A Giant Leica 250 ‘Reporter’ Riesen Model Rangefinder Camera

A very large wooden dummy model of a 1934 Leica 250 ‘Reporter’ camera, the model with a black painted body with distinctive side barrels designed to take bulk rolls of up to 10 meters of film allowing up to 250 exposures. With silver painted trim, wooden dials and details, Plexiglas viewers, lens and hand-painted serial numbers and branding. This dummy bears serial number 114052, which we believe to be the serial number of an early prototype camera still in existence. Only 950 bodies of the reporter were ever made, this model is the only large-scale model of the Reporter Camera we have ever seen.

61 x 20 x 23 cm

Early camera retailers would have been familiar with the concept of using dummy camera models in their retail establishments - much as with high-end electronic goods on display in stores today - these display versions would have been made to scale, using actual camera casings but with no internal mechanisms. These dummies would have demonstrated the new designs well to prospective buyers, but as these were expensive items to purchase, the dummies would have meant that retailers would not have had to take their displays down each night for security.

However, the models here are the exception and made to massive scale to faithfully resemble the actual models but would have been used for trade fairs and exhibitions, or for press and publicity for the release of a new design. Made with an almost obsessional attention to detail, these replica cameras are made in wood with textured Rexine coverings, hand-painted dials, branding, trim and even transparent ‘lenses’, and have all the features of the originals, and in some instances employ actual camera film roll casings and lids, to create the dials and details.