New Firmware 1.092 thoughts/ Read instructions

[Guest guy_mancuso]

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It all seems to be about noise both shutter and image. I am not sure I like the new shutter noise. It is a bit like my very worn IIb in comparison to my very lightly used IIf. There sounds to be more mechanical threshing about. However I am very happy with the reduction in noise. It looks to be more marked in DNG than JPEG taken at 1250 ISO but it is late at night and I have been trying a new to me malt whisky - 10 yo GlenKinchie - don't like it very much.

 

The other features seem to work well without the bugs of image numbers I got in 1.091. It will be interesting to try a colour fringing test with the Biogon 21 tomorrow. Cross fingers my Elmarit - M 90 might finally be back for me to play with too.

 

Wilson

 

 

There has been a lot of talk about the shutter . Now i am going to speculate here which is very dangerous and something i rarely do. But the failures that we have seen and this is the same one I had back in early December with 1.06 were the shutter shot and the menu and set went down for the count and tried different battery techniques to get it working and it was variable as to what worked and did not , also in the last several weeks this has happened to others as well and we all know about them very well. Since it happened in 1.06 and 1.09 and we can say that it could be in the firmware but the LCD menu and set operations are triggered by the the shutter to work after a shot is taken correct. let's asume for a second that maybe the change in shutter may have some bearing to this. That the signal is shorter or longer to those circuits ( I need a engineer here) and maybe leica changed the electrical throw of the signal to improve this connection. okay i am out on a limb here guys but is anyone catching this thought

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[roberth]

Mark,

I sent my photo with a green streak to my dealer here in Sydney, he forwarded it onto Leica in Aus who forwarded it to Leica head office. Within several hours of me sending the photo I got a call saying a new camera is coming to me as a replacement.

I feel that is the best service.

 

I am now shooting with DNG and JPG and have set the jpg to basic and 1MP, I get B&W previews. Since I am using 1MP res for the jpgs I cannot zoom in much when chimping but then I don't do that anyway so who cares.

[judybabinski]

A couple of comments. I agree, the noise at 2500 and 1250 does seem a lot less. But I am still getting pulsing on the LCD. Someone else mentioned this some time ago. When I am viewing an image on the LCD, it pulses lighter and then darker. The firmware update did not fix this. Don't mind it too much, but not sure if it is not a sympton on a deeper problem yet to surface.

 

Thanks

Judy

[Woody Campbell]

Today I got my backup body back from Leica "fixed". I installed 1.092 on it. The real news here is that high ISO performance is dramatically improved - iso 2500 is far better than the old 1250. Also streaking at high ISOs appears to be fixed. The noise supression slider in C1 works very well with these files giving you a choice between fine detail and some noise at 2500. Kudos to Leica - if this is all they have accomplished with this release I'm happy. There is a lot to learn here because (for example) the file naming work around doesn't appear to work the same way that it did under 1.09.

 

In testing for streaking I did manage to produce a frame with a green stripe. This is one one out of 17 exposures under dramatically bad circumstances - the halogen lamp is about 9 inches from the lens. See below 9 (pardon the focus which is sort of casual). This doesn't really trouble me - at least not until I see it in a real life situation.

 

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[erl]

The following pic was shot at 2500iso during a wedding shoot last W/E. M8 with Ver. 1.09 + elmarit 24mm wide open. B&W 486 filter was used, shooting DNG. The light causing the problem is a flush mounted ceiling downlight.

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[hammam]

1) - There IS a double click on shutter release, especialy at slow speeds, but this is supposed to be «normal»,

 

3) - I THINK the WBs are more inconsistent. «Tungsten» is still bad,

 

2) - I'm afraid the magenta cast is rearing its ugly head again, even with the IR cut filter, albeit slightly. Now that's bad news. First photo is 1.09, second photo is 1.092. Look at the same wool hat.

 

Can other people do some IR tests?

 

How can I revert back to 1.09?

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[gravastar]

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The following pic was shot at 2500iso during a wedding shoot last W/E. M8 with Ver. 1.09 + elmarit 24mm wide open. B&W 486 filter was used, shooting DNG. The light causing the problem is a flush mounted ceiling downlight.

 

Erl, did you see this thread http://www.leica-camera-user.com/digital-forum/18270-green-stripe-berlin.html where Leica are replacing a camera which shows this anomaly.

 

Bob.

[robsteve]

1) - There IS a double click on shutter release, especialy at slow speeds, but this is supposed to be «normal»,

 

3) - I THINK the WBs are more inconsistent. «Tungsten» is still bad,

 

2) - I'm afraid the magenta cast is rearing its ugly head again, even with the IR cut filter, albeit slightly. Now that's bad news. First photo is 1.09, second photo is 1.092. Look at the same wool hat.

 

How can I revert back to 1.09?

 

Olivier:

 

What brand of IR cut filter are you using?

[hammam]

Olivier:

 

What brand of IR cut filter are you using?

 

Heliopan on both photos. It did a good job with 1.09.

[robsteve]

Heliopan on both photos. It did a good job with 1.09.

 

There was a post in December comparing the Heliopan to the B+W 486 and it showed the Heliopan did not filter all the IR. I think this is what you are seeing.

[Shootist]

Mark,

I sent my photo with a green streak to my dealer here in Sydney, he forwarded it onto Leica in Aus who forwarded it to Leica head office. Within several hours of me sending the photo I got a call saying a new camera is coming to me as a replacement.

I feel that is the best service.

 

I am now shooting with DNG and JPG and have set the jpg to basic and 1MP, I get B&W previews. Since I am using 1MP res for the jpgs I cannot zoom in much when chimping but then I don't do that anyway so who cares.

I have the green line banding problem with light at the edge of the frame.

Here are 2 different images of the same scene and both have the green blob line.

Should I contact Leica NJ and see if this can be corrected?

I did a test earlier tonight and can duplicate it at will.

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[hammam]

There was a post in December comparing the Heliopan to the B+W 486 and it showed the Heliopan did not filter all the IR. I think this is what you are seeing.

 

I don't think that's the problem, Rob. Like I said, it did good a good job at cutting the IR before the firmware update. Also, how do you explain the difference between the two photos - before and after update - taken with the same Heliopan filter?

[tjv]

Guy, yes, of course the lamp is over exposed, but my spotmeter shows this image has levels from EV 6.3 to 18.7 so the DR is going to be blown however you expose it. If you stop down, the light is correctly exposed, but the background is hopelessly under-exposed.

 

In the real world, we've seen examples where the sun, car headlamps or glare off glass or water just outside the image edge bleeds through the masking around the sensor and upset the black reference for one or more half rows in the image.

 

I suggested a method to Leica how they could fix this in firmware but apparently not yet, if ever.

 

All in all, I'm a bit underwhelmed by V1.092. If this is all Leica's collective firmware development effort can produce in more than two months, we're in for a long haul...

 

 

I dumped my M8's yesterday and will get my money back. I got the banding on many shots without even trying, under pretty normal indoor shooting conditions. As soon as I realised this problem wasn't fixed in the new firmware and that 1.10 is over a month away I decided it really wasn't worth me waiting around. Perhaps withdrawing my money will be a small notice to Leica that some people, even devoted users like myself, aren't willing to wait around for them. I'm heading back to film for the time being. The local Leica guys have been 100% faultless though, I must say. I really admire the way they've handled this situation, not being directly connected to Leica Germany. I'll reinvest in an MP, I think. I want to honour their fine efforts for me.

 

Tim

[barjohn]

Well, tonight after trying several times, I was finally able to replicate the green band issue/ I can only get it if the light is to my left. When I tried the same thing with the light from the right it wouldn't do it but put the light source to the left and I could do it repeatedly.

 

I would say it is a bug of some kind.

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[xrogers]

I also miss the ability to review (even if only for a couple of seconds) the DNG in black and white. When it was relevant, I could check the tones of the image, and then zoom in color to check focus. In a perfect world, I could choose to review DNG in black and white.

 

BTW, I wanted to see what the actual write time was, so I shot 10 continuous shots and watched to clock to see how long it took for the camera to return control to me -- 47 seconds. If I make that 50 for the 10 shots, that turns out to be a 5-second write time.

 

I get the same times, and this is another part of the reason I'd like an option to review DNGs in black and white. DNG without jpg flushes out in about two seconds, so the buffer is never too full, and the camera feels more responsive while it is writing.

 

Clyde

[xrogers]

I'm putting this in again because Guy asked for the icons---I'd like some way to review a DNG in black and white without having to save a jpg too.

 

--clyde

[eronald]

I dumped my M8's yesterday and will get my money back. I got the banding on many shots without even trying, under pretty normal indoor shooting conditions.

Tim

 

Tim, I entirely approve of your decision. There seem to be better samples and worse ones. I guess mine is about average. It had issues initially, but now works OK for indoors use, and can be carried easily. I've taken it on trips and it has survived. So as no one is making a decent subcompact digital Rollei 35 equivalent, I guess I'm stuck with the Leica. I expect Olympus will sooner or later return to its DNA and make a small SLR with a big sensor at which point I think I'll dump the Leica again.

 

Edmund

[xrogers]

When zoomed holding the play button down and arrowing between shots, once three are buffered you can switch between them instantly. Before only two were buffered, so if I wanted to switch back and forth between three shots, I was constantly waiting for the buffer to refill.

 

This is perfect for me---when shooting static subjects in marginal light, I like to shoot three and review at full magnification. I almost always get one sharp of three, but often don't if I shoot just two. This make evaluation much quicker.

 

Thanks, Leica!

 

--clyde

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[blakley]

After a bunch of tries tonight I did finally succeed in producing a green band. Never seen it or produced it at 640, and never seen it without trying to produce it on purpose, though. We'll see if future firmware fixes this.

[barjohn]

I compared high ISO shots and this is what I have found: A significant improvement on JPGs and a marginal improvement on DNGs. On JPGs, ISO 1250 is now almost the equal to ISO 640 or almost a 1 stop improvement. Even ISO 2500 is significantly improved but not quite one stop, more like about 1/2 stop better. Color balance is improved in daylight but at night under tungsten it is slightly worse. I don't remember whether the shot count changed with ISO before, but it does now. Is this what others are seeing?