"The M5 was the first M to offer a built-in light meter. A CDS cell was
mounted on a "semaphore", and offered TTL metering. Alas, the M5 was not a
commercial success, and nearly ruined the company."
The reason for this failure has not been publicly discussed. It's an
interesting story.
In the late '60s, some years prior to the introduction of the M5, Leitz ran
a series of ads proclaiming that it would never put an exposure meter in
their M-series cameras "until creativity can be automated." That's an exact
quote.
Leitz has a reputation for honesty and integrity. So, when the M5 with its
integral meter appeared, everyone quite reasonably assumed that Leitz had
solved the problem of "automated creativity," and all one had to do was
press the M5's shutter release to get -- at a bare minimum -- an
aesthetically pleasing photo.
When buyers discovered that the M5 could not do this, they angrily returned
their cameras for a refund. Leitz was stuck with a huge pile of unsellable
camera bodies.
The reason you've never heard about this is because the leading photo mags
were paid off by Leitz not to reveal that the camera could not do what they
had promised it would be able to do.
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