Crack!

[jaapv]

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Yes, but you can't break things without causing some form of mechanical stress. As you mentioned earlier there are several ways in which you could induce stress; heat recycling and associated differences between expansion coeffs etc of the various materials in a composite and so on.

 

What i'm driving at is that the asymmetric vignetting may be a symptom of the underlying problem which in the extreme case also lead to the mechanical failure of the sensor. One side of the sensor shows greater blue vignetting than the other. Some have suggested that this asymmetry is due to the sensor mounting, or the lenses - i'm suggesting that if the sensor itself has an asymmetry in it's light path from left to right, then you may get similar effects.

 

The question then becomes what could be causing an asymmetry in the sensor's light handling from left to right - and it is possible that one area of the sensor is always subject to more stress than other areas, which in extremes results in the sensor cracking, but meantime may also be responsible for the asymmetric vignetting. The stress may be due to mounting of the sensor, or its manufacture, either way localised stress may cause both the vignetting and ultimately, the cracking.

 

For example, if you take two strips of glass and clamp them together very tightly at one end, leaving the other end with a significant air gap between them... and then shine blue light through the two layers of glass... will equal intensities of blue light be transmitted along the full length of the sandwich? They won't - and if you were to over tighten the clamp eventually you will break the glass. Also, if you were to tighten the clamp to just below the breaking point, then tapping the glass with a pencil may be enough to shatter it. Perhaps not with the first tap, or the second.... but after a thousand, two thousand?

 

So depending on whether the clamp is there or not and to the degree to which it is tightened, you may have a different degrees of blue light transmission at one end of the strip sandwich compared to the other. This will be the case whether or not the glass breaks/cracks due to excessive stress. In fact, you could try to use the difference in light transmittance between the two ends of the sandwich to measure the degree of stress applied at the clamped end. The effect would be wavelength dependent too.. red light would scatter less than blue and green somewhere in between. It would also depend on the angle of incidence of the light...depending on colour you would see variations in transmitted light intensity along the glass sandwich as you varied the angle of incident light.

 

Of course I'm not saying that this is what is happening with the M9's sensor - it may be totally unreasonable to suggest that something akin to this is happening. Nonetheless, light transmittance and stress can be related and nobody discussed this... so i thought i'd pop it in.

I fear it has been discussed extensively - no correlation.

[hoppyman]

I looked through three threads here to see if I could notice any further trends amongst the reported problems here.

I also looked at RFF forum and the LUG (where I cross -posted the response from Stefan Daniel). I could not find any cases at all reported on those two forums. Someone will correct me if I missed any. There were said to be1 to 3 cases reported on the DPReview forum.(If so, I don't know if any of those are duplicates)

I do not know about any cases reported (only) on the German Forum here.

 

I found about 30 reports here, around half of those by new members so perhaps we have attracted almost every on-line report? People can make their own judgements on what percentage of occurrences we have vs. the estimated production numbers so far (a number of people suggested 20,000 units as an estimate).

 

Of our approximately 30 reports around half have been followed up with reports of repair or replacement.

Perhaps anyone who has reported a problem but does not yet have a resolution or has not reported a resolution could let the Forum know in this thread (as the SN thread only wants serial numbers there)?

[Guest Overview]

Lars, Did you use Stanley dry plates by any chance? Sorry about your cracked

filter.... good luck!

[kuspen]

Maybe just a ridiculous thought? When my sensor cracked a thumb up EP-1 was mounted to the camera. You guys who had your sensor cracked, did you use a thumbs up?

Per

[vanhulsenbeek]

Hmm. I can think of one forummember, who had a crack and uses a TU as far as I know. Some sort of funny strain on the back, coming from the hot shoe?

[250swb]

I had a crack and used a TU, but I don't see any relationship other than coincidence. If its the hot shoe you are calling into question there would be a larger proportion of people with cracks who'd been using flashguns.

 

Steve

[Alnitak]

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Maybe just a ridiculous thought? When my sensor cracked a thumb up EP-1 was mounted to the camera. You guys who had your sensor cracked, did you use a thumbs up?

Per

 

Nope, never put anything in the hot shoe except the Frankenfinder for the WATE.

 

Jeff

[ho_co]

Thumbs-Up an interesting idea, but according to the Leica photokina meeting notes, Mr Schopf said the cause was in Kodak's construction process and has been corrected.

[Tom M]

Hello again,

My M-9 was sent to Leica NJ on August 1, 2010, and returned through my

dealer, Camera West today August 20th. The cracked sensor and glass were replaced, as well as the CPU and the camera's leather-like covering. I am

grateful for the help from Sean at Camera West, and for the rather quick repair time from Leica NJ.

Bob

 

The last post in this thread is from late August. Surprisingly, there is very little in this regard on the German language forum.

 

T.