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Very strange M240 glitch that I haven't seen reported yet.


huckles

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Hi guys,

 

just letting you know that I noticed something very strange when in Live View today. The screen was totally ghosting, it was like a milky white layer on top of the image. This occurred in shooting LV, Movie Mode, playback, e.t.c.. so everywhere. I pulled the battery. Nothing. I reset the camera and presto! Back to normal.. Very unusual. Temperture here is about 20 degrees celsius. I was taking test shots on my tripod... I haven't seen anyone post this issue yet, could just be a simple 'bug' but nevertheless, my heart was in my mouth up until the time that I resetted the camera... :eek:

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I mentioned something similar to Solms CS when in Germany about 3 weeks ago. Only when using the EVF, sometimes after the shot delay the EVF screen is about 1/4 normal brightness. I take another shot so see if it clears and it gets better, but is still maybe half brightness. I turn it off, wait a few seconds and then power it back on and everything seems fine. This has happened to me about 5-8 times in thousands of shots, but it is very disturbing to have happen.

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Solms CS had not heard of the problem, but I ventured a guess with them that there might be an issue with the voltage feed to the EVF on rapid shots or in continuous node which I was not using when it happened to me. I did make many shots in rapid succession though.

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Solms CS had not heard of the problem, but I ventured a guess with them that there might be an issue with the voltage feed to the EVF on rapid shots or in continuous node which I was not using when it happened to me. I did make many shots in rapid succession though.

 

I'm sure thats the explanation. The connection to the camera is not the most wonderful of bits of engineering and transient poor contacts could easily cause this .... particularly with a a new or partially discharged battery plus adverse conditions....

 

Doesn't sound at all like a firmware or major camera issue.

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Hi Enno,

yes, I can replicate that fault by setting the sharpness on 'high'. That is the exact problem, the 'milky' low contrast look on the LCD.

So obviously we know NOT to set it to high, but I can say that I didn't set it to HIGH in the first place... so it was some other 'bug' that triggers this. Don't Leica do bug tests these days? :mad:

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I have just experienced some of the aforementioned glitches whilst using my M240 in anger for the first time on a holiday to Cornwall. Although I really like using the camera, it locked up about 15% of the time which could only be fixed by wasting time either switching it on or off a few times, or taking the bottom cover off and reinstalling the battery. Also, the Leica EVF2 viewfinder exhibited milkiness every time the SHARPNESS was set to HIGH in the MENU. There were two occasions when a luminescent green outline appeared around the EVF image whilst the SHARPNESS was set to MEDIUM HIGH.

 

I was working at a level of MEDIUM HIGH for SHARPNESS and was finding at about 8X magnification, the images on the rear display were not quite as sharp as at a comparative magnification on my Ricoh GXR, though the colours were more accurate. That is why I ended up setting the SHARPNESS to HIGH in the MENU. This is an interesting finding given that the M has about twice the number of pixels and about twice the sensor area of the Ricoh with probably about a similar pitch size. Both rear displays appear to have roughly the same resolution of 920k and provide similar areas of coverage. I did the brief comparison using a 35 mm Summarit lens on the M 240 and a 24 mm Elmar lens on the Ricoh. I am hoping the M images (compressed DNG) will turn out sharper once downloaded on to my iMAC which I will do soon.

 

I am afraid that the Ricoh's electronics have always been robust and never produced any glitches. The rear display also seems to respond more quickly and provides you with intermediate magnifications that I can equate to in assessing potential A4 and A3 sized images. I hope Leica can resolve these glitches so that the M will prove reliable long term.

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Sorry to be so blunt, but trying to asses an image for an A3 print on an LCD of less than two credit cards in size is just plain silly.

 

Perhaps I mis-phrased it. According to my calculations, an image viewed at about x6.7 times on the Ricoh rear display seems to provide a level of detail and sharpness that if fully produced would roughly amount to an A3 sized image given the dimension of the display and the magnification of the image. It is just a rough test of how well the image is being resolved, particularly in terms of finer detail such as lots of vegetation in the foreground of an image and how satisfactory the depth of field is.

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I would say any display on any camera is pretty useless for the purpose, if only because of the artifacts introduced by the limited in-camera processing. The plane of focus is about all you can judge at 100%.

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I would say any display on any camera is pretty useless for the purpose, if only because of the artifacts introduced by the limited in-camera processing. The plane of focus is about all you can judge at 100%.

 

I think that the display on the camera is really quite good at assessing images despite the in-camera processing. From my experiences with the Ricoh, you can magnify them incrementally relatively quickly and whizz across and up and down the screen at any desired magnification observing a highish level of resolved detail. Certainly, detail shows up well up to about x8 magnification.

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I have just had a look at some of my Cornish images from the M240 in Lightroom and they seem fine exhibiting good sharpness and colour when I have blown them up. This is very pleasing after the glitches I reported earlier. I am very impressed with the functionality of Lightroom having just recently acquired it.

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