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It’s a unique opportunity to speak to the owners of Leica. There have been many times when I’ve been in the same room as Dr. Kauffman, but we’ve never spoken or met personally. But at the recent 100th Anniversary celebration here in NYC, that changed. Not only was I able to speak with Dr. Kauffman, but also with Karin Kauffman, the head of the Leica galleries across the world. Both had fascinating things to say about the future of photography and cameras.
Both Kauffmans believe that the future of photography is that a picture is only a picture when someone uses a camera. They, like many other photographers, don’t believe that it can be made any other way. Composites, to many photographers, aren’t photographs. With that said, tools like sky replacements and other generative fill options can make things very questionable.
“I think that real photography needs the human,” explains Karin. Both Dr. Kauffman and Karin are quick to state that Leica was the first camera manufacturer to really get onboard with Adobe’s Content Authenticity Initiative. Indeed, their cameras, to this day, the the only ones with the CAI chip built into them.
While this is all very important with reportage, it’s also well know that the advertising and commercial worlds tend to use a lot of image manipulation. But in the future, Karin believes that luxury companies and many others are doing so to tout that they’re using real photographers and real cameras to shoot their campaigns. For them, it will be a point of pride.
Content authenticity isn’t simple, but Leica was one of the first camera companies to join the Adobe initiative.
“I also think that perhaps some luxury companies will avoid using AI because this is not authentic,” she states. I’m hopeful that this will be the case, but I also tend to not trust capitalistic goals when it comes to advertising.
Despite Leica being so incredibly upfront about AI, Dr. Kauffman tells us about a unique camera that used AI back in 2019 that wasn’t heavily reported on. That camera was the Leica M10 ASC edition. They teamed up with the American Society of Cinematographers to make it.
Dr. Kauffman explains that Leica built an algorithm that reinterprets an image to look like contemporary or classic cinema. But this was beyond just applying a preset to an image. “…the software interpreted the light in a certain way, like in (30s and 40s cinema), which means directly going into the data stream from the sensor.”
Because it was a special edition camera, it wasn’t reported on all that much. And even on Flickr, we can’t find a lot of photos shot with it.
Andreas said that he can talk about the next five years or so in the camera world — and he believes that there will be more AI in cameras and a lot more authenticity built into them too. What’s more, the Leica M lineup of cameras will continue to live on no matter what. But they might greatly change based on a number of factors.
Earlier in the day, Dr. Kauffman refused to comment on a Leica M with an EVF built into it, but he spoke of a few other options.
At one point, he brought up the Sigma BF camera — which he agreed (in some very challenging statements) that it was basically the Leica T. At this point, Reviews Editor Alberto Lima intejected and asked why Leica didn’t make a full-frame version of the camera themselves. Andreas didn’t respond directly to the question, but said that Leica wanted to move away from APS-C.
Andreas has told the press before that a medium format camera is being worked on and that it is indeed real. But when asked about it during our interview, Andreas stated that the camera is real and is still being worked on. However, he hesitates to talk about it more because he flat-out states that it isn’t easy to make.
