Leica’s latest camera encrypts verification info into every photo

From The Verge: The compact and discreet nature of Leica M rangefinder cameras once made them a popular choice for photojournalists, long before autofocus became pretty much a prerequisite. But while M cameras these days are more likely to be in the hands of an amateur or enthusiast than a conflict photographer shooting for Reuters or The Associated Press, Leica’s new M11-P has a novel approach to verifying the authenticity of photos.

The $9,195 M11-P follows mostly the same playbook as Leica’s prior “P” variants. At its core, it’s mostly the same as the 60-megapixel manual focus M11 rangefinder it’s based on, but it eschews the red dot badge in favor of an old-fashioned engraving, upgrades the LCD cover from Gorilla Glass to sapphire crystal, and, like the M11 Monochrom, has 256GB of internal storage instead of the M11’s 64GB. It’s even launching alongside a new $5,295 Summicron-M 28mm f/2 ASPH. lens, which is another by-the-book Leica lens update that focuses closer than the previous version.

But the big addition here for the M11-P is a new internal security chip that generates a signed certificate (Content Credentials) in the metadata of each image, allowing photos to be verified through Adobe’s open-source Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI).

View: Full Article