RANGEFINDER CAMERA TEST
EXPERT OPINION ON THE LATEST KIT
The M11-P is leading the fight for AI accreditation – and looks great doing it
www.leica-camera.com £8,000 / $9,195
All of Leica’s cameras are iconic in their own right, but it’s the M series that perhaps has the most fervent following. Since last year’s reveal of the latest generation of the M-series with the M11, we’ve been waiting for Leica to unveil its usual collection of variations on that core camera. So far we have seen the black-and-white-sensor M11 Monochrom and now we have this generation’s M11-P variant.
The Leica M10-P was unique for its focus on a redeveloped silent shutter for quieter street photography or photojournalism, where discretion is paramount. The M11-P is also aimed at these audiences, but a quieter shutter is not the focus of the M11-P. Instead, the camera has a trick that’s to combat the rise in photos being misappropriated by AI.
The Content Credentials initiative is the start of a fightback by imaging companies (including Adobe, Leica and Nikon) and photographers to protect works from being misused by AI image generators while providing accreditation for photographers. The implementation of Content Credentials by Leica is hardware-based, with a dedicated chip in the M11-P that encodes the file with the photographer’s details. These credentials can then, in theory, travel across the internet with the image, so credit remains with the photographer, even if the image is manipulated using editing or AI. Unfortunately, due to the hardware element this feature won’t be coming to existing Leica cameras by way of a update.
Apart from the new focus on content credentials, internally the Leica M11-P is the same M11 as the first time around. Like other cameras in the M-series, the M11-P is also a manual-focus-only, rangefinder-style camera, with no video. But then this is the charm of the M11-P, with the photography experience being first and foremost. The triple-resolution 60.3MP colour sensor that was used in the M11 features again here, capable of shooting in 60MP, 36MP or 18MP, gaining a stop of dynamic range with reduced resolutions.
