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What fresh (Leica) hell is this?


fussgangerfoto

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I admit, I don't hang out on computer forums much, but I have (and have had) a LOT of equipment (film and digital) over the years.

 

I've been happily shooting my Monochrom for a few months, about 9,400 shutter actuations and just stumbled upon a thread about sensor corrosion. Really? OK, I've probably had a dozen Nikon DSLRs, probably 5 Fujis and just a few Leica digitals, but I read with interest about the corrosion issue. So I ran some tests to see if I was a victim of this insidious malady, and mercifully, my sensor appears fine. Yet, while verifying that I can sleep soundly tonight, taking solace in the certain knowledge that my sensor is not corroded, during the testing, my MM woefully interrupted my testing to state that the shutter had a fault. The preview showed a image black from the top to the middle. "Attention: Shutter Fault". A reset cured the complaint and the camera continued to function as normal thereafter.

 

So, my question is this - is this a fluke or a sign of more pain to come? Should I send the camera in for an interminable period of repair or wait unit the problem becomes worse?

 

I have to say, in all honesty, that I love Leica, but for an ultra-expensive hand-built product, they have the lowest reliability of any camera, film or digital, that I've owned. I have about 300,000 actuations through Nikon equipment and have only had one warranty issue (light leak on D750). It was fixed in 10 days (not four months). Never had a problem with most cameras (Hasselblad, Nikon, Olympus, Fuji) and they cost a fraction of the Leicas. Just sayin'...

 

 

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It was a fluke. Think of all the times your computer needed to be rebooted. You don't send it in every time it needs a reboot. Welcome to the world of microcontrollers and firmware. My first experience with this was the Nikon N8008, ~1989. It had a sensor to detect end-of-roll and engage the rewind. On vacation, the last picture was "perfectly at the end of the roll". It did not budge, firmware could not detect end-of-roll, no way to convince it by pressing the buttons to manually engage the rewind. The camera could not be turned off at the switch, it was "frozen". Batteries out, press rewind buttons, put batteries in: rewound the film. Par for the course for a computer controlled camera. 25+ years later, more control handed over to firmware, more to screw-up, if just a reset fixes it- be happy. Remember, the only error message that a user needs is a blank screen and locked keyboard. Seems to be the industry standard.

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I don't think you need to panic, I don't think you need to do anything further, venting your spleen as you have done should do the trick, it solves lots of problems with Leica's.

 

 

Steve

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