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Uh Oh...Me Too


sean_reid

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I'd like to second what Marc said -- this is a camera that I'll take warts and all over any other digital camera I own. Mine has performed flawlessly to this point and even if it develops a problem, it still deserves to be on the top of the heap. Leica will fix the flaws and these discussions will quickly fade from memory.

 

Larry

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John, the problem with a high impedance path to ground is that the voltage on it can rise very quickly in response to an electrostatic discharge and punch through those CMOS gates which are nano-metres thick. Conventional wisdom is that you use clamp diodes on susceptible lines to present a low impedance path to ground when an ESD strikes, but there's no point sinking that energy to a point which is not seen by everybody else in the circuit as a true ground reference.

 

Who knows? we're speculating but Sean's reported failing conditions do point to some sort of static trouble.

 

Scott, very true, I'd missed that, even the Digilux 2 allows you to run it from a power supply.

 

Mark

 

I agree - and presumably the self-capacitance of the CMOS gates is so small that even a tiny amount of charge can result in a high voltage (Q = CV and all that!). I think what I was trying to say was to suggest that, in the context of a Faraday Cage, 180 ohms or so might actually be quite a low impedence connection between the different metal bits of the camera body. What we don't know though is whether the electronics' ground is connected at all to the body!

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No, we're talking about the electronics generally where the transistors in the chips have a tiny channel or "gate" which is wafer thin and can be perforated by static voltages which will generally spoil your day.

 

John, you can quite easily get currents of 5 amps flowing for a fraction of a second on a static discharge...

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Guest guy_mancuso

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Well my issue was outside in a golf cart with cool temps and i was in the middle of shooting shot one or 2 and bam dead. It maybe static but i am really leaning at the batteries as the issue. I have had just some odd occurances were the camera just won't work without turning it off and back on again or replace the battery with a more charged one. I am starting to think more on the level were these issues come into play is below half capacity. Problem is i can't prove this theory and it happens occasionally. Honestly not sure what to think here on this but batteries have been issues with other digital camera's as well and maybe a combination of static and batteries the camera freaks out. But i know one thing for sure it is electronic and not a mechnical issue. i would not go in the forest without backup batteries is a rule of thumb to live by.

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Guest localplayer

a newbie here. love leica m's--used them for yrs. wanted to check into the M8--i get tired of carrying multiple Canon 1D Mkll's around for assignments=-but they tend to hold up well, do okay in the rain, and take all sorts of abuse (i shoot the NFL during the fall). thought i was ready for an M8--but not after reading all this stuff. well check in next year--hope they get it all fixed, but i'm not betting my assignments on one quite yet. thanks guys for your post, you saved me a stack of money. i sure hope leica makes it.

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I was out shooting with the camera, and turned it on, but it refused to read the card when turned on. I tried reformating the card but that just didn't do anything - just a blinking light for 5 minutes.

 

The fix was sort of fun: pull the battery (to kill the blinking light), then take out the card. Restart the camera with battery but no card. Only after that, reinsert card.

 

After that, all was well. Goblins, I suppose. Need to be handy with this stuff!

 

You guys are too hard with the british sports cars: its Italian exotics with early Marelli ignitions.... it took a bit of time for reliability to come in, but once it did, they were bulletproof.

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The same thing happen to me this weekend after a trip to Marbella in spain, shooting models for a norwegian icecream company ( I did not use the the m8 for the job - only for privat shooting).

The camera is now totaly dead.

 

Freddy Larsen

Norway:confused:

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Have you seen this problem with the M8 before?

 

Freddy Larsen

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Sorry to insist but I can't believe that there is so much static electricity everywhere:eek:

Of course this is just an opinion.

 

...........

This was obtained by slowly reducing the voltage feeding the computer, i.e. putting it in a "strange" state. Then after doing that, pushing some keys could allow us to have another type of tool...in a stable maneer, even powered correctly.

......... Perhaps the M8 is not protected against a bad (low) voltage feed? Or M8 should get a nicely "off sequence" (like today computers)? Or some batteries are not enough good to deliver the right voltage near their end of charge?

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Sean,

 

Brent Nicastro has a similar problem earlier this week with a camera that died almost as soon as he got it -- check out this thread:

http://www.leica-camera-user.com/digital-forum/13859-dead-m8-survey.html

 

It sounds like a battery contact problem to me, too.

 

Good luck, and keep us posted.

 

Larry

 

I'm sure static electricity wasn't the problem with my M8. Here's the sequence that led to it's failure:

 

1. Received camera late in the day and charged the battery for over 3 hours.

2. Put in fresh battery and did some test shots around the house. Everything functioned.

3. Next day, I did more testing. The camera functioned properly, but exhibited focus problems as determined by using a focus chart and tripod with the camera at a 45 degree angle. Throughout the day, I removed the SD card (on the list of compatibles) 3 or 4 times and downloaded images.

4. Later that afternoon, I was out walking in cold, but not frigid, weather and doing sporadic shooting. I noticed at one point that the images suddenly stopped displaying on the monitor, but I was still able to shoot. Then I tried to recall an image and was unable to bring anything up on the monitor. I turned the camera off and went home. When I tried to turn it back on about an hour later, it was basically inoperative. I was able to briefly pull up the menu by holding the shutter down while pressing the menu button, but was unable to record any images.

5. I considered battery failure, so I removed the battery and charged it for 2 hours. When I put it back into the camera, it still would not operate. Finally, I removed the battery and left it out of the camera for 24 hours. This still had no effect.

6. FedEx to Solms.

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Have you seen this problem with the M8 before?

 

Freddy Larsen

Was this a deliberate IR photograph? Mine did something similar but more spectacular when using flash and a IR pass filter.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Lucas earned this rubric honestly:

 

[ATTACH]22553[/ATTACH]

 

I used to buy tail light bulbs by the handful for my BSA since they lasted only about half an hour of use at night.

 

Chris

 

One of the companies I had back in the early 70's was a motor industry consultancy specialising in guarantee claim analysis. As any of you who owned British made cars from the 60's, 70's or 80's will painfully recall, good electrical conductivity was not a high priority. One of the major culprits was the "Lucar" bullet connector. At the end of the 1960's, for economic reasons, they changed the metal of this component from plated brass to plated steel but left the little "bullets" which went into it as plated brass. Anytime this combination got wet, especially with salt water, it formed a nice little electrolytic cell, what with the current running through it and would corrode in hours. We tried, in vain, to persuade the various manufacturers we were working for, to specify the earlier but slightly more expensive version. This is, to a major degree, what I believe led to the poor reputation of British cars and Lucas = death of the British motor industry.

 

I hope companies like Leica learned from this debacle and have given electrical bonding a high priority.

 

Wilson

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