I suppose that if anyone was going to be the first to introduce a system that allowed the provenance of an image to be traced, right back to where it came from and to the original file, it would be Leica. In the new M11-P rangefinder we have just that, with the inclusion of Leica Content Credentials. The feature relies on a new hardware chip that encodes details of how each image was recorded and what it looked like, so it can be compared to future versions of itself. In theory, this will allow viewers of images to check what has been done to an image and for photographers to see when one of their images has been used and altered without permission. The idea is to give the public and commissioners more confidence that what they are looking at hasn’t been faked or manipulated beyond reason.
How does it work?
Content Credentials isn’t just a Leica thing. It’s the beginning of a common provenance standard in a scheme that includes players such as
