Leica

From the LEICA Barnack Berek Blog comes an explanation of "The Other Companies at Leitz Park" answering the question about what is contained in the other buildings at Leica's Leitz Park. Read more below for the details.

We've certainly seen a ton of coverage of the recent celebrations over 100 Years of Leica Photography and hopefully everyone isn't too burnt out on it. But Les Numeriques recently took a nice tour of Wetzlar and Leitz Park and shares it with us in "Leitz Wetzlar Park: the return of the child prodigy" (French). Lots of great pictures. Read it in English (via Google).

Leica Camera AG has announced the issuance of commemorative accessories for the Leica M system cameras: the soft shutter button and memory card of 32GB. The boutiques and shops of Leica worldwide received 1000 of these items. A nice detail of the soft shutter button is that it can also be used as an icon on clothes. The company also announced that the Leica C-SNAP cases for Leica C cameras will not be shipped due to manufacturing defects. Customers are urged to please cancel their orders - they apologize for the inconvenience. Read more below for additional images!

A La Vida Leica exclusive (which Leica Rumors copied and reposted without credit). You may have heard of Camera West (they're one of our sponsors). They currently run two rather successful Leica boutiques, located in Rancho Mirage and Walnut Creek, CA. Turns out, they're working with Leica Camera to open a full-on Leica Store in San Francisco. We don't know the exact location yet, but we do know it's in a prime area and the space is gorgeous. Depending on construction, the opening is tentatively set for late June or early July. We reached out to Camera West, who had no comment. Read more below for updates!

French website 01net.com reports in "Leica setting scalable appliances and cloud for photographers" (French) (in English) that Leica is reportedly working on a cloud storage solution for photographers and will be officially unveiled at Photokina:

A cloud for photographers

Another area of ​​innovation which the company thinks about is the photos themselves, i.e. the files. "I’m sure you all here have memory cards, hard drives, online backups Dropbox type, and more. But for now it seems to us that all these services are not adapted to the very specific needs of photographers." To say that Leica will launch cloud services, there is a step that Mr. Kaufmann does not cross : "One thing is for sure, we will not enter this field without a partner. We are a small business and this is not our core business. But we think about it and we'll tell you more at Photokina."

"What will inspire Apple's round iWatch design?" asks Pocket-lint. There's some suggestion that it'll be influenced by Leica. It's no secret how Jonathan Ive collaborated with Marc Newson for Leica on the design of the now famous (RED) Leica M that sold for $1.6M USD at auction. Surely the iWatch will be cheaper than the recently launched Valbray - selling for a cool $25k USD. Ive is also very keen on the simplicity of design - in fact, in an interview he says:

"[The Leica] communicates so quickly and immediately that it is a camera. It's almost like a camera, distilled," Ive said, clarifying that he got rid of any design element that he didn't want to be there, because they were a distraction. "Now that alone doesn't mean it will be simple. But it's part of the process to be left alone with something that's so camera-y."