Comparing the electronics of the M11 with M10 series.

[scott kirkpatrick]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

There's a lot that is new inside the M11 besides just the 60 MPx sensor, bigger buffers and the Maestro III ASIC, which it shares with the SL2 and SL2-S.  Fitting the Maestro III and its firmware into the M family framework is probably the source of the fairly large number of small bugs and peculiarities that Leica is currently fighting.  But I'm interested in other components and systems that have changed, especially the positive experience with power management that the early testers have reported. And the apparently complicated experiences with USB cables that are hinted about.

I set out to see how charging the camera through its USB port works.  For this, I had to run the battery down to an intermediate charge state.  In an M10, this is easy.  Just set the display and wifi to be always on, wait an hour, and you will have a battery with less than half of its full charge.  But not the M11.  I waited an hour and was still above 80% charge, checking with my phone that the wifi was really on all the time.  So there is a new wifi chip, using much less power.  It also starts up at least twice as fast.  On an M10, it takes about 60 seconds before the wifi is initialized and you can connect with FOTOS (only after the red light stops blinking).  On the M11 there is no blinking light, but I detect the wifi's presence with my phone in something like 15-20 seconds after the Fotos app says wifi ON and the QR code appears.

I've made a few measurements of charging the battery in the M11 through the USB port, using a phone charger (same specs as the Leica charger. which is in another room), and an Anker battery as the sources.  Leica provides a stiff 2' long USB A to C cord, which I used, as well as a shorter 1' skinny cord that comes with the M11 charger and a heavy 4' braided cord that I use with my laptops.  All were A to C cords, and they all worked essentially the same.  The camera controls the amount of current that it draws, and the voltage at the camera's USC C input is between 5.2 and 5.0 volts.  With the camera switched off and a partially discharged battery, the camera draws 1.7 amps from its charging source.  This is apparently digitally controlled -- the charge source and the camera are talking to each other, so the cable you use doesn't seem to matter.  As the battery nears a full charge, the current steadily drops from 1.7 to a few tenths of an Amp current, while the voltage presented remains 5 volts.  The final part of the sequence takes the same 20 minutes or so that you see in the Leica charger when the orange light is on and the green light blinks more slowly.  With the Anker battery the USB A source is an "IQ outlet" and this works.  The PD output, which uses a C to C cord, also provides 5 volts, but doesn't communicate with the camera, so no current flows.

Plugging a charger into the USB port while the camera is operating, the voltages are the same as you see when charging at the max rate -- 5 Volts and 1.7 Amps, independent of what the camera is doing..  I tried plugging the external charger into the USB socket with the camera off, then switching it on.  That failed for me once or twice (camera would not start, just like the update bug)  but mostly worked.  That should be watched once we have firmware that eliminates the startup problem that 1.2.1.0 showed.

 

 

Edited February 6, 2022 by scott kirkpatrick

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[scott kirkpatrick]

Connected my M11 to an iPad with Fotos.  The standard connection required turning wifi ON, then opening pairing, and was quick and more reliable than before, thanks to the improved wifi.  Fotos presented messages about the new things I will be able to do with a USB3.2 cable, and I have just gotten one of those, but I couldn't get it to do anything with the cable.  It only recognized the camera using wifi, it didn't upload firmware (because I have already moved to 1.2.1.0), and my attempt to get it to upload a file sent it off into an endless loop. Ill wait for Fotos or the firmware or both to be upgraded before trying this again. 

[scott kirkpatrick]

Tried tethering the M11 to Capture One, since I dimly recall someone commented that worked well during the beta tests, but no, it's not supported in the production firmware or in Capture One 22.1 yet  I set the camera to PTP.  Don't recall whether the SLs, which work well with Capture One when tethered, used PTP or Storage mode, and I couldn't find this spelled out in the Capture One documentation.

[mon10a]

Scott, I am enjoying your thoughts and experiments. More please.

m