The Leica R9 is a manual focus

Manual focus

In the field of photography, a manual focus camera is one in which the operator has to adjust the focus of the lens by hand. Before the advent of autofocus, all cameras had manually adjusted focusing; thus, the term is a retronym....

 35 mm

135 film

The term 135 was introduced by Kodak in 1934 as a designation for cartridge film wide, specifically for still photography. It quickly grew in popularity, surpassing 120 film by the late 1960s to become the most popular photographic film format...

 single-lens reflex camera

Camera

A camera is a device that records and stores images. These images may be still photographs or moving images such as videos or movies. The term camera comes from the camera obscura , an early mechanism for projecting images...

 produced by the German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 firm of Leica as part of their R series of cameras. It was released in 2002, replacing the very similar Leica R8

Leica R8

The Leica R8 is a manual focus 35 mm single-lens reflex camera produced by the German firm of Leica as part of their R series of cameras. Development began in 1990:...

, upon which it improved in several aspects. Unlike other manufacturers, Leica has never offered autofocus on its top-of-the-line models such as the R9, or the M series rangefinder cameras.

The R9 can be fitted with the "Digital Modul R" (DMR) 10-megapixel digital back and used as a digital camera; during the DMR's production run from 2005 to 2007, the R9 and the R8 were the only 35 mm film SLRs capable of taking a user-installable digital back.