Vertical stripes, Portrait

[D A V I D]

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Dear all, just got a beautiful (2500 clicks) M8. I tested with 320, 640 and 1250 iso in dark and 160 on portrait. I have read about the vertical stripes. I know I should use lower iso and push in pp. I still wanted to test and indeed there are two, three vertical stripes from 320 upwards. At 160 iso it’s perfect, the portrait as taking with a summicron 50. 
 

Should the cam go back to Leica to take care about the stripes? Or is this « normal » for an M8 ?
 

 

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Edited March 20, 2021 by D A V I D

[farnz]

Hi, D A V I D,

It looks like you've got one or two dead pixels on your sensor, which is not uncommon.  They cause a line because they fail to pass on data from the pixels beyond them.   If the lines only show up at high ISO and you can put up with them or work around them (clone tool in pp software) then you don't need to do anything.  If they're too much to put up with then Leica can remap the dead pixels (or hot pixels) but you might be without your camera for a while.  (Some brands of camera allow the owner to remap hot or dead pixels themselves but Leica doesn't offer that facility as far as I know.

Dead pixels are found in all brands of sensors and are permitted so as to lower the attrition rate during manufacture and increase yield (and lower price per unit).  The sensors are made on a large wafer and all the pixels (photosites) in the sensors on the wafer are tested.  The manufacturer will have a tolerance level that says that a sensor with more than x dead pixels will automatically be binned and sensors with fewer than x dead pixels will be kept and have the dead pixels remapped so that they don't show up and don't cause lines like those in your pictures.  Over time, some pixels in the sensor will fail, which looks like what you have.

The choice is yours: put up with the pixels and keep shooting or send the M8 to Leica and wait for it to return and pay a remapping fee.

Pete.

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