By Bonnie James/Deputy News Editor
Leica, the legendary German camera brand renowned for making some of the finest photography equipment preferred by purists over the past century, has partnered with Qatar’s Abu Issa Group (Techno Blue and Blue Salon) to launch their products in the country.
An exclusive Leica Boutique has been set up on the ground floor of the Blue Salon building on Suhaim Bin Hamad Street. Four showcases feature a range of Leica products including compact cameras, professional camera systems and binoculars.
“Leica is a lifestyle and this is the beginning of a long relationship,” Abu Issa Holding vice chairman Nabil Abu Issa said at an event attended by Leica CEO Alfred Schopf, head of sales (Europe and rest of the world) Falk Friedrich, area sales manager Andrea Von Gyimes, and Techno Blue executive manager R Srinivasan.
“The mission of Leica and its products is to enable better imaging,” said Schopf.
All Leica products - cameras, lenses, binoculars, spotting scopes, riflescopes and rangefinders - fulfil this promise with a perfectly harmonised interaction of high-precision optics and state-of-the-art electronics, he explained.
“Leica was the enabler of reportage photography,” Schopf said, citing a number of historic images shot with Leica cameras, including that of the Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and the Pulitzer-prize winning photo of a Vietnamese girl fleeing from a napalm attack.
Asked why it took Leica so long to come to Qatar, Friedrich told Gulf Times that the company was searching for the right partner.
Leica Camera AG, headquartered in Solms, Germany, and having a second factory located in Portugal, is not into mass manufacturing. Even today many of the production processes are hand crafted to get the perfect precision product.
Leica Camera AG possesses enormous expertise in fields ranging from manufacturing, optical design and measuring technology to the construction and assembly of lenses with aspherical lens systems.
These are important factors on the way to better images, due to their abilities in ensuring precise reproduction, even at the extreme edges of the captured image.
Together with the quality of the glasses employed and the latest coating technologies, these guarantee extraordinary viewing experiences with both cameras and sport optics products.
The focus on essentials, many years of experience in development and construction, uncompromisingly stringent quality standards and continuous further development make Leica products ideal companions that even take enormous stresses like extreme temperature variations.
Reliable precision engineering and painstaking assembly using only the best materials guarantee images of superior brilliance.
“With Leica you are making pictures and not taking pictures,” Schopf said, adding that the company still makes 1,000 pieces of its famed film cameras every year, as per order.
The Leica camera prices start from QR5,000 for a compact and go all the way to QR140,000 for the Leica S2 professional medium format digital camera body.
Nabil Abu Issa flanked by Srinivasan, Andrea Von Gyimes, Alfred Schopf, and Falk Friedrich at the launch of Leica products in Qatar.
