Leica says it had "serious discussions" about how phone photos should look

When trying to capture this scene, most phones would probably try to brighten the shadows. The Xiaomi 17T Pro, shooting in the Leica Authentic color mode, didn't. Photo: Abby Ferguson

One of the big conversations around mobile photography relates to how images are processed, with many bemoaning the unnatural look that some phones produce by dramatically brightening shadows. Apparently, Leica isn't necessarily a huge fan of the look, either. According to Marius Eschweiler, Vice President of the company's mobile business unit, it had "a very tough conversation" with Xiaomi about how photos from its co-branded phones should look.

The comment was part of an interview at the launch event for Xiaomi's latest phones, the 17T and 17T Pro, which feature Leica's "Vibrant" and "Authentic" profiles. Eschweiler, responding to a question about what the company's goal was with the latter color mode, says it was meant to show the real colors and shadows of a scene.

Leica executives participated in a group interview with Xiaomi for the launch of the 17T. Photo: Abby Ferguson

The last part was apparently what prompted the discussions with Xiaomi. "That was a very tough discussion we had with the Xiaomi engineering team at the very beginning, because coming from the smartphone world, colorful, shiny images were seen as a benchmark," he says. "Then we came into play and said, 'yeah, but if you see it from the serious photographer's point of view, it's okay that some shadows are maybe not perfectly lightened up to let you see every detail.'"

"That computational imaging was getting too much in the picture for our taste"

Pablo Acevedo Noda, Head of Development and Engineering for Leica's mobile division, adds: "Leica Authentic was made more for photographers coming from the photography world," explaining that phones need to do a lot of computational photography to make up for their smaller sensors and lenses. "That computational imaging was getting too much in the picture for our taste."

The solution, he says, was processing the images in a completely different way than the vibrant ones. "In the end, we had to do two different pipelines. The image signal processor (ISP) has two different processing pipelines. One is the authentic, one is the vibrant. They share some common blocks, but the base is different."

A photo taken in the Leica Vibrant mode on the Xiaomi 17T Pro. Photo: Abby Ferguson

He also says Leica had a hand in tuning the imaging pipeline for the phone's Live Moment feature, which captures a video before and after the shutter is pressed. The feature existed on Xiaomi products before, but now it includes the Leica color profile throughout. According to Noda, the company helped improve the resolution and HDR processing for the feature, as well as the exposure and white balancing for human subjects.

Eschweiler says Leica wants to give photographers a choice: they can go with the Leica Authentic for a more traditional photographic look, or the Vibrant for a more saturated aesthetic that mobile photographers will be familiar with. "It's a different philosophy, and I believe it's good that customers have the choice."

He echoes this sentiment about users having options when discussing the role of AI in mobile photography, after Xiaomi and Google touted the 17T's ability to use generative AI to transform images taken with the phone into videos, or to reimagine them. "Whether you take a serious image or whether you would like to create something with generative AI, I think that's a different use case," he says.

"It's a different philosophy, and I believe it's good that customers have the choice"

"You likely won't see that on a Leica M, but I think on the 17T series it makes sense," he says. Noda also adds that part of the point of features like Content Credentials, which Leica attaches to photos taken with its cameras, is to make it obvious when someone has tampered with a photo, using generative AI tools or otherwise.

The answers offer a look at some of the considerations traditional camera companies face when deciding to co-brand a phone. There are some fundamental differences in how those devices will produce images compared to a traditional camera, as well as different expectations from consumers, but the Leica name and branding come with their own set of expectations. Of course, not everything will come down to decisions around processing and software, but we'll cover the choices around hardware in a separate article.

Related: What's a 'real' Leica and is your brand just a badge?