M8 breakdown - still examining possibilities

[ho_co]

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The comment that Leica does not know what the problem is makes no sense to me.

I guess I just trust them more than you do.

 

Christian is only an acquaintance, but I do find him trustworthy. His explanation makes sense to me, but you certainly have a right to question it.

 

Put your money where your...is and have it fail and be gone for two months and then we will appreciate your telling us not to worry It's real easy when it's not your five grand on the line.

Interesting viewpoint. I don't see it as a money issue. You mention Hublot watches having problems with their new ceramics, for example. New products frequently have problems, no matter what the cost. Paying more doesn't obviate logic. By the way, what word are you skipping with your ellipsis?

 

--HC

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[barjohn]

Trust is something you earn. I have seen posting after posting on this forum, RFF, and DCR complaining about the length of time it takes to get a repair, the lack of responsiveness and or lost cameras and lenses, the numerous problems identified with complete silence from Solms, etc. The general lack of communications and the number of these postings and events is not trust inspiring. You accept that Leica doesn't know what the problem is yet they have fixed numerous cameras. How can that be? Maybe you mean they don't know what is causing the problems rather than that they don't know what the problems are. They can't have fixed a problem is they didn't know what it was.

 

I'm sure when your money is not at risk you wouldn't see it as a money issue so put your money at risk and join the club. Of course, if you are wealthy enough that $5k doesn't matter to you, you are right, it won't ever be an issue for you. While a $5k loss won't devastate me there are people that stretched to buy this product and desrve consideration becasue it might devastate them.

 

Yes, Hublot had initial problems but they handled them the way I expected Leica to handle its issues. Forthrightly and promptly making the customer and his problems a priority. As a result most customers barely remeber it having any issues. If we could just get there with Leica and the M8:) :)

[barjohn]

If I'm not mistaken:

 

Reichmann had the problem with the WATE, but no problem with the camera.

 

Nick Devlin had the flakey behavior.

 

--HC

 

Check the latest on LL Forum

 

Problems

 

On three occasions, my M8 simply stopped working when I turned it on. The battery was reasonably fresh on each occasion, but the camera would come to life when my fully-charged backup battery was substituted. The battery which had been in the camera at the time of the crash required a full re-charging to function again. It is unclear whether this was a phenomenon is a battery, charger or camera problem, but I couldn't care less since it cost me a shot on each occasion.

The higher cost, however, was the loss of confidence these failures engendered. The M8 largely lost its shore-privileges after the second incident of ‘narcolepsy’. A camera only gets to die and fail to capture a really nice image once or twice before you stop trusting it. I really expect more from Leica. It’s a testament to the camera’s other excellent qualities that I remain willing to put-up with this sub-standard nonsense.

[colorflow]

We don't know much about the architecture of the M8 electronics but we do know there are a number of different components each receiving a firmware update. Many of the failure reports suggest the camera is partially functioning and one of Andy's failures, for example, showed that the top half of the camera was functioning while other parts of it were not.

 

There's no surprise the camera can keep functioning when you switch it off. The On/Off switch is nothing more than an input to one of the processors which will then signal to the others to shut down or start up.

 

My guess is that these failures are caused by a breakdown in inter-processor communications, due either to a firmware problem causing one end to stop responding or else some sort of hardware latch-up which causes the physical links to fail.

 

As long as we are speculating, let me add my TCW. My early M8 failed in basically in the following two different modes, both had a pre-cursor mode of any display being on only for a moment and then turning off by intself.

 

1. The displays and buttons were not reponsive, but the shutter, viewfinder display and framecounter/battery indicator worked as normal.

 

2. A display was stuck on, and nothing else worked (no button, shutter functions)

 

Changing/draining batteries did not help. Letting it 'rest' for a few hour will revive it for a few shots and then fail again. Eventually failed in mode two and I did not have enough patience to see if it revives again before shiping it off to Solms.

 

So it feels like at least two independent logic circuits (hardware or firmware) were detecting a shut-off condition and got out of synch with each other. It may be the battery charge, or more probably the battery temperature ( since turing it off for a few hours worked initially) until the indicator finally latched.

 

My guess is Leica still has not pin-pointed the cause of the problem yet, and is choosing what they think is the less of two evils - complete silence or we have no clue what is causing the problem. If I were Leica, I would acknowledge the problem and state that all possible appropriate resources are being employed to solving this problem.

 

Alan

[ho_co]

Check the latest on LL Forum

Okay, help me out:

 

You say to check the LuLa Forum, but then you cite a quotation from their essays page, supporting what I said.

 

Could you give a URL to the Forum page where Michael Reichmann writes this?

 

In the essays page, Nick Devlin says this word for word; Reichmann says he didn't use the M8 in Antarctica because he didn't consider it the appropriate camera.

 

So you're getting me confused.

 

--HC

[barjohn]

Sorry, I thought it was Michael writing and not Nick. It is in the Lula forum.

[ho_co]

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John,

I had a nice, carefully reasoned post all planned to answer your responses, but I thought better of it. Our differences aren't that important.

 

I guess I just have more interest in following analyses like Mark's and Alan's. I want to know how this camera does its marvels and what causes it to mess up. I think finding out what failed is a step forward, and the more we know about what elements are failing the closer we are to a solution: In this, all news is good news because it brings us closer.

 

Sure, it's a pity that it takes some time for Allendale to get its act together, and for Customs to handle its stuff. But everyone who shipped through Allendale was given the option of shipping direct to Solms. So everyone who is now complaining is simply complaining about the choice he made. We ought to ask those who decided to ship direct and avoid the middleman how long it took and how they rate the amount of paperwork they had to do. (I haven't seen any gloating on that issue on the forum.)

 

I'm one of those who would have chosen to ship thru Leica USA just because it's less hassle. And having made that choice, I would feel out of place to blast them because they didn't do it the way I would have done it.

 

--HC

[colorflow]

John,

I

Sure, it's a pity that it takes some time for Allendale to get its act together, and for Customs to handle its stuff. But everyone who shipped through Allendale was given the option of shipping direct to Solms. So everyone who is now complaining is simply complaining about the choice he made. We ought to ask those who decided to ship direct and avoid the middleman how long it took and how they rate the amount of paperwork they had to do. (I haven't seen any gloating on that issue on the forum.)

 

--HC

 

Fact is I was not given the choice to ship direct. Both Solms and NJ told me to ship to NJ.

Fact also is this whole fiasco can be managed much better. We all love the M and the Leica lenses. We all knew Leica is a small company that just came out of reorganization. Still, we all jumped in with $5k plus $???ks of whatever additional lenses and other accessories. What we did not expect and do not appreciate is the poor management in handling the problems ( I am not saying I did not expect problems) which should be done in a much more forthright manner and with some addition of inexpensive clerical contract labor. As I said " we are fully aware of the problems and have not yet identified the root cause. All appropriate available resources are working on solving the problem..." works a lot better.

 

Alan

[barjohn]

Howard,

 

I too have no interest in arguing with you. I am only interested in having a great reliable camera. I appreciate the efforts everyone is making to try and analyze the problems to narrow the scope and help Leica arrive at a solution. I understand Leica's problems in this area better than you might think. By way of background, a little information about me. I manage several development and R&D groups for the Navy. One of my branches does software development of several major new systems that we will be deploying to every ship in the Navy and 100s of shore labs. Another branch works on the development of national standards for calibration and verification chemical and biological sensors. Another branch works on the development of nano-technology, lasers, night vision, directed energy, etc. So I understand engineering problems and how one goes about solving them, software bugs and how those are idnetified and fixed, etc. While the quick fix for a defective product may be board level replacement, it never ends there for us unless it was what we call a COTS product (Commercial Off the Shelf) in which case we may let the vendor know we have identified a high failure rate and give them an opportunity to fix it and if they can't we change vendors. If we developed it, like the low level laser radiometer we developed that is 100,000 times more sensitive and accurate than any commercial unit, we would analyze the failure down to the component level and respec a failing component. None of this is easy and I suspect it may be very new to Leica since they have not been an electronics company. However the skills are there in the market place and I would hope they are developing the capability.

 

I am in no way trying to minimize the difficulty of the task but I have to believe that by now their engineers would have found the common thread and derived a solution besides replacing a circuit board with a new one from the parts bin. Every circuit board manufacturer has extensive diagnostic tools that they use to test their circuit boards and can be used to diagnose down to the component level. Failed IC's can be opened up and analyzed to determine failure modes , if not by the circuit board level manufacturer then by the IC manufacturer.

 

In the end we all want the same thing and I hope that Leica can deliver it to us. I will try and help as much as I can.

[colorflow]

Well said John. I have similar background and agree 100% and hope Leica is doing what you outlined. If not, we are in for some real unpleasant disappointments. Anyone knows who runs Leica's engineering and R&D? I would like to shoot off an email to him/her.

 

Alan

[Jamie Roberts]

However, statistically it does not look good.

 

Unfortunately, no-one knows what the statistical element here actually is except Leica, and they're, understandably, not telling.

 

When the CEO of a company says, though, that it's they're number one focus right now (see Guy's recent post from PMA), then I believe they're working on it.

 

Unfortunately, the difficulty and sheer expense that comes in debugging an intermittent, not always present, flaw means we're going to have to wait, and perhaps not everyone's camera is affected.

 

Expense is one thing, John, to the US Government, and quite another to a private company. No-one's life is riding on a working M8 (though my livliehood--to some extent--is )

 

Heck, maybe it's a battery short somewhere. I've had DMR batteries fail on the job (just completely fail) and maybe something like that is happening too.

 

Maybe it's something else entirely. Lock-ups shouldn't happen--it's true--but sometimes it's not even the camera's fault.

 

The Canon 1ds2 used to lock up with Lexar--and Lexar only--cards. Once folks realized it, Canon tried to fix it with firmware, but it didn't work. Lexar had to recall all their CF cards of a certain kind.

 

So has anyone asked what kind of SD card was in the camera when it locked? I haven't seen those results yet--has anyone else? I'd actually guess an intermittent I/O problem before I guessed "static" FWIW.

 

I guess I'm just saying "stay patient."

 

Leica will fix this. John, just because they have not identified a general fault doesn't mean they haven't fixed individual camera's faults.

 

Again--imagine if it was the SD card, or intermittent battery production run. Yikes--that could take awhile to prove and solve (though honestly, and in fairness, the first place I'd look is to external, uncontrollable, possible causes in an unpredictable failure mode).

[Guest guy_mancuso]

FYI i did just sent the laundry list to Stefan Daniels and we should see a reply to that this week . i will post the official statements from leica in it's own thread later this week when it returns.

 

I hope this will help many folks with the communications from leica and the list of issues that need addressing. I know Stefan should be back in Germany by now he left Sunday from PMA and was looking at 20 hours of flying time. Yuk that is no fun

 

Just a FYI Stefan Daniels is in charge of the M division and he is the guy that has the answers we are looking for.

 

Thanks for your patience in this area i know many of you feel frustrated and hopefully this will help.

 

Guy

__

[colorflow]

Unfortunately, no-one knows what the statistical element here actually is except Leica, and they're, understandably, not telling.

 

When the CEO of a company says, though, that it's they're number one focus right now (see Guy's recent post from PMA), then I believe they're working on it.

 

).

 

I missed Guy's post. Did the CEO specifically address the sudden death issue. Frankly Leica should communicate directly with registered owners, not through Guy. Their email yesterday made no mention of this at all. It would calm a lot of nerves and minimize speculation about whether Leica is up to the job of debugging electronics.

 

Alan

[Jamie Roberts]

I missed Guy's post. Did the CEO specifically address the sudden death issue. Frankly Leica should communicate directly with registered owners, not through Guy. Their email yesterday made no mention of this at all. It would calm a lot of nerves and minimize speculation about whether Leica is up to the job of debugging electronics.

 

Alan

 

Alan--

 

My apologies; I misread Guy's original post. It was the head of the M Division--Stefan Daniels--not the CEO, that he mentioned as being concerned by the reports of sudden M8 failure in his first PMA post.

 

And I do agree agree with you; they should be communicating on all this. But hang in there--if their track record is anything to go by, they will both communicate on this and fix it, too, if anything needs fixing.

[herbkell]

Alan--

 

My apologies; I misread Guy's original post. It was the head of the M Division--Stefan Daniels--not the CEO, that he mentioned as being concerned by the reports of sudden M8 failure in his first PMA post.

 

And I do agree agree with you; they should be communicating on all this. But hang in there--if their track record is anything to go by, they will both communicate on this and fix it, too, if anything needs fixing.

 

 

Track record is what bothers me. A company that either never saw the magenta problem (absolutely unbelievable to me) or willingly chose not to disclose it cannot be said to have a very admirable track record

[Jamie Roberts]

Track record is what bothers me. A company that either never saw the magenta problem (absolutely unbelievable to me) or willingly chose not to disclose it cannot be said to have a very admirable track record

 

Herb--that's absolutely fair comment.

 

I don't know whether they saw it or not, or if they even thought it would be a big problem, but I do know the M8 was in the hands of a lot of people before the launch who also didn't notice it--or didn't care. And I'm not talking about people like Michael Reichmann who did notice it, either.

 

I was actually thinking of Leica's *overall* track record of fixing things, though I suppose one can poke holes in some of that too. But it's mainly the digital dependencies they have lately that, perhaps, have been letting them down. That said, the DMR is still a great camera, and so, for that matter, is the M8.

 

It's early days yet, I think. Talk to me in April or May without firmware or filters and I'll be singing a different tune But I do believe Leica will deliver on their promises, too.

[colorflow]

 

... But I do believe Leica will deliver on their promises, too.

 

I sure hope you are right Jamie. My dead M8 left 18 days ago for NJ/Solms via UPS Air. It still has not made its way to "in repair" status yet. I can't justify two M8s since I am not a pro. So all the recently acquired expensive glass just sit and gather dust.

 

Alan