Review of the Leica LUX App For iPhone

For years, I’ve wanted a way to simulate the infamous “Leica Look” without having to buy an actual Leica camera.  As it happens, Leica released an app for the iPhone last summer called the Leica LUX app…but somehow I never heard about it until I saw a release announcement yesterday for the Leica LUX Grip (more on that later).  So I downloaded the Leica LUX app from the app store and decided to give it a try.

First thing first…does the Leica LUX App for iPhone accurately and convincingly simulate the look of images generated from Leica cameras?  No…this app doesn’t do that.  Despite Leica’s product description for this app strongly suggesting otherwise.  Perhaps “Leica inspired” might be a more fitting description for the images this app produces?  Let me go ahead and discuss the features of the app, and then I’ll explain.

Key Features:

• Leica Lens Simulations: The app emulates several of Leica’s legendary lenses, such as the Noctilux-M 50mm f/1.2 and Summilux-M 28mm f/1.4, allowing users to replicate the distinctive characteristics and bokeh of these optics. 
• Authentic Leica Looks: Drawing from Leica’s renowned color science, the app provides a variety of film presets and color profiles, including Leica Classic, Contemporary, Black & White, and Vivid, enabling users to apply the signature Leica look to their images. 
• Manual Controls: For those who prefer hands-on adjustments, Leica LUX offers manual settings for exposure, shutter speed, ISO, white balance, and focus, granting photographers comprehensive control over their shots. 
• Aperture Mode: This feature allows users to simulate shallow depth-of-field effects, akin to the bokeh produced by Leica’s fast lenses, enhancing portrait and close-up photography.

To access both the Leica Lens Simulations, you’ll want to be in “A” or Aperture mode.  Oddly enough, you don’t get full manual controls in “A” mode – you have to be in “P” or Photo mode for that.  

If you think more about this app as something produced by Leica to provide a Leica inspired look to your photography, and less about it as trying to accurately replicate specific Leica cameras/lenses, you’ll be happier.  In particular, the “Leica Lens Simulations” will disappoint.  They simply apply Apple’s computational photography settings found in “portrait” mode to different crop settings.  The 28mm setting for example does not differ substantially from the 35mm or the 50mm setting – they are just different crops.  It would be REALLY cool if each of the Lens settings were more unique and evocative of the Leica lenses they claim to simulate instead of just different aspect ratios/crops.  Perhaps they can achieve this in subsequent updates.     Here’s three different photos of my car at the car wash I took with 3 different Leica Lens Simulations.  They don’t look like they were taken with three different lenses to my eye – just cropped differently:

When you take your photo, you can select from one of the 13 different “Leica Looks” – Leica Chrome, Leica Classic, or Leica Natural for example.  I find myself liking “Leica Contemporary” as a good starting point.  These Leica Looks appear to be essentially presets or filters, but very well done.  In fact, according to my research, the Leica Look presets available on the iPhone are quite nearly identical to what you find available on actual Leica camera, like the Q3 for example.  You can control the strength of the filter, or choose to not use the Leica Looks at all on any photo taken with the app. If you are a Leica camera owner, and would like to make your iPhone images more consistent with the images generated by your Leica camera, this app will be of strong interest.

You can also select one of a few Leica Frames for your photo.  The Leica Frames are handy in those situations where you want to show the Leica LUX specific settings you used to take the image – such as in this article. I used one of the Leica Frames to show the settings (the lens simulation setting in particular) on each of the photos.  I did find that the Leica Frame function did not report the aperture accurately – it always showed me at f1.8 for every photo no matter what lens or aperture setting I was actually using – you can see that in the photos of my car above.  

Once you finish with the photo options in the Leica LUX app, you have several exporting/sharing options available, to include saving it to your iOS Photos library.  Unfortunately, that function only works one way – you can’t take a photo from your Library that wasn’t taken using the LUX app and import it into the app to apply Leica Looks or Frames.  For the price of the app, I sure wish you could.  Speaking of which…  

Subscription Model:

While the Leica LUX app is free to download, access to its full range of features requires a subscription. As of now, the subscription is priced at $6.99 per month or $69.99 annually. Notably, purchasing the Leica LUX Grip accessory (more on that later) includes a complimentary 12-month subscription to the app’s Pro version.

Leica LUX Grip

As I mentioned, the Leica LUX grip was announced on February 6^th and is currently available for pre-order at a price of $329 and includes a one-year subscription to the Leica LUX app. Taking the one year free subscription into account, it puts the LUX Grip price at about  $250ish, which is still quite pricey for an iPhone accessory/gadget.  But the LUX grip does look useful.  Fortunately, Chinese camera accessory manufacturer PGYTech has already released a competing product for just $65 – the PGYTech MagCam Phone Grip.  Since you can’t even purchase the Leica LUX grip at this time, I went ahead and purchased the PGYTech product.  and I can’t imagine that the Leica version is worth almost $200 more.  Let’s face it – Leica is probably outsourcing the production of the accessory to someone like PGYTech anyway.  The PGYTech MagCam appears to have several features in common with the Leica LUX grip like battery that can recharge your phone and a built in tripod mount, but ithe MagCam appears to have features the LUX Grip does not.  I’ll have a full review coming soon.

DO I RECOMMEND THE LEICA LUX APP?

If you come into the app with the right mindset/expectations, it really does produce some nice results.  But the price is high, particularly when compared to other 3^rd party photo apps that are available.  It’s probably going to be a no-brainer for Leica photographers who will welcome the opportunity to make their phone camera photos look more like their camera photos.  I will say that using the app I’ve produced some very high-quality, very unique photos so I think it’s definitely worth downloading and trying the two-week trial.

DID I PURCHASE THE LEICA LUX APP SUBSCRIPTION?

The Leica LUX app has a two-week trial period during which you can use the “Pro” functions.  To continue to do so, you’ll need to subscribe.  Which I did.  Not because it’s a segment leading product.  I subscribed because I very much like the idea of the app and I’m hoping Leica continues to develop and improve it.  I’m getting good results, but if like it doesn’t improve the app over the next year, I think I’ll have difficulty justifying renewing it.