Still not Hasselblad: Leica launches $600 lighter, $500 pen under new ‘0.95’ brand

As an homage to its 50mm f/0.95 Noctilux-M lens, Leica has launched a collection of limited-edition accessories that use Leica’s name, branding and clever marketing copy to raise the price to astronomical numbers.

Leica teamed up with French accessory manufacturer S.T. Dupont to produce 95 pieces of three separate accessories, each of which pay tribute to Leica’s historic lens with a white, hand-engraved ’0.95’ emblem and unique materials.

Up for grabs are a keychain, a lighter and a pen, which will set you back £99 ($105), £575 ($615) and £475 ($507), respectively. Similar to Nikon’s effort to justify the price of its stainless steel hotshoe cover, Leica says the entire collection uses an ‘innovative’ metal alloy called Ceramium A.C.T. that is ‘lighter than comparable metal alloys, and offers up to six times the resistance to mechanical fatigue.’

I’ll leave it up to you to decide if a unique metal alloy and hand-engraved motif is worth the price. Don’t think about it for too long though. There are only 95 pieces of each, so time is running out.