another dead horse...

[robertwright]

Got mine Thurday night. It stopped working friday night. At first the menu would display but the camera would not fire, and now, after charging the battery 3 hours the camera will fire but the menus will not display.

I will leave the battery out all night to see if that helps it.

I got it from fotocare in NY. Do you think I should go back to them to see if they will swap it or do you think I should just register the camera with Leica and then ship it to them direct?

Disappointing of course, but I knew the bed I was getting into...

Images that I have seen are fine, I got filters in advance, so no issues there.

Advice?

[AaronJ]

if you're still within the dealer's return period, take it back and ask for another. Even if you're out ot the return period, see if he'll swap. I'd send it to Leica for repair only as a last resort as they're pretty busy at the moment. Also, there's a chance that firmware 1.10 may fix your issues, too.

[barjohn]

While it still has some life, go to the Leica site and down load the 1.09 firmware and instructions and try and reflash the memory. You can't do any harm and it might recover the camera. That is what I would try. Just be sure you have a fully charged battery.

[marknorton]

I agree with John; if the flash memory has gone bad and can be fixed by reloading, that would be a useful pointer to the underlying cause of the problems.

[stnami]

another dead horse...... lets hope not

[Shootist]

Could tell us the serial number of that camera?

[robertwright]

serial 3101818

if i cannot access the menus how can I reflash the firmware?

[guy_mancuso]

It will automatically come up and ask if you want to update the firmware

[robertwright]

I see how to do the firmware-

I tried this morning and it said the battery was too low to relfash. This is interesting since I charged the battery last night for three hours, and then left it out of the camera all night. So either the software that measures the battery charge in the camera is corrupt, or there is a short in the battery contacts, or the battery itself is hosed. I don't have a spare battery to check to see if another makes it better.

so I am charging the battery now and I will attempt to reload the firmware.

There was another symptom I did not mention, after the camera died I put it in the bag, and when I got home 45 minutes later and took the camera out, it was very very warm, so warm I immediately took the battery out and suspeced a short. Even the lens was warm to the touch. But since then I have not experienced that.

Thanks for your replies!

[sean_reid]

It may or may not come up automatically depending on what state the camera is in. I tried to reload 1.09 on mine but it wouldn't do it. I'd do two things.

1. Exchange the camera
2. Do a full battery discharge/recharge cycle three times right after getting the new camera (as I believe the manual suggests). The easiest way to discharge the battery is to leave the camera on overnight with the "auto power off" disabled. I recommend that everyone do this, in fact.

Guy has reminded us about this in past posts.

Cheers,

Sean

[sean_reid]

Originally Posted by robertwright

I see how to do the firmware-

I tried this morning and it said the battery was too low to relfash. This is interesting since I charged the battery last night for three hours, and then left it out of the camera all night. So either the software that measures the battery charge in the camera is corrupt, or there is a short in the battery contacts, or the battery itself is hosed. I don't have a spare battery to check to see if another makes it better.

I got the same message when I tried this approach, despite trying different fully charged batteries. Swap the camera.

Cheers,

Sean

[robertwright]

Guy to the rescue! you should have a saturday morning super hero cartoon! I'd watch and eat cereal like I used to do as a kid (guess we should excoriate my parents for letting me sit too close to the tv, watch too much crap and eat sugar cereals huh..)

It is funny and frustrating at the same time to have these problems with the M8. In just the few hours I had it working it was a lot of fun. My main frustration with dslrs has always been controlling them, so to have a camera that you can manually focus, and have an actual aperture ring and shutter dial to set is such a relief.

I bought this camera because I do all my personal work on rangefinders (m6, mamiya7) and wanted to work that way on my professional work too, like I used to do in the halcyon days of film...when white balance meant choosing between green and yellow boxes...

when it gets sorted I will be a very happy camper...

[robertwright]

so the consensus seems to be swap the camera monday morning, assuming they have another to swap.

[guy_mancuso]

Robert quick question did you notice any weird event happen before this , like fast moving playback or LCD streak or any electrical interference. Also what SD card and have you tried a different one.

i also agree if you just got it, return it and get another. Why fool around with this but this is also good data for us so try a couple things and also where did you buy it.

[guy_mancuso]

Guy to the rescue! you should have a saturday morning super hero cartoon! I'd watch and eat cereal like I used to do as a kid (guess we should excoriate my parents for letting me sit too close to the tv, watch too much crap and eat sugar cereals huh..)


No sure a fat little Italian cartoon guy would be that appealing to the general public. ROTFLMAO.

Seriously though try to give us a little more data. Sean and I are both interested in these kinds of things, it helps us rely messages to our Leica contacts

[LJL]

Originally Posted by guy_mancuso

No sure a fat little Italian cartoon guy would be that appealing to the general public. ROTFLMAO.

Surely you jest, Sir Guy......have you not heard of the Mario Brothers and how successful THAT cartoon/game franchise has been for quite some time??

LJ

[gravastar]

Originally Posted by robertwright

.......................................There was another symptom I did not mention, after the camera died I put it in the bag, and when I got home 45 minutes later and took the camera out, it was very very warm, so warm I immediately took the battery out and suspeced a short. Even the lens was warm to the touch. But since then I have not experienced that.

Thanks for your replies!

I think it's most important that Leica gets to hear about cameras that fail and are very warm to the touch afterwards. There's one "feature" of CMOS circuits that can cause this and that's ESD induced latchup. There's a 4 layer structure produced during CMOS fabrication that can act as a silicon controlled rectifier. The SCR is connected directly between the supply (battery) terminals. If there is enough current injected into the structure, say from an ESD strike, to make the SCR gain greater than one then the current is self maintaining and can be destructive. It's magnitude is only limited by the battery and bulk impedances. There are many safeguards build in during the design and fabrication process but if the injected current is large enough then latchup can still occur.

I read a letter from Leica on the forum saying they do test to an ESD standard. I wonder if that includes an ESD strike while the camera is powered up.

I would never accept a camera that had been hot due to this cause. The best line of action is to get it exchanged and to let Leica know what has happened. You're not the first to have a camera that's failed hot.

Just to add... I used to be a senior CMOS chip designer with a large semiconductor corporation.

Bob.

[robertwright]

Originally Posted by guy_mancuso

Robert quick question did you notice any weird event happen before this , like fast moving playback or LCD streak or any electrical interference. Also what SD card and have you tried a different one.

i also agree if you just got it, return it and get another. Why fool around with this but this is also good data for us so try a couple things and also where did you buy it.

there was no event that I can remember prior, it was working, it turned it off, put it in the bag, and then saw something else to shoot and took it out, and it was unresponsive.

this was all indoors at a studio in manhattan. I got the camera a fotocare thursday night. I did shoot a little with the partially charged from the factory battery before charging the battery to full later that night. It worked fine, and all through the next day. I don't remember what the battery level icon read at that moment. There have only been about 150 caputures in the camera total.
No playback issues, no streak, although now that the camera is dead, taking the battery out and reinserting it and turning the camera on can render a dark black line on the lcd against a dark background, you can hardly see it, but it is there. About 1/8th of an inch thick. also if I take the bat out and reinsert it and leave the camera in the off position I can shoot frames and see the preview, but I cannot access any menu functions. That may have stopped after I left the battery out all night, now I can get menu functions sometimes but it won't shoot. Mixed bag.

SD cards are 2GB transcend 150x speed. Fotocare recommended them (perhaps because they were expensive? )

[guy_mancuso]

No I can just imagine my 9 year old son playing a game with his dad in it, NO THANKS . LOL

hey if you can't make fun of yourself than you just don't know how to have fun. Right

You guys are too funny.

[guy_mancuso]

Originally Posted by robertwright

there was no event that I can remember prior, it was working, it turned it off, put it in the bag, and then saw something else to shoot and took it out, and it was unresponsive.

this was all indoors at a studio in manhattan. I got the camera a fotocare thursday night. I did shoot a little with the partially charged from the factory battery before charging the battery to full later that night. It worked fine, and all through the next day. I don't remember what the battery level icon read at that moment. There have only been about 150 caputures in the camera total.
No playback issues, no streak, although now that the camera is dead, taking the battery out and reinserting it and turning the camera on can render a dark black line on the lcd against a dark background, you can hardly see it, but it is there. About 1/8th of an inch thick. also if I take the bat out and reinsert it and leave the camera in the off position I can shoot frames and see the preview, but I cannot access any menu functions. That may have stopped after I left the battery out all night, now I can get menu functions sometimes but it won't shoot. Mixed bag.

SD cards are 2GB transcend 150x speed. Fotocare recommended them (perhaps because they were expensive? )

Damn same issue I had to on my dead one , return it. This one has happened to several folks almost the same scenerio a mixed bag of working and not working. I had this with a 1.06 camera. How about static anything that may have set that off , carpet or anything like that. Starting to feel like a Doctor here. LOL