Why did R4 not continue with R3's shutter?

[terry_scott]

Can someone tell me why the Leica R4 has a Seiko shutter instead of

the CLS (Copal Leitz Shutter) of the Leica R3 - was there a problem

with the CLS ?

[andrew_c2]

Perhaps use of the R3 shutter would have violated an agreement between Leitz and Minolta... so Leitz outsourced it from somewhere else?

[ben z]

AFAIK Leitz was still working with Minolta since the R4 was also based on a Minolta body. Three posibilities come to mind, but other than a Leitz engineer who was in on the design, all we can do here is speculate. One possibility is that the CLS was not set up to work with a multi-mode meter (the R3 has only aperture-priority). Another is that perhaps it didn't physically fit in the confines of the smaller body. The third is economics, as Copal was a separate entity from either Leitz or Minolta, perhaps they would not produce it at low enough cost to satisfy the budgetary demands of the bean counters.

[zapata_espinoza]

Body size