Leica’s next auction brings two cameras with very different stories. One is a half-frame prototype Leica built and then they shelved. The other is the Leica R6 Sebastião Salgado carried into the burning oil fields of Kuwait.
Both go to auction at Leitz Photographica Auction No. 49 in Wetzlar on November 28. The prototype carries an estimate of €400,000 to €500,000. Salgado’s R6 comes with 2 prints and a signed copy of Workers.
The Leica Half-Frame
It’s a Leica Box prototype from the mid-1950s, an experimental compact that shot the 18x24mm half-frame format. Only 2 were ever hand-built. One lives in the Leica Museum as a non-working study piece. The other, serial 000.01, still runs, and that’s the one heading to Leitz Photographica Auction No. 49 at Leitz-Park.
Half frame puts 2 pictures where one 35mm frame would go, so a 36-exposure roll gives you 72 shots. In the 1950s that idea pointed toward a smaller, simpler Leica, right as the company was launching the M3 in 1954. Then Leica shelved it. A few years later Olympus built a whole line around half frame with the Pen, and today the format is now enjoying a new run with film shooters.
The history and rarity of the prototype is driving the price. A working example of a camera that never reached a shop is about as rare as a Leica camera can get.
Salgado’s R6
Another of one of the rarest Leicas, Salgado carried this fully mechanical SLR through Kuwait after the 1991 Gulf War, and the pictures he made there are some of the most important of the last century. Workers, the signed book in the lot, is his landmark study of manual labor around the world.
Salgado died in 2025. This was his tool. Wow.
How To Follow Along
The sale starts at noon Central European time on November 28, with more than 400 lots and estimates running from three figures to six. Pre-bidding is open now on the Leitz Photographica Auction website. The catalog also includes a re-edition of the Elcan 66mm f/2, the lens that came before the Summicron-M 66mm.
Sources
Elevate Your Vision
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