balifoods Posted July 27, 2013 Author Share #21 Posted July 27, 2013 Advertisement (gone after registration) Accept it should not be like that, but it is no big deal and as has been said would only take 10 minutes to clean with a Arctic Butterfly static brush or similar. With the other digital M's you have you are probably set up for sensor cleaning. Did the camera come previously unopened or is there a chance sensor may have been exposed in shop. For what its worth I did test as this is new feature just to try it, and it showed one speck on edge that I can't see on images. It is a very big deal after 200 exposures. Imagine you have to send in your brand new Mercedes Benz for a tune up after only 100 km. then the dealer tells you to do it yourself Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted July 27, 2013 Posted July 27, 2013 Hi balifoods, Take a look here Leica M 240 what is going on. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
balifoods Posted July 27, 2013 Author Share #22 Posted July 27, 2013 It is against my will to wash my car - I will return it to the dealer... Fully agree Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
balifoods Posted July 27, 2013 Author Share #23 Posted July 27, 2013 You bought the camera in Hong Kong? It's probably been picked up more than a Wan Chai hostess. No wonder the sensor is covered in dust. Don't blame Leica for something that isn't their fault. If you don't like cleaning your sensor then the M240 and every other Leica digital M is probably not for you. The shop is Delon in Hong Kong and the sales gentleman is Mr. Sit. Of course it has to be Leicas fault. I just wonder why the Canon Mark 3 has no spots after one year???? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
balifoods Posted July 27, 2013 Author Share #24 Posted July 27, 2013 Stephen, the OP stated he had an M8.2 and M9 so surely he is familiar with a few dust spots. Lets face it, 60 spots is a LOT. But those who suggested he clean the sensor himself are correct - it shouldn't be a big deal unless they are oil spots which can be problematic (just ask a D600 owner). My M8 was a horrible dust magnet, but nothing that couldn't be taken care of by me with a blower or a Lens Pen. My M8.2 has been great at not having dust on the sensor (can't really say why). My M9-P just returned from a CLA by Leica with a spot on the sensor. You just never know. My first response would not be to go screaming to Leica - I would try to fix it myself or find a camera shop with an experienced tech - if that didn't work then go screaming to Leica . No way I will fix it myself. I know how to clean sensors, but it is absolutely against my will to do so after only 200 exposures. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
magosak Posted July 27, 2013 Share #25 Posted July 27, 2013 It is against my will to wash my car - I will return it to the dealer... What if you just picked up a brand new car from your dealer. Are you ok with driving straight to a car wash right after paying thousands of $$$, Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
balifoods Posted July 27, 2013 Author Share #26 Posted July 27, 2013 When frustration kicks in, it is sometimes difficult to expose facts clearly. Are you talking about dust, like everyone is assuming, or other spots (dead pixels or whatever)? You say you had exactly the same problem with your M9. But I don't see how you could possibly get a replacement model if the problem was nothing but dust on the sensor. And then again, also the new sensor needed changing? That can't have been dust then. On my (ex) M9, I had up to 25 - 30 dust spots, and while I did not manage to remove some of them (perhaps pollen or oil droplets), a quick and cheap pit stop at a service lab made the sensor look like new. Now that was dust / dirt, and no sensor or camera would be replaced because of it. If this is your problem, you can surely remove most spots by yourself as others suggest or get cleaning help like I did. However, if you only took 200 shots with one single lens, it is strange that your sensor collected that much dust that quickly, it might be that the dust was already there when you got your new camera (did they sell you a demo model without telling you??). If it is NOT dust or dirt, then you have reason to be irritated at Leica and contact them. After a year of spots and a sensor change on then M 9 the camera was finally replaced with a new one. Please understand, in order to have the camera serviced, my closest service station is in Singapore a 2 1/2 hour flight away. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
balifoods Posted July 27, 2013 Author Share #27 Posted July 27, 2013 Advertisement (gone after registration) My first M240 had a filthy sensor when it arrived. Not just on the dust detector but visible with a loupe, the sensor was covered with blobs of something. I wet cleaned, then used an Eyelead sticky pad and finally another wet clean before I was happy with the results. My replacement M240 was much cleaner but is now due another sensor clean. I think the Eyelead will work well once I am past the initial stage of gooey blobs. I believe it is what Leica use themselves. Hopefully the new factory in Wetzlar will have superior clean room conditions for assembly. I was surprised to see workers assembling M8's in Solms without gloves on. Human sweat is very inimicable to electronics and PCB's. When I visited Kyocera a number of years ago, all the workers were wearing white gloves. Sensor cleaning as others have said, is an integral part of digital M life. Wilson Thank you so much for your constructive comment. As it sounds you hade the same issue. Just like my sensor the spots do not look like dust but heavy black marks. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted July 28, 2013 Share #28 Posted July 28, 2013 What if you just picked up a brand new car from your dealer. Are you ok with driving straight to a car wash right after paying thousands of $$$, And would you have it returned to Japan or wherever it was built for bird sh!t on the windscreen? As it happens I had to when I picked up my last new car - it was covered in salt from the road within ten minutes. Washing your car, mowing the lawn, changing your baby's nappies, cleaning your sensor, all these chores are your responsibility. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
tadeyev Posted July 28, 2013 Share #29 Posted July 28, 2013 Balifoods, don't you understand? It is normal practice that Leica delivers cameras full of dust, it seems to be their normal practice these days! Look at other threads here. It's normal to clean your sensor all the time with Leica's! It has the additional benefit of something to talk about on forums like these (are you using the Arctic Butterfly #2? Oh, no I have the Arctic Butterfly #3, it is much better than the Rotomop I bought last week!) Did you really expect to be taken seriously in this thread? I would like to see ONE person on this thread picking up their new car at the dealer filled with sand and muck on the seats and windshield and see their reaction (oh, that's normal for a Lamborghini, didn't you know?) It is easy to make fun of others, isn't it guys? Vindt je ook niet Jaap? (Do you bring your car back to the dealer when it's dirty?) = So funny, so helpful for a freaked out newbie user ! Tadeyev Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted July 28, 2013 Share #30 Posted July 28, 2013 The sensor is clean when it leaves the factory. It collects dust when the new owner plonks a lens with a dirty rear end on it. Preferably with the lens mouth facing upwards in a dusty room. Then he takes some images, As the shutter is a simple mechanical thing it may deposit some minuscule manufacturing rests on the sensor. So he will have to clean it. Which appears to be less easy than complaining. That is all there is to it. In my experience with any digital camera. That is why -surprise, surprise-, the editing programs have a dust removal tool. Do you think that was incorporated for Leica only? So when you put your dog into your new car, by all means blame Toyota for the hairs on the seat. Having said that, in my opinion the dust detection tool on the M is a redundant and rather useless tool. Dust must be removed when it gets visible on a monitor if need be at 200%. I find that a sparkling clean sensor that has no dust on it viewed under an operating microscope and none on the computer screen will still show a fair number of spots using the camera feature. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted July 28, 2013 Share #31 Posted July 28, 2013 ...... if you consider that the spots appeared only after 1 shoot and no lens change.So it WAS clean when you received it and the dust spots appeared in use. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaques Posted July 28, 2013 Share #32 Posted July 28, 2013 well... i have a 5 year old Canon 450d DSLR- and I have never had to clean the sensor once... Not once. With M9 I doubt I have ever taken a single image that didn't have some dust spots on it. I have had the sensor cleaned by a trained hasselblad technician under a stereo microscope only to find fresh dust spots 3 pictures later... The very first photos with 2 brand new M9's had dust on the sensor. And I take care putting the lens on... I for one WISH that Leica had installed some kind of self cleaning sensor function into the camera. I like Leica- just ask my poor credit card- I just bought an m240 2 days ago. But I am not so in love that I cannot criticize the product. I don't believe in blind faith or excessive brand loyalty. I think by noting our frustrations there is a chance that change may occur. The analogy with a dirty car is pretty far fetched... more appropriate to suggest a new car with dirt in the cylinder heads than bird shit on the windscreen... It seems the Leica design has a real problem when it comes to dust. After 3 digital M's the issue persists. And Yes: dust can get on just about any sensor.. but from my experience the issue is worse than on many other digital cameras including ones that are a fraction of the cost. It may be that that is just too bad- and par for the course. Still it is a shame. and is it really true that there is no way to calculate the number of images the camera has taken? If that is true then that really is shameful. Why would they obscure such data? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guido Posted July 28, 2013 Share #33 Posted July 28, 2013 Please understand, in order to have the camera serviced, my closest service station is in Singapore a 2 1/2 hour flight away. To add yet one more analogy in car terms, this would be like living with your Jeep in the remote outback, 3 hours away from the nearest village with a garage. In the real world, you'd probably find most people in such conditions able and willing to do basic maintenance and repairs of their car themselves, instead of whining about the inconvenience of getting their own hands dirty. In the old Hasselblad V days, packing a screwdriver and learning how to resolve shutter jams was commonplace and not worth further mentioning. Yes, expensive high-end Hasselblads with frequent shutter jams! I wonder how many photographers in the field chose to wrap up, go home, and write to the president of Hasselblad, instead of reaching out for their screwdriver and fixing the jam in a minute? If you feel so burdened by the prospect of having to clean your M yourself, maybe you should question whether the M is the right camera for your current living conditions. Maybe a self-cleaning DSLR would be a wiser choice if the next capable dealer is so far away? Note that in the above car analogy, most people would probably decide to buy a Jeep for the countryside, and not a Mercedes or a Lamborghini. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted July 28, 2013 Share #34 Posted July 28, 2013 well... i have a 5 year old Canon 450d DSLR- and I have never had to clean the sensor once... Not once. With M9 I doubt I have ever taken a single image that didn't have some dust spots on it. I have had the sensor cleaned by a trained hasselblad technician under a stereo microscope only to find fresh dust spots 3 pictures later... The very first photos with 2 brand new M9's had dust on the sensor. And I take care putting the lens on... I for one WISH that Leica had installed some kind of self cleaning sensor function into the camera. I like Leica- just ask my poor credit card- I just bought an m240 2 days ago. But I am not so in love that I cannot criticize the product. I don't believe in blind faith or excessive brand loyalty. I think by noting our frustrations there is a chance that change may occur. The analogy with a dirty car is pretty far fetched... more appropriate to suggest a new car with dirt in the cylinder heads than bird shit on the windscreen... It seems the Leica design has a real problem when it comes to dust. After 3 digital M's the issue persists. And Yes: dust can get on just about any sensor.. but from my experience the issue is worse than on many other digital cameras including ones that are a fraction of the cost. It may be that that is just too bad- and par for the course. Still it is a shame. and is it really true that there is no way to calculate the number of images the camera has taken? If that is true then that really is shameful. Why would they obscure such data? Any mirrorless camera with interchangeable lenses will show more dust on the sensor than a DSLR because there is no mirror in front of the sensor to catch at least part of the dust.Having said that I can only say that I learned to clean sensaors in a time that I had Canon DSLRs. My 10/20 D and 1 D needed regular sensor cleaning. I doubt that much has changed. If you want to see dust accumulate on your 5D buy a 100-400L and take the camera into a dusty environment... It all depends on the use you put the camera to. When the climate is moist and the dust gets washed out of the atmosphere by rain you can go a year before you will see dust on your sensor and a quick blow with a blower bulb will suffice. When it is windy in spring and you have nice sticky Pollen coating everything it may need a weekly wet clean or worse. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJB Posted July 28, 2013 Share #35 Posted July 28, 2013 It has been interesting to read this. I think the OP has a valid complaint and I think it is good that he is prepared to write to someone senior at Leica. Tolerance of dust magnet camera is a choice some can make but the people who complain to the top are the ones likely to encourage some behavioural change from Leica. Your defence of Leica Jaapv comes across as a bit unbalanced and overly aggressive towards the OP. The car analogy is unreasonable. Dust on a sensor materially affects the principal functionality of the product: a camera that takes dirty pictures is useless. One should expect a brand new camera to be fully functional. I have yet to reach the top of the waiting list for my black M. However, our M9 is also prone to attracting dust. Our Canon 5DIII has been used in all kinds of conditions, had hundreds of lens changes and zero issues with dust on the sensor. Leica perhaps need some attention to their design and manufacturing processes. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted July 28, 2013 Share #36 Posted July 28, 2013 Note that the OP had exactly the same story about his M9, claiming that it had to be returned to Leica to be cleaned and that it had its shutter and sensor changed because of dust spots. Not that there was a repair note with the camera, but "somebody told him". We all know that that is not the way Leica operates. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted July 28, 2013 Share #37 Posted July 28, 2013 It has been interesting to read this. I think the OP has a valid complaint and I think it is good that he is prepared to write to someone senior at Leica. Tolerance of dust magnet camera is a choice some can make but the people who complain to the top are the ones likely to encourage some behavioural change from Leica. Your defence of Leica Jaapv comes across as a bit unbalanced and overly aggressive towards the OP. The car analogy is unreasonable. Dust on a sensor materially affects the principal functionality of the product: a camera that takes dirty pictures is useless. One should expect a brand new camera to be fully functional. I have yet to reach the top of the waiting list for my black M. However, our M9 is also prone to attracting dust. Our Canon 5DIII has been used in all kinds of conditions, had hundreds of lens changes and zero issues with dust on the sensor. Leica perhaps need some attention to their design and manufacturing processes. Like putting a mirror in front of the sensor? I am not defending Leica at all, I am explaining the proper use of a tool. If you cannot accept dust on your sensor you should not buy a mirrorless interchangeable lens camera and if you do you should be careful how you use it and learn how to clean it. If one is not prepared to do so I would recommend an RX1. As it happens I would welcome a sensor cleaning system too. It would save some hassle, although they are not 100% effective either. Sticky dust is not removed so wet cleaning is not completely eliminated. It appears there are some technical obstacles to using the existing ones, like adding to the thickness of the body. After the cracked sensor cover glass episode I am not quite sure if I would feel happy if ultrasonic vibrations were applied to that glass, as it is much thinner than a DSLR one. I can imagine Leica having the same reservations. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
lct Posted July 28, 2013 Share #38 Posted July 28, 2013 Aside from fixed lens cameras, all sensors get dirty soon or late. People claiming that they don't need sensor cleaning either don't use their camera or never change lenses. Just shoot at f/16 or f/22 with any DSLR and you'll see what i mean. I would never return a camera for such petty issues personally. It could well come back in a worse condition due to handling or carrying let alone new QC problems at the factory. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaques Posted July 28, 2013 Share #39 Posted July 28, 2013 Note that the OP had exactly the same story about his M9, claiming that it had to be returned to Leica to be cleaned and that it had its shutter and sensor changed because of dust spots. Not that there was a repair note with the camera, but "somebody told him". We all know that that is not the way Leica operates. actually we don't all know. my own experience with Leica service was pretty poor... I sent an M8 in to have the LCD replaced. I was told it would be free as it was a manufacturing defect. However once it arrived I was told I would have to pay. I paid: the camera was returned with the very same faulty LCD. Leica tried to say it was a new screen that had also failed... It wasn't. It went back to Solms and was returned with new LCD but old cover glass: which I was promised would be replaced as well when I was quoted for the work. Ending up losing close to 1200 dollars. A nightmare. Leica accepted responsibility: but only offered to cover less than half my losses. and while I do understand that dust is a fact of life: I am also aware that there is technology in other cameras that works to reduce it. I think it is a shame Leica has not worked on this area of the camera... dust spotting is a real pain in my arse. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paulus Posted July 28, 2013 Share #40 Posted July 28, 2013 Last Sunday July 21 I finally received the M 240 as you all know a very long wait. Years we have been waiting for this camera. Best professional camera 2013 in my hands. When I received the camera which I purchased through Hong Kong I immediately attached the 50/1.4. Then finally three days later last Thursday July 25 I found some time to take out the camera for some shooting. Feels terrific and the low light ability does not seem to be an issue any longer. Then after 24 hours out in the open I anxiously set down and uploaded the images on the computer. Big apple, big screen on Lightroom. Wau what appeared blew me away in every sense. Colors are fantastic and the white balance seems to be only slightly off. I took about 200 shots and for a very short time I felled like I was in heaven. But then my marriage with Leica broke, possible for ever. Spots and lots of it. Spots every where. The sensors is covered in them. Today I found a little time and checked them out. There is a function in the menus allowing you to check for dust and spots. And guess what the sensor is covered. I then took some shots with closed aperture on white back ground and printed them out. A quick count revealed at least 60 spots and this only quickly. With other words that hand made presses son tool made in Germany is totally useless. Believe me I am upset after waiting such a long time and spending US$10000.I own a lot of Leic gear. R8. Digital back. Lots of R lenses. M8.2 M9 and various lenses. Beside all this several small ones. What really gets me is the fact that I had exactly the same problem with the M9. It took Leica a whole year before I received a replacement model. Then the new M9 also showed spots after a few weeks and within a year the sensor needed to be changed. This I had done through the service center in Singapore which took an enourmes 6 months. To me the only acceptable answer from Leica would be if the camera is replaced with a brand new model immediately. Unfortunately I live in Bali in Indonesia and now have to get the camera back to Hong Kong. Then in Hong Kong to Schmit marketing. From there back to Germany and by the time I have an answer I might be several times grand father, Something is not right and I need to share my total and absolute frustration with the supporters of Leica. I will tomorrow write a personal letter to the president of Leica which I guess will be a waist of time. Similar a waist was spending $10000 on something which does not work. I love live and the island of Gods Heinz von Holzen Heinz, If you are not good in cleaning your camera's do just like me. Sent them to Chip clean in the Netherlands and it will be cleaned perfect for you.A lot of professional photographers do it. You don't have to clean your own sensor if you don't like it. There are professionals there who can do it for you. ( Some people like to cook for themselves, some like to eat in restaurants all of the time. It's your choice! ) Not only the sensor but also the surroundings of the sensor. I had some issues with the M9 also, but after a clean at Chipclean all my issues were gone. Last time it was cleaned is now a year ago and about 10.000 clicks later. I still change my lenses, but carefully. When I have a new M 10 camera, I first let the shutter work a couple of hundred times and then take it to Chipclean to really clean it. They do it a lot better than Leica. You can sent the camera to them, and they can sent it back. ( This is not an advertisement, but I am just very satisfied with it! ) It's not a big deal to sent a package to the Netherlands. It will cost you a week. One day for cleaning and then back in a week! So all by all lot faster than via Schmidt.! In my opinion it's better en more productive to sent Chipclean a mail and negotiate the sending, than Herr Kaufmann. On the other hand.. I was playing with a demo M 10 yesterday for an hour. Loaded the files on my computer and saw no dust particles in the pictures that were really noticeable. And I think a demo M10 "gathers" a lot of clients and a lot of lens changes. All potential dust makers. Chipclean - Stof op de beeldsensor van uw digitale SLR? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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