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M9 Battery Low Issue


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Strange battery issue with my nine month old M9. I pop in a fully charged Leica battery. I shoot pictures. Periodically, with no set frequency, the camera displays a "Battery Low" message. If I turn the camera off and on, the problem disappears. It appears sporadically, and it is driving me crazy.

 

Anyone else facing this, please?

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Solution: restore the calibration by draining the battery as far as it will go by switching off autoshutoff in the menu and leaving the LCD on (push the set button when the battery low message appears). And clean the battery contacts, both in the camera and on the battery.

 

I suppose this is an original Leica battery? Third party batteries have this behaviour built in.

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Strange battery issue with my nine month old M9. I pop in a fully charged Leica battery. I shoot pictures. Periodically, with no set frequency, the camera displays a "Battery Low" message. If I turn the camera off and on, the problem disappears. It appears sporadically, and it is driving me crazy.

 

Anyone else facing this, please?

 

Hi, I have the same problem, and unfortunately I havem't solved it... Have tried all the advised solutions from the forum members (thanks everyone), but the problem is still present, actually it is getting worse. Have even bought second original battery, but the same problemis present, so it is not the battery, but a camera problem. At the moment, I am preparing myself to send the camera to Solms, however I am affraid that it might get damaged in transport :(

 

Please inform if you have managed to solve the issue.

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I had this very same battery problem when I first obtained my M9. The camera was repacked and returned for repair. And, two weeks later the camera was returned and the problem had been fixed and resolved and never to again occur...

 

It wasn't the battery. It was the camera.

 

With my respects,

 

Norwin

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A fully charged battery in my M9 was empty after 3 days of non use.

The first time after I had sent the camera to Leica, I received a new battery, but this was not the cause.

So the camera went for a second time to Solms.

This time Leica replaced a Printed Circuit Board and they sent me a friendly email to excuse for this inconvenience.

Everything is fine now.

Great service and I am a happy customer.

 

Hans

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Your experience is one we all hear too frequently.

 

And, whilst I do not want to create an uproar with what i am next going to write, however, I don't know anyone who has purchased a Leica M9, who had not sent their camera (back) for repair - at least once.

 

I know there are those who returned their M9 several times.

 

You, my friend, returned yours more than once. Whilst, I only had to return mine -once.

 

We all know that for a camera of this high-end price. And, one which we all obviously love for the various reasons we choose Leica and the M9...I can't help but feel a little disappointed when I read of someone like yourself who had to send their camera in twice for such a silly required repair.

 

Gawd, I too await the M10, however, I don't want to again read these same complaints. And, I don't want to hear of anyone having had to send their camera back for repair.

 

We love the darn machine, I know. I do.

 

I really do.

 

However, I don't want to be disappointed either.

 

What can we each do to encourage Leica in acknowledging that their inspection process is clearly flawed...and, that they cannot let anything out their door without 110% confirmation that the product being passed in inspection is flawless in every way.

 

What can we do, hum?

 

With my respects,

 

Norwin

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Hi Norwin,

 

It has all to do with statistics.

 

A camera with 1000 components, with each component having a change of 1:1000.000 of having some kind of a problem, results in 1:1000 camera's having a defect.

Let's say that final inspection finds 80% of them, then there are still 1:5000 camera's being shipped with some kind of problem.

 

Increasing final inspection will increase costs asymptotically. So there is a point where it makes no sense to increase final inspection, because the market does not accept the induced price increase.

 

When the Leica M10 has significantly less parts, the percentage of defects will decrease accordingly..

 

Hans

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I have been in touch with Leica. Actually, their Internet Management guru reached out to me after he read my complaint on the Leica Facebook page. He has personally assisted me and my camera is being serviced in their New Jersey facility as we speak. I am not sure what the cause of the problem is but let's see what the official Leica communication says.

 

Does The Leica M9 Have Battery Problems Too? | Popular Photography

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Solution: restore the calibration by draining the battery as far as it will go by switching off autoshutoff in the menu and leaving the LCD on (push the set button when the battery low message appears). And clean the battery contacts, both in the camera and on the battery.

 

I suppose this is an original Leica battery? Third party batteries have this behaviour built in.

 

Jaapv, your method did not work. :confused: Also, battery contacts are clean. These are original Leica batteries I am dealing with. Thanks for the response.

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A camera with 1000 components, with each component having a change of 1:1000.000 of having some kind of a problem, results in 1:1000 camera's having a defect.

Let's say that final inspection finds 80% of them, then there are still 1:5000 camera's being shipped with some kind of problem.

 

Increasing final inspection will increase costs asymptotically. So there is a point where it makes no sense to increase final inspection, because the market does not accept the induced price increase.

 

Those figures may be correct for correctly-installed components that are either defective or fail early in the product’s life. But they do not account for manufacturing defects such as wrongly installed, badly installed or even missing components.

 

Careful inspection was the key to high quality in the past. For example, in the late 1950s every lens manufactured by Nikon was put through a projection test in which it was used at full aperture to project a complex test chart onto a large screen which was examined by an inspector. Several test images were also taken with each lens. These were checked and then filed away for ten years.

 

A year or so ago, a dealer told me that a customer’s new Leica lens proved unable to provide an acceptable image unless fully stopped down. A lens in that condition would never have passed the 1950s-style Nippon Kogaku inspection procedure.

 

Old Leitz-era staffers are reported to have tales of how the head of the lens department at some time during that era would spend part of his day inspecting newly manufactured lenses. I suspect that such duties in no way part of his official job, but it illustrates the degree to which he cared about the quality of the hardware his department was creating.

 

Yes, good inspection will drive up manufacturing cost, but so will the repair costs caused by poor test and inspection procedures. An inspector might take an hour to inspect ten widgets, but a highly-trained repair technician might need an hour to repair a defective one.

 

Around 1960, I worked in a repair department attached to a production line. We had good inspectors, and life in our little repair department was fairly easy. Most defects were noticed by the inspectors and were corrected by the operator who had built the item in question. We only had to deal with the problems that the inspectors had failed to spot. We even used to do a bit of production work ourselves if things got quiet. (There was a 'down' side, of course - the relationship between the production workers and the inspectors was an adversarial if not downright hostile one.)

 

Fifteen years later I was briefly attached to the repair department of a company which was suffering from a huge backlog of repair jobs and was running two shifts in order to try to cope. My assignment was to find out why so much hardware needed repair, and to see if the repair procedure could be speeded up.

My conclusion was that much of the problem was due to poor inspection in the production department.

 

My recommendation was that the repair section should set up its own inspection process for everything arriving for repair. A careful visual inspection lasting 5-10 minutes would in many cases be enough to identify a defect that could have taken an hour or more to troubleshoot using a highly-trained technician and expensive computer-controlled test equipment. I don't know if they took my advice, but hiring a couple of good inspectors would have been much cheaper than buying more computer-controlled test equipment and hiring more technicians. Those were the pre-PC days when a computer-controlled test equipment had a 'real' minicomputer built in.

 

Best regards,

 

Doug

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Yes, good inspection will drive up manufacturing cost, but so will the repair costs caused by poor test and inspection procedures. An inspector might take an hour to inspect ten widgets, but a highly-trained repair technician might need an hour to repair a defective one.

[/Quote]

Doug,

 

When better inspection reveals more problems, it will make more customers happy, but the camera has to be repaired anyhow.

The savings are only in avoiding the extra handling afterwards, not in the repair.

So there is a point where those two element are in balance and I am sure that Leica is constantly monitoring these two processes and attempting to bring the costs for inspection and repair down and quality up.

 

Hans

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Those figures may be correct for correctly-installed components that are either defective or fail early in the product’s life. But they do not account for manufacturing defects such as wrongly installed, badly installed or even missing components.

 

Careful inspection was the key to high quality in the past. For example, in the late 1950s every lens manufactured by Nikon was put through a projection test in which it was used at full aperture to project a complex test chart onto a large screen which was examined by an inspector. Several test images were also taken with each lens. These were checked and then filed away for ten years.

 

A year or so ago, a dealer told me that a customer’s new Leica lens proved unable to provide an acceptable image unless fully stopped down. A lens in that condition would never have passed the 1950s-style Nippon Kogaku inspection procedure.

 

Old Leitz-era staffers are reported to have tales of how the head of the lens department at some time during that era would spend part of his day inspecting newly manufactured lenses. I suspect that such duties in no way part of his official job, but it illustrates the degree to which he cared about the quality of the hardware his department was creating.

 

Yes, good inspection will drive up manufacturing cost, but so will the repair costs caused by poor test and inspection procedures. An inspector might take an hour to inspect ten widgets, but a highly-trained repair technician might need an hour to repair a defective one.

 

Around 1960, I worked in a repair department attached to a production line. We had good inspectors, and life in our little repair department was fairly easy. Most defects were noticed by the inspectors and were corrected by the operator who had built the item in question. We only had to deal with the problems that the inspectors had failed to spot. We even used to do a bit of production work ourselves if things got quiet. (There was a 'down' side, of course - the relationship between the production workers and the inspectors was an adversarial if not downright hostile one.)

 

Fifteen years later I was briefly attached to the repair department of a company which was suffering from a huge backlog of repair jobs and was running two shifts in order to try to cope. My assignment was to find out why so much hardware needed repair, and to see if the repair procedure could be speeded up.

My conclusion was that much of the problem was due to poor inspection in the production department.

 

My recommendation was that the repair section should set up its own inspection process for everything arriving for repair. A careful visual inspection lasting 5-10 minutes would in many cases be enough to identify a defect that could have taken an hour or more to troubleshoot using a highly-trained technician and expensive computer-controlled test equipment. I don't know if they took my advice, but hiring a couple of good inspectors would have been much cheaper than buying more computer-controlled test equipment and hiring more technicians. Those were the pre-PC days when a computer-controlled test equipment had a 'real' minicomputer built in.

 

Best regards,

 

Doug

Doug, you should visit Solms. What you describe is very close the the way Leica operates.
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Hi, I have the same problem, and unfortunately I havem't solved it... Have tried all the advised solutions from the forum members (thanks everyone), but the problem is still present, actually it is getting worse. Have even bought second original battery, but the same problemis present, so it is not the battery, but a camera problem. At the moment, I am preparing myself to send the camera to Solms, however I am affraid that it might get damaged in transport :(

 

Please inform if you have managed to solve the issue.

 

ODIN: Camera is back. Leica replaced a circuit board. 4 hours and no visible occurrence of "battery low". Suggest you send it in for repair and reference the post on Leica's news web site regarding the issue: Leica Camera AG - Leica M9 / Battery Low Issue

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