SD Card compatibility issue?

[chris_tribble]

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It seems that some of the problems relate to SDXC cards.  I've had no problems with Sandisk SDHC 32GB 90/mps cards.  I've decided to stick with this size of card for now.  Frankly, the only reason for me for going with the bigger / faster SDXC cards had been video on the SL.  Now that I only use M10 + Canon 5D mk3, the 64GB SD cards are used on the DSLR and the Leica is more than happy with the 32GB SDHC.

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[Neko]

 Problems with SandDisk Extreme Pro (SDHC) 32GB 95 mb/s. Crashes, slow reading, no image in LCD. Last FW update.

 

 No problems with:

 

 - Lexar 16GB 95 mb/s

 -SandDisk ultra 16 GB 80 mb/s

[pnoble]

The only glitch so far - for some reason neither of my Lexar 633 64GB / 95 MB/s cards are recognised.  They worked fine on the SL and M-240.  I've reformatted using SD Formatter, but the M10 simply doesn't recognise the card and isn't able to format in camera.  

Anyone else with similar experiences?  My Sandisk 32GB 95 MB/s Extreme Pro work fine.

 

I'll log this with Leica...  Possible firmware issue?

I have had my M10 only a few hours, March build, latest firmware loaded, and already it has failed to recognize the Lexar 633 SD card three times in either write or read mode. First time I reformatted and the second and third time I turned off/on. Resolved the issue but extremely annoying to spend $6600 on a camera body and first attempt it won't even take a picture.

[apertur]

I found that if you zoom out quickly so that you see multiple images in review the problematic cards show small question marks for half a second.

SD 32 GB crashes

SD 64!GB 80mb extreme works best - super fast formatting and use is perfect

SD 64 GB 95 mb extreme pro: golden label works easy, black crashes after a while

Lexar 1000x formats super slowly but then works fine

[pnoble]

Definitely a systemic problem with Lexar Professional 64GB (633x). I have now tried two. Completely unstable results with both. M10 recognizes, doesn't, shoots, doesnt, erases all, but doesn't.

 

I then took a Sony 64GB from my Sony RX-100 and formatted it in the M10 and now see for the first time a status indicator during formatting, a very good omen, and so far so good. Put one of the Lexars in the Sony and no problem. (I was wondering why there was no status indicator during formatting of the Lexars - but there was no error message either. And I had no prior experience of M10 formatting.)

 

Astonishing to me that Leica wouldn't systematically test their new camera with at least all the major brand SD cards before putting it on the market. Or at the very least provide a list of recommended/tested cards. Only other possibility: a bad batch of Lexars, but doesn't seem to affect the RX-100. And others seem to be having the same problem.

 

I felt like an idiot yesterday a couple of hours after picking up my new camera body, finding myself in the midst of a volatile street demonstration in Lower Manhattan pushing on the shutter release with absolutely nothing happening. I did thereafter record some images and later downloaded them successfully to my computer, but the behavior during the day was completely erratic.

[Magic]

Based on info/threads from the internet, I directly invested a bit more money (peanuts in relation to the camera ) and bought the Lexar Professional 2000x SDHC/SDXC UHS-II 64GB which works absolutely fine, no issues at all. It comes with a separate USB-card reader.

[stephan54]

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I bought a SandiskUltra 64Gb 80mb/s sdxc to begin with, but that card produced errors: some files took ages to write and then could not be opened in Lightroom as they were corrupted. Usually four out of 50, which does not sound too bad, but the long writing times were really annoying. SD cards are relatively inexpensive so I bought a Lexar 32Gb sdhc 300x 45mb/s. Probably too early to tell, but the writing times are faster and I did not experience the occasional extra long writing. None of the 80 pictures seems to be corrupted.

[Neko]

¨Astonishing to me that Leica wouldn't systematically test their new camera with at least all the major brand SD cards before putting it on the market. Or at the very least provide a list of recommended/tested cards.¨

 

 Totally agree!

[digitalfx]

Astonishing to me that Leica wouldn't systematically test their new camera with at least all the major brand SD cards before putting it on the market. Or at the very least provide a list of recommended/tested cards. Only other possibility: a bad batch of Lexars, but doesn't seem to affect the RX-100. And others seem to be having the same problem.

 

 

 

This has been Leica's Achilles heel since day one...every M has had issues. Leica does usually publish a list of compatible cards and its always been a small list.

Im using the Lexar UDH II cards and they have been flawless...I guess I was lucky as I already had these for the SL.

[Cliff S]

64Gb

Lexar professional 1000x

SDXC II U3

150 MB/s

 

Worked perfectly from day one. And at that speed it's ready for video

[Dirk Mandeville]

And at that speed it's ready for video

Just gotta stir the pot now, don't you?

[pnoble]

Allow me to suggest a pretty apt analogy: you pay under $25K for a Honda Accord Coupe, you fill it up at any gas station and it works perfectly. You pay more than $250K for a Ferrari 488GTB and, just imagine, you pull into the first gas station and if it's Shell or Mobil super unleaded it works fine, but if you fill it up with BP super unleaded it knocks and if you happen to pull into a Suncoco gas station and fill it with Sunoco Supreme (also the factory specified 93 octane), it completely stalls. Imagine.

 

Only externality a car needs to operate is gas and a digital camera: a memory card. Half a dozen major brands in both markets and a bunch of off labels. Pretty strict technical standards in both markets with subtle chemical/electronic variances. You'd imagine that any manufacturer would test their product, be it car or camera, with every mainstream available gas/memory card brand.

 

Leica has its marketing act really together, its product act not so much, it would seem.

[Magic]

..but after you know that...when is the smile on your face bigger ?....driving the Honda or the Ferrari ?

[apertur]

It seems that some of the problems relate to SDXC cards. I've had no problems with Sandisk SDHC 32GB 90/mps cards. I've decided to stick with this size of card for now. Frankly, the only reason for me for going with the bigger / faster SDXC cards had been video on the SL. Now that I only use M10 + Canon 5D mk3, the 64GB SD cards are used on the DSLR and the Leica is more than happy with the 32GB SDHC.

 

And that is why I tried those cards but from minute number one Thea cards crashed. All four of them that I bought for a trip.

 

Now I am on SD extreme (80mb) in 64 GB and those are fine.

 

With M240 the 64 Gb were best for switch on speed.

[pnoble]

..but after you know that...when is the smile on your face bigger ?....driving the Honda or the Ferrari ?

For sure, but why I drive a 911: exceptional engineering and near Ferrari level performance but not temperamental which I hear Ferrari and Lamborghini to be. (I have not owned either).

 

Interesting article I just found on the web: http://www.autotrader.com/car-shopping/heres-why-spending-more-money-doesnt-get-you-better-reliability-250690

 

I applogize if it seems off topic for a Leica forum but I actually think it quite relevant in terms of Leica as a product and brand. But what is missing from the article is the 'why' which is that what Leica and its automotive analogs have in common is relatively very low levels of 'bespoke' production, when product reliability is quite scale-dependent, I think.

 

Ferrari unit production is under 10% of Porsche sports car production, 3% of total production including SUVs. I'm guessing Leica is similar or even less in proportion to Canon/Nikon/Sony. And it is the total production that is key since design, process, production, parts, QA are shared.

[jffielde]

I have used the Lexar Professional 2000x SDHC/SDXC UHS-II 64GB and DO have problems with it.  How preposterous. 

[Guest]

Some earlier M's were limited to 32BG SDHC cards and 2GB SD cards. So the new M10 may fall into that category. That might explain why your 64Gb is not working and your 32GB card is. 

 

My Samsung 64 PRO SD XC I class 10 works perfectly including in Continuous mode.

[apertur]

OK now SD 64 GB 80mb crashed after 1500 pictures and 10 days. I will try now the Lexar 64 GB 1000x. However picture saving take a lot of time with this new card.

I tested 16 GB Sad cards, 32 (was not even able to safe one picture), 64 GB all from San Disk and they all crashed at some point. Keep your fingers crossed.

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[Magic]

I have used the Lexar Professional 2000x SDHC/SDXC UHS-II 64GB and DO have problems with it.  How preposterous. 

That's really weird...so far I took only 350 photos, but I tried burst mode, bracketing etc., reviewed them single or multiple images on the screen by using the wheel and the card works just fine.

[Jager]

Allow me to suggest a pretty apt analogy: you pay under $25K for a Honda Accord Coupe, you fill it up at any gas station and it works perfectly. You pay more than $250K for a Ferrari 488GTB and, just imagine, you pull into the first gas station and if it's Shell or Mobil super unleaded it works fine, but if you fill it up with BP super unleaded it knocks and if you happen to pull into a Suncoco gas station and fill it with Sunoco Supreme (also the factory specified 93 octane), it completely stalls. Imagine.

 

Only externality a car needs to operate is gas and a digital camera: a memory card. Half a dozen major brands in both markets and a bunch of off labels. Pretty strict technical standards in both markets with subtle chemical/electronic variances. You'd imagine that any manufacturer would test their product, be it car or camera, with every mainstream available gas/memory card brand.

 

Leica has its marketing act really together, its product act not so much, it would seem.

 

Actually - though I think most of us find ourselves nodding our head at your car analogy - the possible variance in the SD-spec is vastly larger than that of gasoline.

 

At a physical level, the family of SD cards seem like simple devices... form factor, pin assignment, and high-level data transfer protocols are straightforward.  Those parts of the SD spec are stable.

 

Alas, it quickly starts to go wonky from there.

 

The SD card specification originated out of a consortium of Matsushita, Toshiba, and SanDisk.  It derived from the earlier MultiMediaCard.  Later, the spec became "owned" by the Secure Digital Association, a much larger consortium of over a thousand companies.

 

The obvious desire of any device manufacturer (like Leica) is to achieve error-free operation across as many SD card products as possible.  The challenge is the enormous variability in that multitude.  The first problem is how strict, or loose, any given card manufacturer chooses to interpret the spec.  And even if, by their lights, they are interpreting the spec strictly, there are many differences and options open to them.

 

Just a few...

 

• Capacity differences
• Transfer speed variations
• Multiple clock speeds and varying size data buses in the same card
• Different electrical interfaces (some 3.3v; some 1.8v)
• FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, and exFAT filesystems
• Some cards implement wear-leveling; some don't
• Power consumption varies significantly between card types and manufacturer
• Although the SD spec itself is proprietary (and can be licensed by card manufacturers), parts of it have been reverse-engineered and some of that rogue code is in the wild
• Cards implement multiple state conditions; and varying conditions in which state can change
• Most cards implement multiple read/write modes
• Complex and different bus topologies
• SD cards all have inherent defects (probably the dirty little secret of microprocessor fabrication).  Different manufacturers implement different defect management systems.

That's just the tip of the iceberg.  The bottom line is that camera and other device manufacturers must navigate a daunting and complex SD card landscape.  The technology is not nearly so simple as might first appear.

 

And we've seen plenty of empirical evidence over more than a decade now that Leica's software effort(s) are probably their greatest weakness.  It wouldn't surprise me if they only have a couple people working on it across all their product lines.

 

What has worked for me has been to choose a very conservatively spec'd card (both capacity and speed), always use a given card in a given camera (no sharing), always format in-camera, and never delete images in-camera.