Sensor Corrosion Analysis and Fix [Merged]

[jaapv]

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I don’t think it is a double negative. The “cannot” refers to the replacing by the camera maker, the “not” to the meeting of the specification. 

[dobritch]

19 hours ago, pedaes said:

Interesting first post. This does not sound like the language Leica (UK) would use. How did Leica UK have your camera to examine as they would not have invited you to send it in?

 

Wondering why the air of doubt surrounding my 1st post? Ha 🤷🏼

The text/‘language’ was cut and pasted from an email from Leica uk.
They established that corrosion was evident from the sample image files I had sent them. 
Should I be questioning their prognosis, without further examination? 

 
 

[irenedp]

My M9 P has been with me for about three years now. The sensor was replaced by Leica (ID15). It  has some minor spots visible when shooting skies -mostly on the sides, so it might be a bad cleaning- and one a bit larger.  They seem like small specs of dust but could not find them with the loupe. Can it be corrosion, or I should consider that ID 15 sensors are safe and send it for cleaning?  

Edited August 31, 2023 by irenedp
typo

[dllewellyn]

My philosophy on dust, sensor defects, corrosion, etc, is that if the dust is not a problem at normal apertures and normal shooting, then it is best to leave the sensor alone.  Typically, sharpest pictures with many lenses are around f/8.  Above that, the lens aberration starts to degrade the image though the depth of field improves.  A perfect lens would be sharpest wide open but there is not such thing.  Then again, having a sharp picture may not be what you want anyhow.

Once you touch the sensor, you will always leave something behind.  You can use clean room swabs, solvents, etc, but all will leave something behind.  Hopefully, whatever you remove is less than what is left behind.  If you shoot an f/22 sky or white field and then look for spots, you will surely find them.  Even on a brand new camera, you can find defects if you look hard enough.  From a sensor manufacturing friend, he tells me a typical consumer sensor will have about 5,000 bad pixels for a 50MP sensor.  The manufacturer hides this in the firmware as long as the pixels aren't grouped together in a big cluster.  There is no such thing as a perfect sensor.

I have seen people fixate on cleaning their sensor and end up damaging or ending up with a worse situation, so I would caution anyone on getting into that mindset.  You want to take good pictures - not agonize over specs that don't impact the image.  That is a subjective thing, of course.

If your sensor does have corrosion (actually oxidization of the glass), then the question is whether it is bad enough to warrant fixing.  Leica can't/won't fix sensor corrosion, having it done by another shop is expensive and some shops are better than others.

[irenedp]

I have lived with that philosophy, yes. Before any image goes to print I check it for dust. It’s not a big deal -much easier than cleaning scratches and dust on scanned film- and happens in all cameras when you work on location.  

And yes, it is not easy to clean a leica M sensor, but the dealer is an official Leica seller and a friend too, so I wanted to know what could be the situation.  Sending a sensor to clean professionally -not the kind of lousy job I can do- is not the same thing as sending a camera to Wetzlar with a corrosion issue on a type 15 sensor changed by them. Thanks for your comment 🙂 

[69xchange]

Can you post pictures of the these spots? Most likely it’s just oil or dust. I have never heard or seen anything about ccd 15 and corrosion before.

1 hour ago, irenedp said:

I have lived with that philosophy, yes. Before any image goes to print I check it for dust. It’s not a big deal -much easier than cleaning scratches and dust on scanned film- and happens in all cameras when you work on location.  

And yes, it is not easy to clean a leica M sensor, but the dealer is an official Leica seller and a friend too, so I wanted to know what could be the situation.  Sending a sensor to clean professionally -not the kind of lousy job I can do- is not the same thing as sending a camera to Wetzlar with a corrosion issue on a type 15 sensor changed by them. Thanks for your comment 🙂 

 

[irenedp]

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the image is not particularly good but I have surrounded a number of them in red. The largest one, on the upper left side, was a real speck of dust. But other than that the sensor looks spotless 

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[69xchange]

7 hours ago, irenedp said:

the image is not particularly good but I have surrounded a number of them in red. The largest one, on the upper left side, was a real speck of dust. But other than that the sensor looks spotless 

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They look like dust/oil. Corrosion usually has a halo look to it, plus it’s a ccd 15. 

[irenedp]

5 hours ago, 69xchange said:

They look like dust/oil. Corrosion usually has a halo look to it, plus it’s a ccd 15. 

I did a second cleaning today, and after it cannot see any dust with the loupe. Whatever is left is probably oil. Thank you 🙂

[ekaraspratama]

This is my first experience with m9, i got corroded m9 with very bad pixel line. in the process of filter removal i scratching the color filter array in the sensor, so i decided to remove all the cfa layer with paint remover(very gently, and slow avoid not to touch the thinny gold wire). I try to replace the filter with lens filter that i cut (just clear glass not ircut). Here is the result.

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M9mir(monochrominfrared) 😁

[dllewellyn]

Hmmm.  You can see the vertical line between the two stitched sensors.

[ekaraspratama]

19 hours ago, dllewellyn said:

Hmmm.  You can see the vertical line between the two stitched sensors.

Yes, my sensor are very bad. The stitched lines in the sensor are image banding(common problem on monochrom sensor), i have one more problem are worst than that, bad pixel line 

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[dllewellyn]

With a CCD sensor, if there is an overload or new hot pixel cluster, you are going to get a vertical line like that.  For CCD's, it is called Blooming where a pixel is overloaded and neighboring pixels get saturated.  I would guess you damaged the CCD in a way to cause some pixels to overload and resulting in the vertical blooming line.  In contrast, with a CMOS, each pixel can be read out individually.

[mydarkroom]

Hi everyone,

My M9 and M9M have the corrosion spots. Shooting anything close to F4 it shows. Anyone with recent experience with Sensor Repair (not replacement) with Kolari? Mind posting your experience and outcome?

Thank you

 

Rafa

[Casey Jefferson]

This is an important message for all who chosen to go with the replaced filter glass route - Leica will not touch any of the subsequent repairs needed for sensors that's 3rd party intervened.

Truth to be told, my recent acquisition of 3rd party replaced M9 being sent for RF calibration only to be told they won't provide any service to it, because they couldn't provide warranty or guarantee, understandable because it's a huge responsibility if anything happen to the sensor consumer can sue Leica for it. The sensor was in fact out of alignment so all I can do is to adjust the RF by myself and fortunately, it turned out great with my 28/1.4 lens wide open on all range. Vertical alignment is also slightly bit off, won't touch it until later date when I'm free to tinker with it.

So...One more reason to get an official Leica replaced M9 😁 I'm more than happy with mine and I hope it'll last for many more years! 

PS: I'm supposed they won't touch the sensor but should be able to provide other hardware replacements that's not sensor related, I didn't ask them about it FYI, I'll give them a call someday and update here.

[Oreki]

I'm from China and there are some informations to share:

• We have quite a few stores that can replace the filters for M9 series cameras, in Beijing there are more than 10 stores who claims they can do the job, some of them can even re-bond the gold wires in side the CCD sensor. the replacment are all done on a dust-free workbench.
• Some of the stores claim they use a Schott BG61 filter with AR coating, I recently baught a claimed "Schott BG61" filter glass from one of the store, but I'm still not sure of its true origin.
• The overall maintenance cost is very low, basically less than 2,000 RMB (not including shipping), which is about 300 U.S. dollars.
• One of my M9p with CCD ID11 is corroded. I will go to one of the stores to have it replaced(The one who claims they are using Schott BG61 filter). I will continue to update the progress, including the RAW files before and after the replacement.

 

 

 

[Casey Jefferson]

2 hours ago, Oreki said:

I'm from China and there are some informations to share:

• We have quite a few stores that can replace the filters for M9 series cameras, in Beijing there are more than 10 stores who claims they can do the job, some of them can even re-bond the gold wires in side the CCD sensor. the replacment are all done on a dust-free workbench.
• Some of the stores claim they use a Schott BG61 filter with AR coating, I recently baught a claimed "Schott BG61" filter glass from one of the store, but I'm still not sure of its true origin.
• The overall maintenance cost is very low, basically less than 2,000 RMB (not including shipping), which is about 300 U.S. dollars.
• One of my M9p with CCD ID11 is corroded. I will go to one of the stores to have it replaced(The one who claims they are using Schott BG61 filter). I will continue to update the progress, including the RAW files before and after the replacement.

 

 

 

The best in the business according a guy posted his experiences on bilibili which he bought six M9 that had the filter glass replaced, the best one seems to be the "好阿友" which I also followed on their wechat account, they're are charging 3000RMB not sure if they raise the fee.

[Oreki]

On 7/1/2024 at 5:32 PM, Casey Jefferson said:

The best in the business according a guy posted his experiences on bilibili which he bought six M9 that had the filter glass replaced, the best one seems to be the "好阿友" which I also followed on their wechat account, they're are charging 3000RMB not sure if they raise the fee.

Yes this is exactly the store I want to go to, they also charge me 300RMB to do the replacement.

[Oreki]

I have an update, I went to one of the store and they charge me 3000RMB(about 450USD) for the filter replacement, The filters they claim are from Japan. The overall replacement only takes about 2 hrs to finish, and I do some simple tests before and after the repair. But due to the 2.44MB limit of this site, I don't know how to share these files. can someone tell me how to aviod this 2.44MB single file limit.

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[Casey Jefferson]

33 minutes ago, Oreki said:

I have an update, I went to one of the store and they charge me 3000RMB(about 450USD) for the filter replacement, The filters they claim are from Japan. The overall replacement only takes about 2 hrs to finish, and I do some simple tests before and after the repair. But due to the 2.44MB limit of this site, I don't know how to share these files. can someone tell me how to aviod this 2.44MB single file limit.

You can resize it to 2048 pixels, and 60%~70% quality. I've got a friend sent them his M9 earlier this year and it came back in great shape.