Leica’s Response to the iPhone 7’s Dual-Lens System: A $299 Instant Camera with Analog Selfie Mirror

Technologist Om Malik recently took to The New Yorker to argue that the advent of smartphones with high-powered cameras such as Apple’s iPhone 7 series spell doom for standalone camera companies. Essentially, Malik argues that such camera-phones have closed the gap with higher-end cameras in recent years, erasing important distinctions while far-outpacing them in terms of sales.

Innovative smartphone makers continue to invest heavily in software, algorithms, and hardware that improve the quality of their built-in cameras, sell millions of smartphones and reap billions in profits, which they can then reinvest in even more advanced image processors. In so doing, they cannibalize the camera business and inexorably eat into their profits, further debilitating camera-makers’ ability to out-innovate and compete with the Apples of the world.

Of course, this isn’t news to camera makers who’ve seen their sales shrivel at an alarming clip since the beginning of the decade. Rather than bow to their smartphone overlords and concede defeat, some prominent camera-makers have opted to go retro and carve out an analog niche for themselves.

Leica, the storied German camera-maker, for instance, is releasing the Sofort instant camera, which comes equipped with the optical viewfinders of yore. Retailing at $299, the Sofort uses Fuji’s retro-style Instax film format to instantly print photos and comes with a variety of automatic modes, including party, people, sport, action, macro, and standard. It also comes with color and black and white film, which respectively cost $14 and $17 per pack.

It also bears mentioning that the Sofort has a dedicated selfie mode and comes equipped with a little mirror on the front to help users along their merry selfie-snapping way.

The iPhone 7 Plus, on the other hand, comes strapped with serious camera-power. The $769 device comes with a dual-lens system – a 28-mm equivalent, 12-megapixel lens and a 56-mm equivalent, 12-megapixel telephoto lens. Not to mention the high-powered chips that enable longer exposures and better aperture, capture digital negatives, and achieve “bokeh,” an effect which blurs the background and clarifies the foreground subject.

But can you shake it like a Polaroid picture? Malik may be convinced that digital image capture technologies are poised to usurp and eclipse analog devices in every way, but camera companies are banking on the fact that the wistfulness people feel for analog film formats is rooted in something more substantial than nostalgia.

Jeff Clarke, the CEO of Kodak, argues that there will always be a place for analog in the world because humans are analog, and of course, the world is too. In an interview with Engadget, he notes, “there’s more information in film, there are more grains, it’s a photochemical process and because of that it looks different — some people think it looks better, same or worse, but that difference is what is important.”

Clarke points to films such as Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Jurassic World, and The Hateful Eight, which were filmed on Kodak film, as evidence. If auteurs such as Tarantino and Abrams believe in the format and see a difference, perhaps there is an ineffable ‘something’ to analog film that digital technologies can never capture and replicate. Too soon to tell.