If you have ever dreamed of owning a Leica camera and can’t quite afford their premium prices, or perhaps you are just a Leica obsessive who looks on non-Leica color science with disdain – you can now get as close as possible to a full Leica camera experience on your iPhone with Leica’s brand new Leica Lux Grip and Leica Lux app.
The newly announced magnetic grip attachment snaps to the back of an iPhone using Apple’s built-in MagSafe magnetic array and connects to the phone via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) pairing. The grip looks to be designed and built to Leica’s usual premium high-quality standards and is made from metal – although thankfully aluminum and not brass like a Leica M11 – and weighs just 130 grams.
The grip features a two-stage shutter release, with a half press activating the focus and a full press taking the image. There are also two custom buttons – although by default one will switch between shooting modes, and the other can be used to access frequently used settings – you can change these using the Leica Lux app. Finally, there is a control dial on the front of the grip for flicking between settings like zoom, aperture, shutter speed, and exposure compensation.
The Leica Lux Grip works in tandem with the Leica Lux app, which is available right now for free on the iOS App Store, (sorry Android users, but this is not for you), and doesn't actually require the Lux Grip to use.
Not to be confused with Leica Fotos, which is used for transferring images from Leica cameras – the Leica Lux app was released last year as a pro camera app for capturing images with classic Leica Looks directly from the iPhone cameras. The app can also mimic the style of certain Leica lenses as well as get in-depth with manual capture controls.
Unfortunately, some of the best looks in the Leica Lux app are locked behind a paywall, but buying the Leica Lux Grip grants one year of Lux Pro (usually $69.99/year or $6.99/month) which unlocks all of Leica Lux’s Looks and lenses.
This is not the first iPhone camera grip from Leica, with its Fjorden sub-brand previously releasing another much more discrete MagSafe compatible control grip – although interestingly, this time around, Leica has decided to brand this new grip with its own name.
The Leica Lux Grip is available immediately from Leica stores and will cost $329 / £260 – and the Leica Lux app can be downloaded right now from Apple’s App Store for iOS (or iPadOS).
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If you are interested in learning more about phone photography – check out the best camera phones you can buy right now. Or if you would rather just buy a real Leica camera, check out our guide to the best Leica cameras.
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