Drive Blocked/Shutter Fault

[beverlylogan]

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Thanks for all the responses; I'm going to talk to Earhard as soon as he returns. And, yes, I bought the camera two years ago brand new from Tamarkin in NYC.

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[trs]

I keep on reading about the incompatibility of the Discreet Mode and Continuous Mode and am wondering - what happened to common sense? Please do not misunderstand me - I am not defending Leica but, would you engage Reverse in your car’s transmission while moving forward at 100km/h? Why blame the manufacturer and expect the firmware to fix this issue?

 

Why not use common sense and deduce that when the camera is in the Discreet Mode and the shutter release is held continuously, the Continuous Mode simply cannot work or, in the worst case scenario, will jam the camera?

 

Sorry - I do not wish to offend anybody…. Just wondering aloud…..

 

All the best,

 

Jan

 

Jan,

Unfortunately, it is accident waiting to happen. If you use D mode regularly like I did, accident is simply not avoidable (there seem to be some solution out there to stop the know though). Worst part is no one seem to care for the C mode, myself included which is causing all these grief. Since release of FW I pretty muched used D mose all the time. In Feb 2010, the accident happened.

 

Beverly, good luck with your camera. I could not find any documentation where I read originally, for sure, it is known bug. There are multiple threads on this in this forum alone.

[beverlylogan]

Do you know which threads document this? I just want Leica to fix it without my having to lay out $525. This sounds like it should be a recall to me.

[chris_livsey]

We were given to understand from Leica that as this was implemented in the firmware a future firmware version would sort out this problem. Unfortunately we are still waiting for new firmware. This does not require a recall just a firmware fix.

You may come across one or two threads on the issue of when and if the M8 firmware will be updated

[marknorton]

It's not clear to me that the firmware problem which causes the camera to hang up when you select discreet and continuous modes together would cause physical damage to the shutter but it's clearly nonsense that the shutter should fail after such a short time and Leica should fix it free of charge.

 

Warranties are one thing but so too are reasonable expectations of quality and longevity in a camera this expensive. I would certainly get in touch with Christian Erhardt and ask some difficult (for him) questions.

[dbraid]

I guess I am lucky. Twice I have accidentally switched the camera into continuous mode when I am in discrete shutter release. I have gotten a repeated whining clunking sound and the "Shutter Fault" message, but the shutter has not been physically damaged. At least I do not have any sense that it has been damaged. I keep using the camera as normal.

 

Donald

[ho_co]

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Donald, that's the more common manifestation of the mismatch. I think in a few cases the camera has jammed and needs battery removal to restart. Beverly's is one of very few cases where the camera gave up.

 

Remember, there are at least two different versions of the M8 internally. That may (or may not) have to do with the way a particular camera behaves in this case.

 

Glad yours is functioning well.

[trs]

Beverly, here are couple of threads that talk about it. I think there are more. One of the thread has quote from Leica service, but no link.

 

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-m8-forum/84799-m8-shutter-fault.html

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-m8-forum/68365-m8-2-shutter-faults.html

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/1225875-post278.html

[sgriffee]

Yesterday I returned from a 2-month trip to Southeast Asia. In the third week of the trip my M8's shutter failed (Shutter fault, drive blocked messages. One of the shutter blades clearly bent.)

 

Bought the camera three years ago in the US, but currently live in Italy. Am about to send it to Germany for repair and am interested to see what responses people with the same problem and the camera out of warranty get from Leica.

 

Best, Simon

[ho_co]

Simon--

Drat! Bad luck! I hope you had a usable backup! Curious--how many shots had it made before self-destructing?

 

Damaged shutter is of course different from the Continuous + Discreet Mode problem that a lot of posters to this thread have.

 

It'll be interesting to see response, as you said.

 

Leica originally charged for some damaged shutter work, even when the camera was under warranty, citing customer abuse. I think the company eventually reversed charges in all those cases and said that damaged shutters would in future be handled on a case-by-case basis.

 

 

You say 'bent' blade. Not like the several cracked blades previously reported, then?

 

If you haven't already shipped it, could you post a picture of the shutter?

[ampguy]

Makes sense. I read about these shutter problems all the time, but have 30k on the original M8, but never use C mode.

 

I need 1/8000, so the new shutter isn't an option.

 

I think it's probably a good thing to consider not using C mode if you like and want to keep the original shutter going for a long time. IMHO, ymmv.

[beverlylogan]

Ok, so Leica repair in NJ called and said the problem with the camera is that the motor advancing the shutter died. No relation to firmware or discrete mode + continuous. I am responsible for the $525 because the camera is out of warranty. The camera is three years old.

 

Has anyone had this problem? I can't believe the most expensive camera I have, this M8, would die after fewer than 6,000 shots.

[jaapv]

The upside? They will check and adjust, if needed upgrade, the whole camera and will grant one year guaranty.

[sgriffee]

Simon--

Drat! Bad luck! I hope you had a usable backup! Curious--how many shots had it made before self-destructing?

 

Ho_co,

 

I'm not sure how many shots the camera had made or how to find out this information, but it was certainly many. I used the camera almost every day for the three years I had it.

 

You say 'bent' blade. Not like the several cracked blades previously reported, then?

 

If you haven't already shipped it, could you post a picture of the shutter?

 

One of the blades was bent 'up and over' a bottom-section of the chamber and I believe there is a small 'rip' on the bottom-left of this same blade. I am sending the camera in on Monday and will try and get a picture of the damaged shutter up here before then.

 

One thing to note: When using discreet mode, even not in conjunction with Continuous mode, after taking a picture sometimes the camera would re-cock the shutter over and over again continuously until you turned it off. It think it had something to do with the timing of pressing the shutter release and releasing your finger from it.

 

Best,

Simon

[ho_co]

Simon--

Here are links to a couple pictures of self-destructing M8 shutters. Situation doesn't seem to look the same as your description, but these are typical of the few cases.

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-m8-forum/20034-m8-shutter-blade-fracture.html#post212348

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-m8-forum/93843-m8-damaged-shutter-how-could-happen.html#post983108

 

The M8/M9 shutter shouldn't be troublesome, since it's the same unit used in the R8/R9.

 

 

 

As to shutter actuation count, some image processing software (Photoshop CS4 here) displays it as "Image Unique ID" in the EXIF.

 

The count is reported in hexadecimal, needs to be converted to decimal. The count below decodes to 2727 exposures according to HEXADECIMAL to BINARY conversion, HEX to Decimal converter, Hexdecimal convertor.

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[sgriffee]

Howard,

 

Thank you for the links and shutter actuation info.

 

I converted the 'Image Unique ID' Hex in the Exif of the last image before the shutter broke: 0000000000000000000000000000BBF7 = 48119.

 

Here are a couple of pictures of the damage. A little rip can be seen on one of the blades, close to the corner of the shutter 'window':

 

http://simongriffee.com/M8-ShutterDamage.jpg

http://simongriffee.com/M8-ShutterDamageClose.jpg

 

Best,

Simon

[ho_co]

Thanks, Simon. Your description and the pictures confirm that this isn't like the others.

 

48000 pictures is a lot better than Beverly's 6000.

 

There haven't been many shutter problems with M8 or M9 reported here, which makes each one seem more interesting. There were maybe half-a-dozen of the rip-in-the-metal kind shown in the links I posted, and then I think shutter problems kind of died down.

 

Then there were/are the problems that seem to be related to mode confusions like Beverly's.

 

The rips that occurred in the earlier examples all seemed to be in the same place, visible when the shutter was cocked. In your case, the shutter jammed after firing, so one of the activating arms is visible.

 

Yours looks like a one-of-a-kind to me. I don't have any words of wisdom. Sorry for the problem; do let us know how it works out. 48000 pictures shows you've been putting it through its paces. Seems like too low a number, but then any number would seem too low. I guess statistically there have to be some outliers.

 

Good luck, and thanks for keeping us posted.

 

 

 

Boy, there sure are enough leading zeros in that hexadecimal field, aren't there? Room for a lot more exposures before the camera gives up the ghost. I wonder whether they reset the count to zero when they change the shutter. When I "up"-graded my M8 to the slower shutter of the M8.2, I don't think they reset the counter. Of course, they probably just exchanged some parts of the shutter in that case.

 

And as far as that goes, that field does get incremented by one each time the shutter fires, but Leica doesn't refer to it as an exposure counter, so it may have a more general use than just counting activations.

[sgriffee]

Howard,

 

Thank you for the reassurance. I believe the camera arrived at Leica late today and hopefully I'll get it back again soon.

 

Best,

Simon

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[marknorton]

Boy, there sure are enough leading zeros in that hexadecimal field, aren't there? Room for a lot more exposures before the camera gives up the ghost. I wonder whether they reset the count to zero when they change the shutter. When I "up"-graded my M8 to the slower shutter of the M8.2, I don't think they reset the counter. Of course, they probably just exchanged some parts of the shutter in that case.

 

And as far as that goes, that field does get incremented by one each time the shutter fires, but Leica doesn't refer to it as an exposure counter, so it may have a more general use than just counting activations.

 

It's a 16 byte field represented as hex, two hex characters being needed for each byte making 32 in all. Some manufacturers might store alphanumeric data there, Leica use it simply as an exposure counter, 16 bytes, good to count up to about 10 to the power 38, so they are being a tad optimistic.

[marknorton]

Ok, so Leica repair in NJ called and said the problem with the camera is that the motor advancing the shutter died. No relation to firmware or discrete mode + continuous. I am responsible for the $525 because the camera is out of warranty. The camera is three years old.

 

Has anyone had this problem? I can't believe the most expensive camera I have, this M8, would die after fewer than 6,000 shots.

 

Most shutter failures seem to have been physical damage to the shutter itself as illustrated here.

 

If the motor drive has failed, it's most likely down to a $10 motor from Namiki (Namiki Precision Jewel Co., Ltd. : dc motors, micro motors, sapphire wafers, diaphragm pumps, vibration motors : Namiki supplies high precision components.) or the $2 chip from Sanyo used to drive it. As I said in Post #4 of this thread, I expect Leica will just replace the entire shutter controller which you can see in my anatomy thread instead of trying to identify and replace the failing part.

 

However you look at it (and it's not clear to me Leica will provide a warranty for the entire camera as Jaap suggests), it's a dismal reflection on Leica's ability to build reliable electronics and stand by their product.

 

I think you are right to feel aggrieved.