carries another. On the M5 the model is what the block settles, and the finish with it; the year it settles only approximately. Both published copies of the list descend from Leitz's own records, CameraQuest's from raw data it credits to Leica through Horst Braun, which is why they agree on the ranges and diverge only in what they were later annotated with.
1355001 chrome · 1357001 black chrome
The third strap lug, by Wikipedia's account: added in 1973 from 1355001 for chrome bodies and 1357001 for black chrome. Two cautions before using it as a date. Leitz also fitted the third lug to earlier cameras on request, so a three-lug body is not necessarily a late one — the modification travels backwards through the run. And this entry's own record of Leitz Photographica lot 123 at auction 42 catalogues no. 1287022, the 22nd pre-production camera, with three lugs, seventy thousand numbers below the stated changeover. Lug count identifies a configuration, not a build date.
1296501–1300000, disputed
A 3,500-number block the two lists assign to different finishes. CameraQuest's copy records it as M5 Chrome, assigned 5 January 1972; Leica Wiki records it as Schwz (+Hell) — black with chrome mixed in. Both cannot be right, and the block is large enough that the disagreement moves the finish totals by thousands. Neither source explains the other.
1294001–1294500
A block Leica Wiki lists and CameraQuest does not, and the reason the Wiki's rows do not sum to its own printed total. The Wiki gives it a batch of 3,500 against a range 500 numbers wide; it also merges CameraQuest's 1347001–1350000 and 1350001–1354000 into one row of 4,000 where the two together are 7,000. The +3,500 and the −3,000 leave the Wiki's rows 500 above the 33,420 it prints as the total, which is exactly what CameraQuest's rows sum to.
the (+50) blocks — 1355001–1356500, 1356501–1360000, 1361501–1363000, 1375001–1378000
Four blocks Leica Wiki annotates (+50). The page does not define the mark, and CameraQuest's copy carries nothing equivalent. What is certain is the negative: neither list gives the 50 Jahre cameras a block of their own, so the jubilee cannot be identified from a body serial.
a letter of LEICA and three digits
How a 50 Jahre M5 is actually numbered. The 1,750 anniversary cameras of 1975 each carry a three-digit number preceded by a letter taken from the word LEICA, alongside the 50 JAHRE engraving with the 50 in oak leaves — an edition number running outside the serial sequence, not a serial. Five letters against 1,750 cameras works out at 350 to each. The CL's anniversary cameras were marked the same way; this entry's sister page records one as 'special number 499-L'.
1918001–1918020
Twenty chrome bodies allotted on 1 June 1992, seventeen years after the M5 was discontinued and the whole of the reason the list's date range runs to 1992. They are the last M5 numbers assigned and sit almost 534,000 above the next-highest block.
1287001–1918020
The table's own date range is 1971–1992, twenty-one years for a camera the model page says ran four. The late numbers are strays of the kind the M4-2's two gold cameras produce; the body of the model sits in the early blocks.
the black blocks
Rows marked Schwz Lackiert total 21,650 against the page's 23,150 black, and the remaining rows 12,270 against 10,270 silver — the two figures cross over, which is what happens when a mixed block is counted whole.

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film, loaded through the base
Finder
Combined viewfinder and coupled rangefinder with automatic frames and shutter speed display · 0.72× magnification · 35mm, 50mm, 90mm, 135mm framelines · automatic, selected by the lens · automatic parallax correction
Base length
68.5 mm
Effective baselength
49.3 mm (derived from base length × magnification)
Shutter
focal plane, rubberised cloth · 1/2 – 1/1000 and B, with speeds visible in the finder; metering range covers 1/1000 to 30s
Meter
Through-the-lens selective metering from a CdS cell on a retractable arm, follow-pointer display coupled to film speed, shutter speed and aperture; 6–3200 ASA; powered by a Mallory PX 625 mercury cell, which is no longer manufactured.
Country
Germany
Original price
$849 with the 50mm f/2 Summicron (1971)

Selective metering works with a 28mm lens too, but the 28 has no frame: a separate finder must be fitted to see what is being photographed.

Figures we worked out rather than found: 23,150 + 10,270 = 33,420 cameras in four years · Black is 69% of the M5 — the first M sold mainly in black rather than chrome

Where sources disagree

Total production
  • 33,420 cameras — 23,150 black plus 10,270 silver (Leica Wiki, summed)
  • No total is printed on the page

Better supported: 33,420

The two finishes are given and the sum is not. Whatever the exact figure, it is under a fifth of what the M3 sold, in a period when Leitz needed it to sell more.

What reviewers say

History

The M5 did the difficult engineering and lost the argument anyway. Getting a meter to read through a rangefinder’s lens is not obvious — there is no mirror to bounce light off, and the film sits behind a curtain — so Leitz mounted a CdS cell on a stalk that swings into the light path in front of the film, takes its reading, and retracts as the shutter fires. It works, it is selective rather than averaging, and it put shutter speeds and a follow-pointer needle into the finder years before any competitor managed the same.

Photographers did not buy it. The camera is bigger and heavier than an M4 and looks it; the rewind crank moved to the base; and at launch it had two strap lugs at one end, so it hung vertically, which after fifteen years of Ms hanging horizontally read as an insult rather than a design. Leitz added a third lug in 1972 rather than argue. About 33,420 were built in four years — 23,150 black and 10,270 silver, making this the first M sold mainly in black — against 233,209 M3s in twelve.

What happened next is the part that matters to the rest of the system. Rather than continue with the M5, Leitz restarted the M4 in Canada as the M4-2, and every metered M since — the M6, the M7, the MP — reads light reflected off a white patch on the shutter curtain instead of off a swinging arm. The M5’s solution was abandoned with it. So was its shape: no Leica has been built to these dimensions again.

It is now the cheapest way into a metered M, and the one experienced users defend most loudly. The meter is more sophisticated than the M6’s, the speeds are visible in the finder, and the mercury cell it was designed around is no longer made — which is the practical catch on every M5 offered today.

Expand Collapse

This history is AI-written, from the sources listed at the foot of the page. Where the record is silent it says so rather than filling the gap — but no human wrote these sentences.

Photographs

Leica M5
Leica M5 with the Summicron 50mm f/2 — Mike, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Leica M5
Leica M5 — Rama, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0 fr)

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $1,600 across 25 fixed-price listings on 2026-10-19 (middle half $1,400–$2,000). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 12 days: down 12% from $1,800.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-10-19$1,600$1,400–$2,00025
2026-10-18$1,600$1,400–$2,00025
2026-10-17$1,600$1,400–$2,00025
2026-10-16$1,600$1,400–$2,00026
2026-10-15$1,600$1,400–$2,00028
2026-09-21$1,600$1,400–$2,00022
2026-09-18$1,600$1,300–$2,00034
2026-09-11$1,800$1,200–$2,50080
2026-09-10$1,800$1,200–$2,50080
2026-09-09$1,800$1,200–$2,50081
2026-09-08$1,800$960–$2,40084
2026-09-06$1,800$960–$2,40084

Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.

Show 42 more listings

Buying from Yahoo! Auctions outside Japan. It is a domestic marketplace: sellers ship within Japan, and most will not register an overseas buyer. A proxy service bids on your behalf, receives the item and forwards it, for a fee and a wait. Buyee, Jauce and ZenMarket each accept a Yahoo auction number directly. Listed alphabetically for information — none is recommended over another, and none of these is an affiliate link.

Listings updated 2026-10-19. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.

Related: Leica CL · Leica M4 · Leica M4-2

Lenses for this body: Elmarit 28mm f/2.8 (v2, 1972) · Hologon 15mm f/8 · Summicron 35mm f/2 (v3) · Summicron 50mm f/2 (v3) · Summicron 90mm f/2 (v2, 1963) · Super-Angulon 21mm f/3.4

Sources (12)

Every page here is assembled from public sources, and the gaps are real ones. If you own this camera, know a serial number I'm missing, or can see where I have it wrong, tell me — corrections, serials and sample photos are all worth having.