shutter button timing issue

[dpattinson]

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I mentioned this in the 1.107 issues thread, but it's not related to 1.107 specifically and I've done some more testing, so I'm putting up a seperate thread.

 

The issue is that the camera will expose incorrectly if the shutter button is pressed through the first detente quickly after the meter has passivated. Having purchased a SF-24D today, I have found that the problem affects flash usage as well, as it will prevent the camera from setting the flash synch speed automatically and firing.

 

Steps to reproduce, not every time - but very often:

 

1. activate the meter, then take your finger off the shutter button

2. cover the lens with your hand so that the suggested shutter speed goes to 32s*

3. leave your hand there until the meter passivates

4. point the camera at any reasonably bright light source

5. push the shutter button down past the first detente - you will find that the 32s exposure is now locked in, and will remain so until you release the shutter button. If you have the flash mounted and on GNC, it will not fire and the automatic synch speed will not be set.

 

* works in the opposite way as well, if the meter passivates while looking at a bright subject, then the resulting exposure will be underexposed.

 

I know some do not find this a problem, however it is a fairly serious issue for me and several other forum members have also reported problems. It does seem a rather significant impediment to making best use of the M's quick shutter response.

 

I post here as I've reported the problem to Leica M8 Support with no response, and it is apparent that some Leica employees do read this forum. It would be nice to know if this is firmware fixable, and if not - then what if anything can be done about it from a hardware perspective.

 

David.

[barjohn]

It would appear that it takes a certain number of milliseconds for the camera to read the light for a given scene. Hence Leica tends to remeber the last read until a new value can be read as a means of not slowing down photography on the assumption that there is a high probability that the next shot may well likely be the same as the last scene read. However, when the meter has been allowed to go to sleep, it would appear that the firmware should recognize that the assumption is no longer valid and force you to wait until it had a good reading. Occasionally this is going to cause you to miss a shot when the shutter lags before it fires. Once the meter is awake it appears to be pretty quick (less than 500 miliseconds). Perhaps another option is to leave the meter on but only turn off the LEDs and display and thus eliminate the lag time.

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[Chuck Hatcher]

My question is, what SHOULD the camera do?

 

If it takes a certain amount of time to meter, and the photographer doesn't give the camera that much time, either the camera obeys the command to fire using what may be an incorrect exposure, OR it does not fire when told to. Either way you may miss getting the shot you wanted. (If the scene is changing quickly, a delay would ruin the shot, and if it isn't, then why were you in such a rush to mash the button?) I always hated cameras which have a lag between pressing the shutter button and capturing the image, and I would not want the near-instant response of the M8 altered.

 

I am a slow shutter button presser by habit. I find jabbing the button quickly tends to cause camera shake.

[ho_co]

David--

As I told you before in the 1.107 thread, your camera has a defective release switch.

 

What is happening to you does not happen to most of us. It isn't typical of the M8, though some people are able to reproduce the behavior either easily or through a great deal of effort.

 

The way your camera functions impedes your photography and would upset the rest of us if we had to put up with it. The M8 is not supposed to work that way.

 

Quit worrying and send the camera for adjustment!

 

--HC

[barjohn]

Let me clarify my earlier post. I don't think the time to meter a scene is the problem or you could not do 2fps continuous shoots. Rather it is the wake up time from sleep before the metering circuit is ready. This appears to be around 100 milliseconds. I can consistently make it fail or not depending on whether I press the shutter button down hard and fast or squeeze the button slowly. I usually am a squeezer to minimize camera shake so I had never seen this before. You really have to press hard and fast to make it happen consistently.

[dpattinson]

David--

As I told you before in the 1.107 thread, your camera has a defective release switch.

 

What is happening to you does not happen to most of us. It isn't typical of the M8, though some people are able to reproduce the behavior either easily or through a great deal of effort.

 

The way your camera functions impedes your photography and would upset the rest of us if we had to put up with it. The M8 is not supposed to work that way.

 

Quit worrying and send the camera for adjustment!

--HC

 

Howard,

 

You're probably correct, and I'm following up with Leica Support - probably not via email anymore as that seems to be ineffective. I'd rather not send the camera off until I get some indication that they know how to fix the problem.

[dpattinson]

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My question is, what SHOULD the camera do?

 

If it takes a certain amount of time to meter, and the photographer doesn't give the camera that much time, either the camera obeys the command to fire using what may be an incorrect exposure, OR it does not fire when told to. Either way you may miss getting the shot you wanted. (If the scene is changing quickly, a delay would ruin the shot, and if it isn't, then why were you in such a rush to mash the button?) I always hated cameras which have a lag between pressing the shutter button and capturing the image, and I would not want the near-instant response of the M8 altered.

 

I am a slow shutter button presser by habit. I find jabbing the button quickly tends to cause camera shake.

 

If it really is the case that there is an inevitable delay like this coming out of meter passivation - which there isn't on the M7 by contrast. Then I'd rather be able to tie the meter passivation to the camera sleep timing, so that it happens much less often and at a time when the camera needs to take time to wake up anyway. Switching off the LED display while leaving the meter on should be feasible.

 

For the record, I don't need to mash the button (on my camera) to have this happen quite regularly in normal shooting. Since others do - I'm leaning toward Howard's view that it's a camera issue (although I've had it on two bodies now).

[wlaidlaw]

In around 2,000 images on my M8, this has never happened to me. Perhaps my index finger is just not fast enough.

 

Wilson

[dpattinson]

In around 2,000 images on my M8, this has never happened to me. Perhaps my index finger is just not fast enough.

Wilson

Could be, I only see it 'in the field' when I'm taking zone-focused grab shots. It did happen quite a lot when using the 24 zone focussed with flash at an event recently (flash didn't fire). If I stop to focus in the finder then I inevitably have plenty of time to wake the meter and it doesn't occur.

The other possibility is that if people are generally shooting in consistent light, and leave the camera around their neck when not shooting - that the last metered value would likely be pretty close anyway.

[Shootist]

I've tried to stay out of this thread but I just have to put my $0.02 in.

If the OP sees this regularly then there are three posibilities.

 

1) He is just overly aggresive with the shutter push and going by the normal "Meter On-Take A Reading-Lock Exposure-Activate Shutter" sequence.

 

2) He is boinc and moves faster then any other human being on this planet. See 1 above.

 

3) There is a problem with the shutter release switch and it need to be fixed.

 

As to item 3 the only way to tell if it is a switch problem is for the OP to get his hands on another M8 and do the same thing he does with his original. If the other M8 does the same thing as his original then it is up to him to SLOW DOWN the shutter press, and that could be just a fraction of a second.

If the other M8 doesn't do it, or take a much more aggressive/FAST shutter push to do it, then his original has a switch problem.

 

But I'm betting the other M8 will work the same in his hands. This to me is a NON-Issue because the meter MUST have time to Come On and Take A Reading. At that point then you Lock the exposure by pressing the shutter button to the next stop and then activate the shutter. You can not bypass the Lock part of the sequence with the M8, it is built into the release switch stops. You just have to make sure you have the proper exposure reading before you get to that Lock stop.

[dpattinson]

With respect, I think it's pretty clear that I understand that I can work around the problem by pressing the shutter button more slowly.

 

Obviously, since I posted this thread - I'd rather not have to change a style of shooting that has worked fine for me with the M7 previously - unless there is no other choice. For me, a change to the camera that would facilitate this would be a very large benefit.

 

I've replicated it under normal conditions on two bodies now, in fact the first one was exchanged by the dealer because we thought it might be a camera specific problem (before I'd figured out how to replicate it consistently). Coupled with similar comments coming from other forum members - if it is a switch problem, then it's not a one-off. So I'm back to what could be changed in the camera to avoid the issue entirely.

 

I suspect that it's affecting many more people than realise, because often the error is only a stop or less - rather than the extreme I've used to illustrate it. They are probably getting 'off' exposures and just putting it down to pointing the meter at a non-representative area of the scene.

[Shootist]

Really I'm not trying to start a fight but I think you are wrong in your assumption that it affects more users.

With both my M8's I have to jerk the switch down very fast, and that means hard, to get either of them to do this. If I follow your steps and do, IMHO, a FAST shutter push I don't see it at all. Only when I pound on the shutter button can I get my M8's to do it.

 

I've tried it 5-10 time on each body with the same result, IE the meter take a reading and locks it before the shutter actually fires (coming off the 32s exposure time).

 

Whether it works the same on a M7 is moot. The M8 is not a M7 with a digital sensor.

 

You are just that much faster then most users.

 

Since you can get it to do it on more then one M8 body then it is not a defect in your camera. It is just the way the camera was designed.

[wparsonsgisnet]

I have noticed that the flash (Metz 54) will not fire when I press the shutter too quickly. I now make it a practive to keep the button down a little or to press slowly when I'm doing flash.

 

If this is a feature of only some M8's, then we're going to have a lot of unique collectibles. Mine is one of the 2-step power-on cameras.

[dpattinson]

Since you can get it to do it on more then one M8 body then it is not a defect in your camera. It is just the way the camera was designed.

No fights here

 

I agree - it may be a deliberate design element, with my issue being a probably unintended side effect of that design choice.

 

I think there might be other ways to avoid waiting for the meter to 'wake' from interfering with the shutter response, like - for example - allowing the user to disable the meter passivation (or delay it like the camera sleep function). That, in my humble opinion would be a superior design choice.

There are most certainly people better qualified than me both on this forum and in Leica to explore the feasibility of alternative design choices, however unless they know that the current design does not allow me to 'do what I want to do', then that consideration is unlikely to occur. Whether they care or not is a different matter

 

David.

[Chuck Hatcher]

...I don't think the time to meter a scene is the problem or you could not do 2fps continuous shoots...

 

This could be tested by shooting continuously as the light changes drastically. If there are incorrect exposures we know the camera is using "old" meter readings for the exposures.

 

...I only see it 'in the field' when I'm taking zone-focused grab shots...

 

Could be that a lot of M8 users are coming from pre-M7 experience and don't rely as heavily on auto exposure. If you can zone focus you could set exposure the same way...

 

...but seriously, I know that doesn't answer the question of whether or not your M8, or all M8's, are broken, and if so, whether your M8, or all M8's, can be fixed, either by firmware update, hardware repair, or redesign. Personally I have yet to encounter the problem, but that's probably because my focusing is so slow the camera has plenty of time to do whatever it wants.

[ho_co]

You're probably correct, and I'm following up with Leica Support - probably not via email anymore as that seems to be ineffective. I'd rather not send the camera off until I get some indication that they know how to fix the problem.

David--thanks for the response; sorry I was a bit harsh in my previous post.

 

I understand your frustration with contacting Leica by email or almost any other means; it's always hit-or-miss.

 

My experience has been that in general, just sending in the camera is quicker than first making contact and then sending.

 

I'm absolutely certain that this is a fairly simple adjustment. Remember that when the M8 first came out, a lot of people complained that the shutter release action was too rough; when Leica found out what was wanted, they changed it immediately.

 

Similarly, many of our cameras don't behave the way yours does. I reason from that that yours can be fixed, or if not, will be replaced.

 

My respects to you. I'm sorry for the difficulty you're having, and I know you'll be happy when you get it back working.

 

--HC