UK upgrade price from Leica for M9 to M10-P?

[wlaidlaw]

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Does anyone know the current UK price for an upgrade from an M9 (à la carte and very little used since sensor replacement) to an M10-P. I know the current US exchange price from Leica is $6000. The current UK price for an M10-P is around £6800 including tax. I might wait for the rumoured M10-R, maybe later this year but then I risk the exchange offer being withdrawn. It is 3 to 4 years since I have used my M9 and in fact very little indeed since I got the M240 in the week it was released and it is a waste for it to sit unused. It is the least used of all my Leicas, film or digital. I use the M8 more, as I use that for colour infra-red. Does the sensor have to be faulty to be eligible for exchange?  I think my sensor replaced in 2012, is OK. I could as an alternative sell my M9 on Fleabay. 

Wilson

[pedaes]

My understanding is that it only applies to cameras with a faulty sensor. Why not get one of the Dealers to sell M9 on commission?

That said, if I was you I would keep M9 and trade M240. Healthy M9's will stay in demand because people think the CCD sensor is special. All IMHO of course!

[ianman]

58 minutes ago, pedaes said:

That said, if I was you I would keep M9 and trade M240. Healthy M9's will stay in demand because people think the CCD sensor is special.

I agree about keeping the M9 over the M240 (there's a surprise eh!), however, if the sensor on Wilsons M9 was changed in 2012, that is well before the safe sensor was developed and hence will always be at risk. Unfortunately I don't think it could be sold without taking the cost of sensor replacement into account.

[wlaidlaw]

I really much prefer the M240 because of the freedom to use my various R lenses on it and its extended ISO performance. Using C1, to "develop" my DNG's, once the profile had settled down, I could never see much difference between the M9's CCD images and the M240's CMOS. The only slight performance advantage I ever found with the M9 was on lenses of 16mm or wider, where there was less Italian flag but that is problem easily cured with a subtractive style overlay in C1. 

My concern with keeping the M9 would be another sensor death and the withdrawal of either a sensor exchange or camera exchange. I would not be surprised if this happened very soon. Then I could be left with a valueless paperweight. Look what has happened with M6TTL owners who have an electronic card issue. 

Wilson

[Reciprocity]

17 hours ago, wlaidlaw said:

Then I could be left with a valueless paperweight. Look what has happened with M6TTL owners who have an electronic card issue. 

What electronic card issue?

I don’t even have a battery in my M6TTL and it works perfectly, hardly a janky M9 paperweight. 

[wlaidlaw]

The M6TTL without a battery is basically an M4. The whole point of the M6TTL is that it has TTL metering and TTL flash. You can buy an M4 for about half the price of an M6TTL. 

 

[Firefly]

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The price of decent M9's seems to be rising, they're almost at the same level of the M240 now, certainly looking at the prices at the Dealers, 

[Reciprocity]

1 hour ago, wlaidlaw said:

The M6TTL without a battery is basically an M4. The whole point of the M6TTL is that it has TTL metering and TTL flash. You can buy an M4 for about half the price of an M6TTL. 

 

Yes and no. A lot of us use it because of the size and direction of the shutter speed dial, it is the same as digital M's. My point was that an M9 with a crud sensor will be worth quite a bit less than an M6TTL with a bum meter. My meter is perfectly fine but I just don't care for the distracting LED's in low light so I use it meter less and with a tiny handheld Gossen. 

Sorry but you just can't compare the two.

[kinch123]

On 1/28/2020 at 6:28 AM, wlaidlaw said:

Then I could be left with a valueless paperweight.

But what  an attractive paperweight! Then the challenge would be to source an unserviceable lens to put on it so could leave it lying around on desk or coffee table without having to worry about fungus.

Puts the Weight in Paperweight, so could also be hurled at intruders (says he who just went to Amazon to source a Louisville Slugger in anticipation of impending Wuhan Biowarfare Lab Escaped Coronavirus Zombie Apocalypse).

[wlaidlaw]

Given that I have 28 other Leica cameras in my collection, where the USP of my collection is that they are all functional, serviced and working perfectly other than the Leica built UR replica, where the innards were just poured into the camera and the bottom plate fixed on and I am not going to pay Mr. Kim $3000+ to get it working, a dead M9 just does not fit. I will probably buy an M10-R anyway when it comes out in the next 2 months or so (it has already been registered with CE for electrical safety), so if I can get a discount or part ex for the M9, that would seem a sensible route. As the M10-R is unlikely to take video, I might keep the M240 but it might be sensible to exchange both cameras for the M10-R, as I don't take that much video and my wife has a good Sony P&S that takes 4K/60 fps video, has 5 axis IBIS, GPS geologging etc etc. 

Wilson

[ianman]

On 1/27/2020 at 11:28 PM, wlaidlaw said:

Look what has happened with M6TTL owners who have an electronic card issue. 

I don't have an M6 but have heard of this card issue more and more lately. Wouldn't it be possible to get some new circuit boards manufactured in China? I'm sure it's not that expensive even for a short run. I've seen this being done in other domains (vintage synthesizers).

[wattsy]

8 minutes ago, ianman said:

Wouldn't it be possible to get some new circuit boards manufactured in China?

Most probably but that would require Leica giving a monkey's about the lack of spares. In truth, I imagine the problem is overblown and the number of cameras with broken meters is very small indeed (which might also explain why Leica are not motivated to commission a new order for the required circuit boards). I've read of the problem here only a handful of times (mostly second or third hand, rarely first hand experiences) and, given how people with problems tend to gravitate towards Internet forums, those incidences might represent most of the M6TTLs that have actually (rather than theoretically) failed.

Edited January 29, 2020 by wattsy

[ianman]

20 minutes ago, wattsy said:

Most probably but that would require Leica giving a monkey's about the lack of spares.

I was unclear, I meant as a sort of group buy, independent from Leica. But yes, if it's just a handful then it would not be cost effective.

[wlaidlaw]

I spoke to my sister about getting new M6TTLboards made, as she used to be the publisher for a resource called Asian Sources, which lists most electronics components and circuit manufacturers in the far east. She told me that in Guangzhou alone, there were at least 5 card cloning companies, who could reverse engineer most things up to and including the board for an iPhone. However for the M6TTL board which is in essence a small industrial type controller, it would really be a requirement to have the original specs for the board, i.e. all the details of the input specs, control parameters and output specs. Leica would have had those specs and I am sure could have provided, if there was the will, a working sample board. She said that the cost for reverse engineering and making a prototype for this pretty simple board would probably be in the region of $500-750 with production boards probably around $10 each.

I put that to Leica some years ago and there was not a flicker of interest. I think we have to recognise that Leica loyalty is a one way street, which I came to realise after my problems getting Leica to release the essential part to repair my M7 last year. 

Wilson

[AndreasG]

vor 39 Minuten schrieb wlaidlaw:

with production boards probably around $10 each.

Yes, at a lot size of 5000 pcs plus, but the main problem is, when you enter into a  business relationship with such companies, right at the beginning you sign a ledger that you are owner or at least entitled to use the intellectual property - and this is certainly not possible without the consent of Leica.