Card Problems

[k-hawinkler]

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No problems... I think I did this elsewhere, but here it goes:

 

I shoot a lot, usually 1000 shots per week during the busy seasons...

 

I shoot DNGs only in S mode. No discreet. 99% manual.

 

Every now and then, though, that power switch on the M9 will switch on me to C mode (very annoying ) and I'll work there as if I'm shooting in S till I notice it and switch it back. The last thing I want is it to switch into self timer mode on me

 

I don't machine-gun the M9, but when I'm chasing something I'm shooting pretty quickly.

 

I don't shoot DNG + JPEG since when I tested it a year ago I found it too slow. And anyway, C1 and other programs now generate a JPEG so quickly in post that I have no use for a JPEG on the job.

 

I hope that helps. I did lose a couple of shots on my M9 when I first got it, with an Extreme 3 SD card, when I inadvertently switched off the power switch as it was still writing and as I was reviewing the image (duh) I needed to pull the batter to "reboot" the camera (the red light just kept flashing), and I had lost maybe 3 shots.

 

I tried to reproduce it since, but wasn't able to--though that was clearly user error; I try not to turn off the camera as its writing

 

Since those new Panasonic cards have power failure protection, I'm pretty sure even in that case I would have only lost one, and not several, images, but maybe not...

 

I know that I inadvertently shot them till the low-battery warning on the M9 (no further writing possible) with no problem on Saturday, Probably not a good practice, regardless, though!

 

Hope this helps!

 

 

Hi James,

 

Yes, that helps a lot. Many thanks.

That's exactly what I do most of the time.

 

S mode, DNGs only, no discreet, power on or off by me.

 

When I operate that way my M9 behaves very reliably.

 

One final question, do you use compressed or uncompressed DNG?

 

Thanks again.

 

Best, K-H.

[sblitz]

i am no professional, but james and i operate the camera the same way and i haven't had a problem. one time the camera locked up. i turned it off, pulled the battery, counted to 10, reinserted the battery, turned the camera on, and all was well. remember this camera is really a computer and just like your pc, sometimes they need a hard reboot to blow out phantom programs and other such background events running in the background that build take up virtual memory get in the way of performance and sometimes freezes the computer. the m9 is no different in that regard -- it is a computer as much as it is as camera, so similar rules can apply.

[Washington]

Just for the halibut I went to the Kingston Website to see what a 16GB SDHC Class 6 Ultimate Flash Card G2 at a whopping $28 will do in my M-9. We’ll see.

Again, the object of going to the source is to avoid fakes.

[scrubs]

Just for the halibut I went to the Kingston Website to see what a 16GB SDHC Class 6 Ultimate Flash Card G2 at a whopping $28 will do in my M-9. We’ll see.

Again, the object of going to the source is to avoid fakes.

 

 

 

I don't mean this badly, but I really hope it fails in the camera so you finally might accept - this is not

a problem with fake cards. I would bet my M9 on it. If you really wanna see one fail - buy the

extreme Pro it will be dead within the month - in fact buy two put one in the M9 and one in any other

camera and see which conks out first.

 

I think If the people who make these cards at sandisk are truly fooled by the fake cards and they

can not find any difference between the fake and there own through observation or testing, then I

would either expect the fakes to work just as well or the that person to find another job.

 

For the most part...

 

There are actually many ways of distinguishing fake cards and lots of guides to help

this have been written already. The print job always let's the fakes down and can be spotted

extremely easy if you have a keen enough eye - blacks being the hardest color to reproduce

are always of substandard quality and stand out like a sore thumb. Even if the print happened

to be spot on or pass you by there are lots of other methods to determine otherwise.

 

eBay.co.uk Guides - FAKE SanDisk Ultra Secure Digital Cards Exposed

 

eBay.co.uk Guides - How to spot FAKE Sandisk Extreme III 2Gb SD cards

 

I appreciate if this is about helping people purchase legitimate cards but in no way accept

or believe that this is the problem that is causing the M9 to have it's memory card related

problems. You even saw a card being refused to be read in your camera a few posts back.

But a few people still seem to holding some odd stockholm syndrome-ish attitude that the M9 is

not the problem..and I get the impression that if peoples cards were failing that were purchased

direct from San-Disk there would be a conspiracy among you that they must have been switched

by villains in transit Part of a postal office scam.. or anything other, than accept there is a flaw in the

current M9 design.

 

My apologies If this sounds blunt or rude, I don't mean to be, Just venting frustration

You are entitled to your opinion and I respect that in whole.

[Washington]

scrubs,

Hell no. I take your info as just that. If the card fails it is just part of an experiment…

hardly anything I’d get upset over, just as I wouldn’t get upset over your comments: you

are being honest and that counts for much! Look, I dunno anything about this problem

because I have never had the problem…. now, I am trying to have the problem out of

curiosity. I will just report what I find. Cheers, Rip

[Washington]

scrubs,

Just a P.S. the info on spotting a fake card is outdated…. the ‘’fakists’’ have become

much more sophisticated. (i.e. the fakes are perfect on the outside)

[Jamie Roberts]

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{Snipped}

 

One final question, do you use compressed or uncompressed DNG?

 

I shoot compressed DNGs 99% of the time.

[k-hawinkler]

I shoot compressed DNGs 99% of the time.

 

Thanks. Same here, I feel uncompressed takes too long for me.

 

K-H.

[jaapv]

I don't mean this badly, but I really hope it fails in the camera so you finally might accept - this is not

a problem with fake cards. I would bet my M9 on it. If you really wanna see one fail - buy the

extreme Pro it will be dead within the month - in fact buy two put one in the M9 and one in any other

camera and see which conks out first.

 

It is flawed thinking to assume that because your camera has a problem all cameras have a problem.

 

If somebody feels inclined to count the number of complaints in this forum feel free, but I would put it at about a dozen cameras, twenty at most. On 30.000 sold this points at an incidental problem.

 

On the other hand the problem seems to follow a fixed pattern so it may be a "batch" thing and almost certainly hardware-related.

 

It is happening on the camera-card interface making the isolation of the problem quite difficult. Is it the card? Is it the camera? Is it a timing sequence in the firmware? Is it an unlucky combination of tolerances? Is it user error? Or do some of these factors combine?

 

The same about the cards. Sandisk Extreme III is mentioned. But is that because there is something wrong with the card, or are those fakes, or is it the most popular card thus bound to have the highest number of problems?

 

I am sure Leica is addressing these questions and quite a few more to search for the cause and more importantly a solution.

 

It may be that making the firmware more tolerant of errors is the symptomatic cure.

 

K-H's efforts to systematize the problem could well be helpful.

 

But they should not be used for generalisations, at least not until some firm conclusions can be drawn.

 

 

Just to illustrate how convoluted these problems can be:

 

As I posted before I have four cheap Memorette 4 GB cards. All of them behave the same

 

The DMR will write files to them , but when formatting the camera hangs and needs a battery out. Afterwards the card reads as 0 Gb and needs a computer format. After that the DMR will format the cards but takes ages to do so. If I delete files from the card it will revert to the hanging behaviour. Other DMRs appear to accept the cards, judging by this forum.

 

The cards work flawlessly in the Digilux 2 and 3, and a Ricoh P&S, they don't work at all in an Nikon P&S.

 

And they work without problem in the M9:eek:

 

Explanation?:confused:

[Jamie Roberts]

{snipped}

The DMR will write files to them , but when formatting the camera hangs and needs a battery out. Afterwards the card reads as 0 Gb and needs a computer format. After that the DMR will format the cards but takes ages to do so. If I delete files from the card it will revert to the hanging behaviour. Other DMRs appear to accept the cards, judging by this forum.

 

The cards work flawlessly in the Digilux 2 and 3, and a Ricoh P&S, they don't work at all in an Nikon P&S.

 

And they work without problem in the M9:eek:

 

Explanation?:confused:

 

Explanation = The DMR is super-picky about SD cards, and scrambled it's fair share of mine... I suspect it's even less fault-tolerant than other cameras.

 

I suspect the DMR just doesn't like 4GB cards very much, which have got to be close to the file system limit it implements. When the camera was designed, surely 4GB SD cards were but a distant gleam in some memory manufacturer's eyes... Now that they're cheap (but not plentiful--everything I see is SDHC) I suspect they're just close enough to the DMR's processing limit to cause problems.

 

BTW--once a card was formatted with the M8 after the SDHC compatilbility, that same card would lock my DMR if I put it in the camera inadvertently...

[jaapv]

I know ; my DMR would lock up at image # 27 in that scenario- I wanted to illustrate that card-files-camera problems are complex and unpredictable.

[k-hawinkler]

Explanation = The DMR is super-picky about SD cards, and scrambled it's fair share of mine... I suspect it's even less fault-tolerant than other cameras.

 

I suspect the DMR just doesn't like 4GB cards very much, which have got to be close to the file system limit it implements. When the camera was designed, surely 4GB SD cards were but a distant gleam in some memory manufacturer's eyes... Now that they're cheap (but not plentiful--everything I see is SDHC) I suspect they're just close enough to the DMR's processing limit to cause problems.

 

BTW--once a card was formatted with the M8 after the SDHC compatilbility, that same card would lock my DMR if I put it in the camera inadvertently...

 

 

Thanks for explaining in rational terms that I can understand.

 

Best, K-H.

[scrubs]

It is flawed thinking to assume that because your camera has a problem all cameras have a problem.

 

If somebody feels inclined to count the number of complaints in this forum feel free, but I would put it at about a dozen cameras, twenty at most. On 30.000 sold this points at an incidental problem.

 

Out of interest i started counting. I stopped counting at 40 because I was getting bored, but seemed to be

plenty more and they were only threads from the english section of this forum. and many more if you explore

the german section and considerably more if you explore other forums entirely... There is also a large portion

of customers that do not use forums, which we will never know so, I suppose Leica will only know true figures

of how many this is effecting and that is assuming all customers have bothered to let lem know about it. Either way -

I do not view this as a minor problem.

 

But, I don't discount the fact this may be only effecting a percentage of cameras - in fact I found this old post quite

interesting and would like to see how he got on.

 

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/1442705-post22.html

 

Perhaps some coalition of serial numbers may even be helpful.

[k-hawinkler]

Out of interest i started counting. I stopped counting at 40 because I was getting bored,

but seemed to be plenty more and they were only threads from this forum.

and many more if you explore other forums... I suppose Leica will only know

true figures of how many this is effecting and that is assuming all customers

have bothered to let lem know about it.

 

Now I don't discount the fact this may be only effecting a percentage of cameras

in fact I found this old post quite interesting and would like to see how he got on.

 

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/1442705-post22.html

 

Perhaps some coalition of serial numbers may even be helpful.

 

 

Scrubs,

 

Many thanks for your efforts. I certainly greatly appreciate them.

What seems to me missing from this discussion is folks stating which functionality of the M9 they use and which they don't.

Howard already explained that point very clearly http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/1777607-post455.html, quote:

 

 

"Quote:

Originally Posted by jaapv

Wouldn't a real firmware bug show up on all cameras without exception?

 

It may be there in all cases but not uncovered because the specific conditions haven't occurred yet.

 

IOW, the fact that it can't be duplicated immediately by a certain sequence of button presses doesn't mean that there isn't a problem.

 

It's hard to prove a negative.

 

The fact that a particular M9 hasn't turned into a frog doesn't mean it won't.

__________________

Best,

 

Howard

 

 

Cheers, K-H.

[Venkman]

Once I got back from my holidays I tried to reproduce the errors that I got during traveling.

 

Result:

M9 DNG (compressed) & JPG fine fails quite regularly to write if I press play while it's still writing.

 

I tried it with DNG only and gone were the problems - until today. First shot I took and the camera went into eternal limbo, meaning the LED flashes constantly and the camera is locked. Only a removal of the battery helped, funny enough the file was saved!

 

Dirk

[Washington]

Long ago on another post I said this is cosmic…. a never to be known mystery far

beyond human comprehension. The M-9 just does’t want to hang around with cards

which have bad vibes. So, you find one that works for you that the camera likes,

and stick with it. This is as good an answer as any.

[k-hawinkler]

Long ago on another post I said this is cosmic…. a never to be known mystery far

beyond human comprehension. The M-9 just does’t want to hang around with cards

which have bad vibes. So, you find one that works for you that the camera likes,

and stick with it. This is as good an answer as any.

 

 

Hi Rip,

 

I sincerely disagree with you on that point. There are no such things as cards which have bad vibes.

However, there are cards and apparently a camera that don't seem to comply with the SD / SDHC standard.

Some basic functions of the M9 seem to work most of the time, others not so much.

 

Why can't Leica strive for excellence of the electronic aspects of the M9, similarly to being second to none in the optical components.

Leica's official silence on this issue speaks volumes, certainly to me.

 

Best, K-H.

[pico]

James H.

That's the problem with counterfeiting. Marginal cards can't be identified in normal use; but they will cause problems when you least suspect it.

 

There are card verifiers for the PC. Dunno about the Mac - anyone?

[k-hawinkler]

James H.

 

There are card verifiers for the PC. Dunno about the Mac - anyone?

 

 

Here is the answer: VMware Online Store - Buy VMware Fusion – Run Windows on a Mac – VMware Mac

 

 

VMware Fusion 3

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[mjm6]

It is happening on the camera-card interface making the isolation of the problem quite difficult. Is it the card? Is it the camera? Is it a timing sequence in the firmware? Is it an unlucky combination of tolerances? Is it user error? Or do some of these factors combine?

 

 

There is NO combination of button presses on the back (except for 'Delete' & 'Yes') that should result in the loss of images! Please explain how you can mark that up to user error?