Results of M8 Lockup/Failure Survey

[sean_reid]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Since the LUF community provided much of the data I needed in order to research the prevalence of certain problems with the M8, I am reproducing the draft of a new addition to the "M8 Updates" article (based on that survey) below. Please note, however, that no portion of Reid Reviews should be reproduced without permission.

 

Please do read the text before considering the information in the table below.

 

One M8 Body Ceased Operation

 

As I was shooting a set of test pictures for a lens review recently, one of the M8 bodies (second generation) I was working with failed. I turned it off to change lenses and when I turned it back on again there was no display in the top readout window and no response to the shutter. I was able to access the LCD functions but the camera didn't always seem to know that it was turned off (ie: it would sometimes behave as if it were switched on even when the switch was in the "off" position). Leaving the battery out of the camera for several hours and then replacing it, fully charged, did not fix things. I've worked with several M8 bodies and this is the first time I've seen this happen although I'm aware of it happening to a couple of other photographers. This doesn't seem to be a widespread problem but the camera is off to Leica for repair or replacement. There had been some question as to whether the M8 has problems with certain SD cards but for this shoot I was using the same 1 GB SD Sandisk Ultra II cards I've been using all along so that doesn't seem to be a factor in this case.

 

I do, however, suspect that static electricity may have played a role in this. I was photographing indoors with the camera on a tripod (which itself stood on carpet). There was a good deal of static in the room. The second M8 went out temporarily a couple minutes later but came back when the battery was removed and re-inserted. The fact that both cameras showed these symptoms (one temporarily) in this setting (when they had not done this at all previously) reinforces my belief that static electricity built up in the room may have caused this.

 

I spoke with Leica about the possible role of static electricity in this failure and received the following statement:

 

<i>"First at all, we would like to assure Leica customers that all our products are tested to withstand static electricity. It is part of the high quality standard we are committed to. While the CE Certificate already requires very strict norms, we go a step further and have the products also tested by an independent test firm. The M8 samples are tested using on the EN61000-4-2 norm. All tests were completed without any problems. As a result you can see the test certificates on the packaging of each camera."</i>

 

I'm not an engineer by any stretch of the imagination and I do not know why my M8 failed. In order to find out how common or uncommon this problem might be, I polled Leica M8 owners on the Leica Users Forum to get a sense of how many cameras have shown the behavior I describe above. Its often said that bad news travels faster than good and people who have a problem with a camera may be more likely to discuss that experience than people who experience normal operation. For that reason, I strongly encouraged M8 owners to respond whether they had experienced this problem or not. The owners responded, on the forum and by e-mail, with information about 140 different examples of the M8. Unfortunately, that's still a fairly small sample, compared the thousands of M8s that have been sold to date, but it was the largest sample I was able to gather. Given the small sample size, however, I would strongly caution readers not to generalize any of these results to all of the M8s produced. We have no way of knowing if the percentages reported below are, or are not, indicative of M8 owners' experiences on the whole. All we can reliably look at is what these results suggest about this particular set of 140 cameras.

 

There are three versions of the M8 in common use at the time of this writing. There is what I call the "First Generation" M8 which is the version of the camera that initially shipped when the camera was released, with firmware 1.06, in the fall of 2006. Then there are First Generation cameras that owner's have updated with firmware 1.09. Lastly there are the "Second Generation" M8s that have had firmware 1.09 installed at the factory and which include the hardware upgrade Leica implemented to fix the camera's tendency to show light streaking under certain conditions. Some respondents did not specify which version of the M8 they were working with and so those responses are all listed under "Not Specified".

 

A response was coded as "No Failure" if the owner reported not experiencing the camera lock-up problems discussed above. Responses were coded as "Reboot Needed" if the owner experienced the lock-up but was able to remedy it by removing the battery from the camera for some period of time. Like all digital camera, the M8 is, in part, a computer and sometimes it may need a "cold reboot". "Camera Died" was the coding for responses where owners were unable to remedy the lock-up by removing or exchanging batteries. Cameras reported in this category had to be returned to Leica for repair or replacement. All percentages were rounded for ease of presentation.

 

Although I did break down the survey responses according to what version of the M8 the owner had worked with, we can see that the responses are fairly consistent between the two most prevalent types of M8. Fifty-six percent of "First Generation" M8 owners reported "no failure" as compared to sixty-percent of "Second Generation" owners. That difference is minor enough, especially given this small sample size, that it could be attributed to random variation. Those same two groups also show similar response percentage relationships for the other two categories. The sample sizes for the other two types of M8 were so small that we can't reliably conclude anything about how the type of M8 might be related to these problems.

 

In short, then, the results presented here don't suggest any significant relationship between type of M8 and the prevalence of the problems being discussed. As such, its the overall percentages that are most relevant to consider. The majority of M8 cameras reported on, 61 percent, had not shown evidence of lock-up or failure. Just under a third, 30 percent, of the cameras had experienced problems that required a reboot (battery removal) and just under a tenth, 9 percent, failed and needed to be sent to Leica.

If this was a much larger sample, say 1000 cameras or more, we might be a better position to estimate that about ten percent of M8s have failed and required repair. In this sample of 140 cameras, however, 9 percent actually represents only 13 cameras. That result can't tell us how many M8s in the larger population are likely to have failed in this way but it certainly does confirm that the problem has occurred in more than just a couple of cameras.

 

I'm told that Leica is investigating this concern and I await further information from them about what solutions are possible. Thirteen confirmed camera failures shouldn't be enough to alarm current or potential M8 owners but it is important information for Leica to consider. While I was disappointed to see this failure in my own camera, I still am very happy overall with the M8 and would repeat my purchase without hesitation. I think its important that Leica continue to work on sorting out problems with the M8 so that it can earn a reputation for reliability. Leica certainly has been responsive to concerns and is actively working on solutions and improvements for this camera. So far, I think they're making good progress.

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[barjohn]

Sean,

 

One thing that I didn't think to ask any of the owners of cameras that failed, was to try, as a repair, to re-install the 1.09 firmware and see if the camera recovered. Did you think to try that? Do you know of anyone that did? A reflashing of the camera ROM and subsequent reboot would eliminate the likelyhood of a hardware issue and point to a catastrophic software failure. On cell phones you usually have to do something special to get to the boot loader that bypassess all of the higher level software to first clear the ROM, reformat it and then flash it with the new code. I'm not sure how Leica gets to the boot loader unless it is a feature of detection on the inserttion of a card where an initial aspect of card detection is checking to see if a boot image exists on the card. Maybe I'll take a look at the hex code on the update and see what is in there.

[sean_reid]

Sean,

 

One thing that I didn't think to ask any of the owners of cameras that failed, was to try, as a repair, to re-install the 1.09 firmware and see if the camera recovered. Did you think to try that? Do you know of anyone that did? A reflashing of the camera ROM and subsequent reboot would eliminate the likelyhood of a hardware issue and point to a catastrophic software failure. On cell phones you usually have to do something special to get to the boot loader that bypassess all of the higher level software to first clear the ROM, reformat it and then flash it with the new code. I'm not sure how Leica gets to the boot loader unless it is a feature of detection on the inserttion of a card where an initial aspect of card detection is checking to see if a boot image exists on the card. Maybe I'll take a look at the hex code on the update and see what is in there.

 

I tried but it wasn't possible.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[rvaubel]

My name came up on my dealers waiting list about two weeks ago, about the time you were doing the survey. My gut reaction was about one in ten cameras were experiencing crib death, which your survey seems to indicate is more or less true. Well I took the plunge and couldn't be happier.... so far

 

Well I am going over to your site to get the full skinny.

 

By

 

Rex

[hgmoore]

Sean,

 

I have read somewhere that the first production run was ~1500 M8 bodies. If so, your 140 unit sample is statistically significant.

 

When I worked in manufacturing QC department as an engineer, we used statistics heavily in production and failure analysis. A failure rate of 9% from customers was enough to stop production and generate inquiries into product engineering and mfg engineering to find the problems.

 

If all your input is from this forum, it biases the sampling away from a true random sample. However, the product pool that produced the samples is probably spread out over the production run.

 

As you say, there is confidence that Leica will successfuly address the problems.

 

A better way to present this data would be in a simple bar graph or pareto chart. Gives a good visual look at the analysis

 

harvey

[jaapv]

Sean,

 

I have read somewhere that the first production run was ~1500 M8 bodies. If so, your 140 unit sample is statistically significant.

 

When I worked in manufacturing QC department as an engineer, we used statistics heavily in production and failure analysis. A failure rate of 9% from customers was enough to stop production and generate inquiries into product engineering and mfg engineering to find the problems.

 

If all your input is from this forum, it biases the sampling away from a true random sample. However, the product pool that produced the samples is probably spread out over the production run.

 

As you say, there is confidence that Leica will successfuly address the problems.

 

A better way to present this data would be in a simple bar graph or pareto chart. Gives a good visual look at the analysis

 

harvey

 

I have a feeling 10% is on the high side. Owners with problems are far more likely to report them than owners without problems. One might even argue that camera failure can be a reason to join up on this forum.

Having said that, I have been able to provoke lock-up-reboot on my camera by leaving it in the "press the release button"screen when cleaning the sensor for too long a time. I found this out when my wife *insisted* that I carry the washing basket out whilst I was starting a sensor clean.

[stunsworth]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Sorry Sean but it's meaninless. It's a self selecting survey. To find the true figure for breakdowns you need to select people at random and question them.

[jaapv]

My problem is that this figure of 10% is going to lead its own life on the Internet: "M8 is a disaster!!!! 10% breaks down!!!!!", whilst the true figure may be anything from 0.1(?) to 2 {?} %....

Also we can discount the "reboot needed" category. It is similar to for instance Canon's "error 99" type of freeze-up, or computers choking on overuse of memory by Photoshop etc. That is a fact of life in the digital age.

But still, 13 camera's out of 5000?? sold is too many, even if not unexpected with a new product.

[scott kirkpatrick]

Sean,

 

I have read somewhere that the first production run was ~1500 M8 bodies. If so, your 140 unit sample is statistically significant.

 

When I worked in manufacturing QC department as an engineer, we used statistics heavily in production and failure analysis. A failure rate of 9% from customers was enough to stop production and generate inquiries into product engineering and mfg engineering to find the problems.

 

If all your input is from this forum, it biases the sampling away from a true random sample.

 

 

I understood the 1500 number to be the initial completed build ready to be shipped by year-end 2006. At various estimates (like 50 refits per day) that were talked about, this cohort of cameras should all be sold or in channels by now with more units joining them that were manufactured after the redesign. So maybe there are 2500 to 3500 units in existence by now. The sample bias by asking here, where owners with problems can possibly be reached is more serious. If the 13 failures in the sample are the only ones that have ever happened, that is a failure rate of less than 1 %, an estimate which is probably on the low side. If we say that the LCU readers got statistically average cameras, but those with failures were 2-3x as likely to answer the poll than those with no problem, then the true population of "no failures" would be 2-3x as great as the poll shows and instead of nearly 10% early failures we would see 3-5%, which is still very high for a mass-produced consumer product made in a single large batch. But Leica is manufacturing continuously, and can respond to problems so this might be quite manageable.

 

scott

[rosuna]

There is a sample selection problem, but it is interesting because the total number of units affected in the sample is too high, even if we consider the total population of 1500 cameras. This is not a minor failure.

[marknorton]

Leica are on a steep learning curve, going far beyond their traditional skills, so that even if all the electronics is sub-contracted and comes in as a small number of pre-tested parts, there's a big job to do to get it all to work together. We don't know what Leica are doing to shake the camera down but they should definitely be burning in the sensor and electronics and test firing the shutter a few hundred times.

 

If you visit a German car plant, it's noticeable that the car is under electrical power very early in the build process. A Porsche 911 is built in 86 stages of 5 minutes each starting with a painted bodyshell and no more than a quarter of the way through, the car's electrical system is live, all to identify problems as early as possible.

 

I'm quite sure Leica will be analysing all the failures to identify what they can be doing better.

 

50 cameras a day is a lot but does not count in my book as mass production. For that, I think of the Philips CD Player plant in Hasselt, Belgium which used just 7 man-minutes (actually, 7 sullen-looking woman-minutes) of labour to make a CD player before even that was too much and they upped-sticks to China. Over in Bremen, Mercedes-Benz churn out a new C-Class every 48 seconds... a truly awesome process to watch.

[jaapv]

There is a sample selection problem, but it is interesting because the total number of units affected in the sample is too high, even if we consider the total population of 1500 cameras. This is not a minor failure.

If we consider the camera numbers, the total should be about 6000. 1500 was the count in November 2006. This invalidates your argument.

[Bill Sievers]

I think there is a higher percentage of users on this forum looking for defects or reporting experienced defects. This would skew your survey results. Moreover, how can you verify that the respondents are in fact owners. I know this is a bit cynical. Just want to add some perspective. Interesting results just the same.

[jaapv]

Unfortunately, that's still a fairly small sample, compared the thousands of M8s that have been sold to date, but it was the largest sample I was able to gather. Given the small sample size, however, I would strongly caution readers not to generalize any of these results to all of the M8s produced. We have no way of knowing if the percentages reported below are, or are not, indicative of M8 owners' experiences on the whole. All we can reliably look at is what these results suggest about this particular set of 140 cameras.

 

Let's be fair to Sean: He is aware of the limtations of his statistics. And I am convinced Leica is reading this with great interest! As I said, my worry is the tendency to read selectively that a number of users, mainly on other forums than this one, have exhibited in the whole M8 hullabuloo.

[mitchell]

Sean,

 

Thanks for this.

 

I have a first generation M8 with 1.09 firmware. I've had to turn it off to undo a freeze, but never had to take out the battery. I didn't respond to your poll. ( guilty as charged)

 

The ten percent figure is probably way high because people like me with no problem are less likely to respond than people with a problem. And people with a problem are more likely to join the forum.

 

But, you have added to our and Leica's knowledge.

 

Thanks again,

 

Mitchell

[Guest guy_mancuso]

Part of this may also be do to the reset function that Germany recommended recently of resetting the camera because of the battery bar status firmware issue. Folks may have thought they had a full battery but in reality the battery may have been below operating capaciity. So there may have been a curve ball in there on this alone. Interesting results though and hopefully soon some of these failures will be minimized.

 

Great work Sean on collecting this data and a good reference point for Leica to see.

[larry]

Sean,

 

Thanks for all of your efforts and posting the results for the benefit of forum members. As you stated in your text, it's difficult to draw any hard conclusions based on the sample size. (Some respondents to your post should read what you wrote a little more carefully.)

 

However, I think the numbers are significant because they indicate a trend. At worst, our glass is 90 percent full, or 10 percent empty, depending on how you view the world. It's safe to say that most of the cameras out there function, and function well. That's a far cry from the postings of some of the doom-sayers on this forum contending that all M8s are fatally flawed. It's extremely important for all of us to remember that Leica has publicly acknowledged the problems and has been extremely responsive addressing them.

 

Larry

[sandymc]

As a comment, the descriptions of the lockups that I've read on this forum sound more like problems with the firmware than quality problems with the manufacture of the M8. What tends to happen with products like the M8 is that internal data structures get corrupted, and the camera locks up trying to make sense of nonsense. There are usually multiple layers of data in the camera, ranging from stuff that is kept only when the power is on (e.g., where in menu structure you are) through settings (like lens detection on/off) that would be irritating but not fatal to lose, down to very low level stuff like number of shutter accentuations, that Leica would not want reset under any normal circumstance. The problem is that typically the lowest level of data isn't reset by a "cold" reset, so if that gets corrupted, the only way to get the camera back into working order is a full reflash of all memory. And loading new firmware, btw, would also not reset this data.

 

Memory corruption would, for example, be a danger if the M8 finds itself trying to process events that it wouldn't normally see. Sean's static hypothesis is quite plausible in this regard. While it quite easy to protect a camera against physical damage from static, a charge of static can easily generate spurious sensor readings. So, for example, if the M8 has both a shutter cocked and a shutter uncocked sensor, static could cause both to flip on simultaneously. The M8 then tries to process both a cocked and non-cocked event at the same time, corrupts its own data, and that's it.

 

These kind of problems are avoidable in firmware in an number of ways - check codes on data, "atomic commits", etc, but if the firmware development was rushed, as has been suggested elsewhere, corruption due to unusual events is a typical area to see problems.

 

If this is the case, the bad news is that anyone hoping that their M8 is a "good" one is probably wrong - it's just a matter of time. The good news is that this is a problem that can be corrected by revised firmware only, meaning that your M8 won't have to go back to Leica to be as reliable as any other digital camera, unless it actually does lock up.

 

 

Sandy

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[mitchell]

Thanks Sandy.

 

Very interesting, and informative for this Luddite who non-the-less loves his M8.

 

It makes a lot of sense that the cameras are the same, and the lock-ups are the result of rare events acting on the firmware.

 

Best,

 

Mitchell

[Guest magyarman]

This what writes Sandy sound like most logic what is anyone tell. So only one hope for M8 depend Leica will to find new one partner who can to fix up bat firmware from before partner Jenoptik. If we look whats happen it to DMR when Leica loose partner with Imacon we mabe need scare. Smart costumer I thing wait how this finish before put himself money for M8.