Just a little bit grumpy at Leica right now....

[Na har]

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So now I'm curious how many of us have had sensor problems (alignment or other) with the SL? I thought I was unlucky with my SL, but reading this thread I see there are others in the same boat.

 

When my SL first came out of the box I noticed unusual banding, so it went to Leica N.J., who replaced the camera with another one because of a bad sensor.

Unfortunately, that camera had the sensor misaligned, or as they called it "out of spec". So that went back to N.J. to be adjusted.

The Leica N.J. people were nice, well meaning and disorganized, but the 2 round trips to the shop meant I did not have the camera for over 2 months. Oh, yes, Leica paid for everything, shipping and all.

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[frame-it]

i thought it cleans the sensor automatically every-time one switches  on the camera ?

 

 

------

P.S. Gordon have you try repeatedly activating ultrasonic cleaning to make the sensor to ‘realign’ itself?

[FlashGordonPhotography]

I am deciding between M10 and SL right now. Reading Gordon’s post makes me vary of possible sensor alignment problems in SL. Ultrasonic sensor cleaning must mean that the sensor is not mounted hard on some supporting surface to provide ultrasonic ‘shake’ to be functional. This sensor ‘suspension’ is then potentially susceptible to misalignment. Do we know how common is this sensor out of alignment problem in SLs? Until reading this post I was leaning 70:30 towards SL, not sure now, I could live with M 10 as well.

P.S. Gordon have you try repeatedly activating ultrasonic cleaning to make the sensor to ‘realign’ itself?

 

No I didn't. I just sent it to Leica although it would have been turned on and off quite a few times before I sent it in.

 

I have (and had) many cameras with either IBIS and ultrasonic cleaning. This is the first that was out. And it was not out when it was new. I don't think it's a common occurrence at all. I have heard stories of various cameras of various brands being out but they're not at all common, from what I have read.

 

Sensor alignment issues aren't a reason to choose between the cameras in my opinion. You're more likely to have an RF go out on the M10 (mine was out from new but an easy fix) than a sensor on the SL.

 

Gordon

[ramarren]

I've been reading all the forums and testing on the SL since it was announced in October 2015. My sense of it is that there have been remarkably few units with problems of any kind. There are always some with defects, of course; that's inevitable with a mass produced machine. 

 

So now I'm curious how many of us have had sensor problems (alignment or other) with the SL? I thought I was unlucky with my SL, but reading this thread I see there are others in the same boat.

 

When my SL first came out of the box I noticed unusual banding, so it went to Leica N.J., who replaced the camera with another one because of a bad sensor.

Unfortunately, that camera had the sensor misaligned, or as they called it "out of spec". So that went back to N.J. to be adjusted.

The Leica N.J. people were nice, well meaning and disorganized, but the 2 round trips to the shop meant I did not have the camera for over 2 months. Oh, yes, Leica paid for everything, shipping and all.

[thighslapper]

If the m9 construction video is anything to go by the sensor will be fixed at 3 points with shims added to bring it into alignment. Movement of even a few hundredths of a mm would be noticeable. Fixation would be by screws tightened by humans probably with loctite or similar. Potentially you have several possible manufacture defects (threaded holes, screws) and human errors in assembly that could cause eventual loosening. You may recall the 'M strap lugs falling off' debacle caused by one of our Portuguese cousins failing to use loctite ....... The SL and associated lenses seem very reliable (touch wood) by Leica standards.

 

Being charitable to Leica, possibly a low defect and return rate leads them to the conclusion that only 'rough usage' is responsible for the problems they find. However there is no excuse in accusing the customer of camera abuse where no indisputable evidence exists....... and adopting that as the default position hardly sits well with a company that promotes premium products and a similar after sales service ......

[jaapv]

I've been reading all the forums and testing on the SL since it was announced in October 2015. My sense of it is that there have been remarkably few units with problems of any kind. There are always some with defects, of course; that's inevitable with a mass produced machine. 

Mass produced- it is not so hard. As machines are consistent in their errors, one only has to pull one unit out of the line from time to time and test it to pieces to find any faults in the preceding run.

In a partly hand-built process like our Leicas, human beings make random errors and one cannot test each individual product to destruction, nor station an inspector behind every worker -and who checks the inspector?- so it is inevitable that once in a while a unit with an unnoticed fault will slip through. The challenge is to get the percentage as low as possible.

[scott kirkpatrick]

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I'm on my 10th digital Leica, having put each to hard use for about four years from purchase time.  One M8 spent time at Solms, but I can't recall why.  One M9, aged 7+ years, was recently judged corroded and has gone back, but the problem was still too small to show up readily in images.  My hard use might be about 1/10 of professional usage, and I am careful with equipment, but that is not a bad record. By contrast, I have returned one Fuji XT2 with a bad sensor and had an Olympus M1 lose an external button, and an M5.2 eye sensor fail from moisture, and those are mass-manufactured products. I would guess that LensRentals' repair statistics sets the baseline for reliability, with usage entirely by non-owners. But they don't publish their numbers, and they AFAIK haven't rented out Leica bodies.  

 

So my sense of Leica quality is that it is fairly high.

 

scott

[ramarren]

Mass produced- it is not so hard. As machines are consistent in their errors, one only has to pull one unit out of the line from time to time and test it to pieces to find any faults in the preceding run.

In a partly hand-built process like our Leicas, human beings make random errors and one cannot test each individual product to destruction, nor station an inspector behind every worker -and who checks the inspector?- so it is inevitable that once in a while a unit with an unnoticed fault will slip through. The challenge is to get the percentage as low as possible.

 

 

Mass-produced doesn't mean 'exclusively produced on machines', it means 'not produced one at a time' as in bespoke production. Leica production involves a lot of machine operations combined with a lot of hand-work by humans, but it's still mass production: the making of a series of identical products rather than making one product at a time. 

 

Doesn't matter anyway ... Defects in machine production and by-hand production creep in regardless. Unless every step in production of each individual unit is backed up by exhaustive testing, it is inevitable that some percentage of completed units will have some defects. This is what bespoke production ("made to order" production) strives to eliminate as much as possible and even that effort is not 100% successful. 

 

"Perfection is beyond the ken of humankind."

[GRBrown]

Scott Kirkpatrick wrote about LensRentals: "...they AFAIK haven't rented out Leica bodies."

 

The LensRentals Leica page lists six different Leica cameras, among them the SL and the M10.

 

Disclaimer: I've never rented anything from LensRentals but have read positive comments about the company.

[antigallican]

Scott Kirkpatrick wrote about LensRentals: "...they AFAIK haven't rented out Leica bodies."

 

The LensRentals Leica page lists six different Leica cameras, among them the SL and the M10.

 

Disclaimer: I've never rented anything from LensRentals but have read positive comments about the company.

I think somewhere on t'internet there's a strip down video of a 24-90 by lens rentals - or there was because I watched it!

[antigallican]

I think somewhere on t'internet there's a strip down video of a 24-90 by lens rentals - or there was because I watched it!

there you go.

 

https://wordpress.lensrentals.com/blog/2016/02/a-peak-inside-the-leica-vario-elmarit-sl-24-90mm-f2-8-4-asph/

 

not a video but an article.

[Jeff S]

They rent Leica gear and, yes, an excellent company.

 

Jeff

[scott kirkpatrick]

LensRentals -- glad to hear that they rent Leica bodies as well as lenses.  It might be worth mentioning the next time a gaseous discussion of whether Leica will ever be in the "pro market" erupts.  

 

They are doing two things that I think are very forward-looking in moving beyond the photo world of the previous decades, which was dominated by sports and fashion photographers. (I don't suppose PJs would rent gear.) First is a real focus on meeting serious video requirements, where rental rather than ownership is typical (good business).  They have hired a number of college-trained and self-trained video geeks whose blog posts are also worth reading.  And Roger Cicala's testing methodologies for various reasons have moved on from Imatest image-in-camera based testing to optical bench-based testing and statistical characterization of their shelves of gear. In both cases, they really understand what they are doing, which I suspect is not always true of web testers.  Roger's OLAF setup is at least 10x more sensitive than Imatest, which was the best of the older school.  So I take a look over at https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/ about once a week and usually learn something interesting.

[tobey bilek]

Impact damage was used by Nikon for a year or two.  Great number of people were really upset.   One would think Leica better than that.  

 

Primo price,  worst service in the camera world.

 

I could tell a story about an M8 that developed a line readout error.   Went for service twice and on the home check trial it kept chopping off heads.   Yea, they put in a M9 focus screen.   Back trip #4.  And they made him think he was lucky that the one year warrantee had two days to go!!

 

But I will not tell that story. 

[jaapv]

Huh? A focus screen? That is certainly a service blooper, given that rangefinder cameras don't have focus screens. It must have been one from an R9, not an M9.

[wattsy]

Jaap, I think you can probably guess from the reference to "chopping off heads" that the previous poster was referring to the frameline masks and not a focus screen. There's no need to try and make someone feel stupid.

[jaapv]

When the head is chopped I'll say :"hoppla"

[dritz]

My S007 took nearly two months door-to-door (Leica store in USA to Wetzlar and back to me). So the professional MF camera is not getting better treatment than the SL customer.

 

It was a circuit board that needed replacement, thankfully under warranty. The repair invoice noted that out of warranty the repair would have cost 5000 Euro (five-thousand!). A 5000 Euro repair cost is astronomical. They replaced a circuit board, replaced the rubber covering (don't know why that was necessary), and cleaned/adjusted the camera to factory specs. That seems like gouging. A single occurrence of a repair is more than the cost of the Leica 2 year extended warranty with 24-hour replacement/loaner camera.  That extended warranty is $3500 in the US.

 

I remember needed a circuit board replaced in my R8. It was $550... about half the camera's value at that time. Maybe that's their pricing model? Repairs are 50% of the camera's value on the used market.

 

Further, the warranty is not extended for the time it was in repair. So, 16% of my warranty period was spend in repair. I think that's a poor arrangement for a premium product and at a premium price.

 

I love the images but dislike their policies.

Dean

 

Leica are doing to me what I've heard Nikon have done to customers.......

 

Sent my SL in for repair as the sensor is out of alignment. After 4-6 weeks I get the call. *Impact Damage* $A6-700 repair costs.....

 

This is a camera that lives in a Pelican Case, spends 90% of it's time on a tripod and looks new. Not a mark, scratch, blemish or dent. Hardly a fingerprint on it. Looks essentially like a new one. I'm not prone to being a liar. If I'd bumped it I'd say so. The harshest this cameras been treated is occasional use on a sling strap when I shoot the odd wedding. 90% of what I do is studio based or architecture/real estate. I'm far more careful than most working photographers I know. My A7R2 and Pentax 645Z get carried over hill and dale, in all sorts of weather bouncing along in a backpack and don't have alignment movements.

 

If this thing is so fragile that it can't handle normal use then it's kinda hard to recommend it to anybody else.

 

So what I've got is a 6-10 week duration with no camera, a BS story about something that never happened and a rather nasty repair bill. I'm the biggest Leica fanboy there is and this just makes me want to have a long look at the A9. Seems pretty obvious that Leics's claims about getting into the *pro* market are just a bunch of hot air.

 

[/END RANT]

 

Gordon

 

p.s. on another note a mate of mine dropped his A7R. Cost him $500.00 and was back in three weeks. Mine hadn't even made it to the service centre in three weeks........

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[graeme_clarke]

Back to earlier comments about the sensor not being "square-on" to the axis of the lens and my earlier posts about relatively quick Leica service.

Briefly, the SL and 24-90 on a tripod blew over  lens first and  went partly down a crack in rock.  The Lee filter fitted smashed and the Lee adapter was twisted back over the lens barrel.

The body and lens went from the UK to Wetzlar via UPS on 11 May and was received on Tuesday 16th May.  Leica emailed an estimate for repairs on Friday 19th May and work was put in hand later that day.  An email from UPS on Wed 7th June told me they'd collected the body and lens and they were delivered on Friday 9 June.  I calculate that's 10 days at Wetzlar. The lens has been stripped, zoom realigned and and new focus ring fitted. it looks like new. The body has a new rear screen and base plate and the sensor has been realigned.  Firmware V 3 installed at the factory.

 

I downloaded a B&H lens test chart, printed it to A3 and taped it to a wall near a window. With the camera on a tripod and IS off, I made a series of test exposures.

24-90 lens

Autofocus at 7 points - centre, top left, top right, centre right, bottom right, bottom left, centre left

apertures f2.8 (to f4), 5.6, 8,11,16,22

zoom settings - 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, 75mm 90mm

100mm R f2.8 ROM macro lens - as above but manual focus settings

180mm R f2.8 ROM lens - as above with manual focus settings.

 

The 28mm f2.8 image is a little soft in each corner and a very slight barrel distortion is evident.

I can't tell the difference between any of the other images when looking at the corners.  Attached are some of the images from the 24-90 tests cropped to show the detail. All are with  centre auto focus.  I used a graduated filter in Lightroom to lighten the illumination on the left side and boosted the contrast a little.

 

I can only show them in pairs so I've put the f2.8 and f5.6 partner images together. 

 

More pairs will follow in subsequent posts

 

In short, The sensor seems to be absolutely "square on" and I delighted with the results.  Now for some field test....

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[graeme_clarke]

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