londond

Have just received a survey from Leica following up with people who had reported freezes with the previous version. Having made a few frustrated posts here - and at risk of irritating those still suffering - just felt I should say I’m happy with how they handled this. The support person (Tim) was courteous and professional in diagostic questions, the latest release fixed my problems and I’m impressed they followed it up. I still get a very rare freeze, perhaps the same frequency as before v2.01, which does not compromise my user experience. In an earlier grumpy post I had accepted, from my own background delivering complex IT, that you get problematic releases, the test would be how it’s handled. From my perspective, this was fine.

Upload via FOTOs worked fine for both M11 and M11M (have to wait a bit with the red light flashing for the restart which was momentarily worrying). Took about 400 shots on M11, no freezes at all where before it had been freezing on average every 50-70 shots. Had been frustrated that 2.0.1 appeared to have introduced freezes to my previously fine M11s - am optimistic they have fixed it with .02, restoring both camera reliability and confidence in Leica s/w and f/w. 🤞

Gave it a try, freeze after about 40 frames - but appreciate your taking the time to share the idea…

Ah, understand a sort of register thread for reference - makes sense.

No, will give that a try…thanks for the suggestion. 🤞

I agree.

Low volume but premium price. Of course people will use Ms for different reason - for me its not IQ (already fine on my SL2 or Q2M) but user experience and the pleasure of using something so well engineered (like my film M). These are for me compromised by a sense that the M11’s excellent physical/mechanical engineering has been let down by some non-premium software engineering. I was trying to say that I know issues happen with new releases. These bugs are frustrating but non-critical and all will be good if they are fixed in due course. I was more reacting to the posts saying that discussion of them should be curtailed on the forums. All the suggested fixes (SD cards, FOTOS) are much appreciated and I’m sure will work for those who have the particular problem. Seems to me some people are finding their M11s somewhat unreliable. There’s no objective standard about what level of reliability one can expect in such a premium but niche product and peoples expectations vary. I don’t know the prevalence or severity of all the problems, but wouldn’t characterise discussion of them as “hysterical”. I think the exchange of information is helpful and its understandable if some people are a bit frustrated.

I switched off FOTOS and the freezes continue, the first one after 30 frames. I don’t have a perfectly reliable camera. It seems some people have encountered an issues with FOTOS, others clearly have some different issues, and some none at all.

Well…I was recently responsible for developing and delivering a computer system comprising 2.5 million lines of code with over 40,000 tests, most run multiple times. I’m familiar with the kind issues computers tend to have, what can go wrong with releases and upgrades, and how best to manage them. While proud the work of the hundreds of people who contributed to the system, I understand that go live bugs were very frustrating for hard pressed users - for them the system felt unreliable until we fixed them. We were delivering a high stakes, fault intolerant system on which over a million people depended. No one would have just accepted the level of unreliability i have encountered with my M11 and M11M - and I certainly don’t regard faults with my expensive hobby cameras as more serious than those experienced by my users at work. However, many thanks for the suggestion. Will retest with Fotos off and hope this solves the problem. Many decades of system development mean I don’t yet share the confidence that this is the one universal solution to the one universal problem with the release. If it is , I’ll happily come back to reiterate my gratitude for the suggestion, and apologise for my grumpiness. In the exchange of diagnostic information with the (polite and professional) Leica support people, they have never suggested the Fotos workaround. Ceratinly if at work we had a fix-all workaround to a sporadic issues affecting some people, we would have told our thousands of users asap. I hope this is the solution and the problems is merely remarkably amateurish communications (you only learn about the fix on a user forum?).

There seem to be fairly frequent threads along the lines of “I’m thinking of buying an M11 (/M/P)…” or “Would you buy one again?” Are you saying that those experiencing freezes should be censored from replying to them if they have once flagged the freezing on the forum? For example, I would reply “I have enjoyed both M11 and M11M up to the new firmware, where freezes on average every 40-50 frames have comprised the experience and undermined my confidence in Leica software engineering. I don’t know how prevalent these problems are but would advise caution if these things matter to you.” Perhaps only those replying “yes I would definitely buy the M11” should be permitted to post (some bots could be deployed to generate them if the general view is insufficiently positive). I have been using Ms for over 25 years but am relatively new to the forum. On other topics, some folks seem to repeat views where relevant on numerous threads. Presumably that would remain OK so long as they are not referring to the M11 unreliability?

Fair enough, agree people might assume that and it must be a minority that have problems. I’ve sent detailed reports to Leica, responses to date professional and courteous but they (hopefully) are still investigating. Will happily take them to Mayfair if they advise, but would be sad if both cameras disappeared to Germany for a long time….

Not sure is meant by “so over reported” - can’t recall any posts assessing the prevalence of the various problems, or indeed what an acceptable level would be. I’m sure people are honestly reporting the issues they encounter, which seems appropriate in a forum like this, sometimes prompting others to reply “mine doesn’t have it.” It seems generally understood these problems are sporadic, which is good for most people but makes it harder to fix for the minority. I get a sample size of 50 is bigger than mine of 2 (both my M11 and M11M have problems post firmware update) not sure either is big enough to draw a conclusion.

I won’t repeat posts on other threads about freezing issues with both my M11 and M11M. But to my answer to your question would be “quite the reverse - my freeze issues seem to have been introduced by the 2.0.1 firmware update”

Looking on the bright side, its a good job Leica got rid of the baseplate for the M11. It would be even more frustrating if you had to remove that every 20 shots to extract the battery…..

Since upgrading the firmware I am struggling with freezing on both my M11 and M11M. Appreciate all the well-meant suggestions about cards and formatting, grateful that people take the trouble to offer them. However…. …I have tried all sorts of combinations of different UHS-II cards and formatting routines, no luck, Yesterday I was using the internal memory - 2 freezes in 39 shots. I am hoping the the polite and professional Leica support people can fix the problem, because card juggling won’t for me.