Sony Camera Updates Make It Easier to Track Photo Manipulation

Given the spate of recent Photoshop-editing controversies and an onslaught of AI-generated imagery, it's fair to question if a stunning image was captured with a camera, if it was heavily manipulated, or even created entirely by a computer. The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authentication (C2PA) is working on that very conundrum and has now established an open standard to digitally sign images coming out of a camera and track any edits made to a picture.

There are some big names behind C2PA from across the tech, photo, and news spheres—Adobe, the BBC, Intel, Google, Microsoft, the Publicis Groupe, Sony, and Truepic sit on its steering committee, and Canon, Leica, and Nikon are signed on too. So far, real-world support is hit or miss; Adobe Photoshop CC and Lightroom CC support tracking, and we've seen exactly one camera with C2PA built-in hit the market, the luxury-tilted Leica M11-P.

Camera support is going more mainstream as Sony has released free firmware updates for several of its full-frame cameras that add C2PA. Updates for the a1, a7S III, and a7 IV are available to download now, with the new a9 III firmware promised in the near future. In addition to C2PA signatures, the updates add or improve several features. Highlights include more robust filtering when playing back images on camera, focus breathing compensation for models that didn't have it already, as well as network transfer enhancements.

Enthusiasts who pick up their camera for fun likely don't need C2PA; the feature is more for photojournalists who submit images to news organizations, artists looking to submit work to a gallery, and serious hobbyists interested in entering photo contents. Each of these scenarios is likely to have its own set of guidelines for editing. For example, the Associated Press allows for dust spot removal, color correction, and contrast adjustment, as long as those edits don't make substantive changes to the content of the image.

And the AP is likely what Sony had in mind with this firmware. Photographers who work for the news service use Alpha cameras exclusively. As such it's no surprise that the initial batch of supported Sony cams are mostly on the high-end. Among them the a7 IV is the only one that's positioned on the entry-level. We asked Sony if other recent cameras would get the C2PA updat. The a7R V, a7C II, a7CR, and a6700 use a similar image processing platform and menu system, but aren't included here, for example, but did not receive an immediate response.

We don't have any of the cameras with C2PA support on hand, so we've not yet been able to try the feature and see how Sony implements it, but we previously tested it as part of our Leica M11-P review. Signed photos from that camera can be checked on the C2PA Verify site, which shows the photographer's name in the copyright field, along with a list of any edits made after capture. Since C2PA is an open standard, we expect a similar experience from Sony.

We also don't think we've heard the last about content verification. News organizations are all but certain to require it for submitted images, and with Canon and Nikon signed on, it's only a matter of time before it's a standard feature in interchangeable lens cameras. As for the firmware, it's a free download for the a1, a7S III, a7 IV, and you can check out Sony Alpha Universe for instructions if you're not sure how the update process works.