Bill Hartung Posted July 28, 2022 Share #1 Posted July 28, 2022 Advertisement (gone after registration) I've always been happy with my M9, and recently to keep it going I purchased a new battery. It took the expected time to get this battery fully charged and seemed to perform well, but with about 50% life left on the camera's screen, the battery suddenly died. Now when it's in the charger it takes just a few minutes for the indicator lights to make it look like it's fully charged, but the camera gives me the 'low battery' notice when I turn on the camera. In addition, when I put the older battery in the charger it also goes right to the lights showing 'fully charged' and the graph on the camera screen shows no change to the charge level of that battery. Has anybody dealt with this issue? Any suggestions? Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted July 28, 2022 Posted July 28, 2022 Hi Bill Hartung, Take a look here M9 batteries not charging. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
jdlaing Posted July 28, 2022 Share #2 Posted July 28, 2022 Sounds like it may be a faulty charger. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ray Vonn Posted July 28, 2022 Share #3 Posted July 28, 2022 This might not be the answer but you've nothing to lose; try keeping the camera on and draining the battery of all power before recharging. Also, ensure an older slower Sandisk SD card not above 16GB storage is used with the camera too. 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianman Posted July 29, 2022 Share #4 Posted July 29, 2022 22 hours ago, Bill Hartung said: I've always been happy with my M9, and recently to keep it going I purchased a new battery. It took the expected time to get this battery fully charged and seemed to perform well, but with about 50% life left on the camera's screen, the battery suddenly died. Now when it's in the charger it takes just a few minutes for the indicator lights to make it look like it's fully charged, but the camera gives me the 'low battery' notice when I turn on the camera. In addition, when I put the older battery in the charger it also goes right to the lights showing 'fully charged' and the graph on the camera screen shows no change to the charge level of that battery. Has anybody dealt with this issue? Any suggestions? Hi Bill & welcome I had a similar issue once when I bought a third party extra battery. It was terrible and I just threw it away as the shop I bought it from refused to exchange it. However the fact that you have an issue with your old battery does seem to point towards an issue with the charger as jdlaing suggested. Did you have any problems with the older battery before buying the new one? 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pedaes Posted July 29, 2022 Share #5 Posted July 29, 2022 22 hours ago, Bill Hartung said: I purchased a new battery You didn't say if a Leica branded battery or an 'alternative'. If it isn't a Leica battery, I would get a new genuine Leica battery and see if that charges ok. There is lots of issues reported using cheap substitutes . Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Casey Jefferson Posted July 30, 2022 Share #6 Posted July 30, 2022 I had 3rd party battery and it behaved like what op described. 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrxclxst Posted September 9, 2022 Share #7 Posted September 9, 2022 Advertisement (gone after registration) This isn't an issue with the battery. This is a Leica M9 defect that first appeared in 2011. There's a defective component inside the camera that fails to read battery levels correctly. All Leica M9s are affected sooner or later. My camera actually just started showing these same symptoms after 8 years of ownership. It is displaying battery levels being low before shutting off completely regardless if the battery is full charged. (I only own first party batteries. And they're specifically M9 batteries -- I know some people use M8 batteries too) Leica used to offer free repair for this... but I literally just received a call from them 10 minutes ago stating that they're no longer supporting this repair. As an alternative, they offered me a trade-in discount for the new M-system which basically gives me $3,000 off. But.. honestly .. I'm not interested anymore. What's the point of owning a professional system camera if the manufacture only supports repairs for a limited time. Now I'm going to have a $7,000 brick in my hands. great. 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
IR-zero Posted October 23, 2022 Share #8 Posted October 23, 2022 On 9/9/2022 at 11:02 PM, mrxclxst said: This isn't an issue with the battery. This is a Leica M9 defect that first appeared in 2011. There's a defective component inside the camera that fails to read battery levels correctly. All Leica M9s are affected sooner or later. My camera actually just started showing these same symptoms after 8 years of ownership. It is displaying battery levels being low before shutting off completely regardless if the battery is full charged. (I only own first party batteries. And they're specifically M9 batteries -- I know some people use M8 batteries too) Leica used to offer free repair for this... but I literally just received a call from them 10 minutes ago stating that they're no longer supporting this repair. As an alternative, they offered me a trade-in discount for the new M-system which basically gives me $3,000 off. But.. honestly .. I'm not interested anymore. What's the point of owning a professional system camera if the manufacture only supports repairs for a limited time. Now I'm going to have a $7,000 brick in my hands. great. I've had a similar experience. A year or so ago I bought a second hand M9 with an original Leica battery but after a while it seemed it was not holding its charge so I bought a non-Leica replacement battery. This new battery worked fine with the camera battery meter showing it to be full when charged and near empty after a few hundred shots. This worked for the next full charge but subsequent full charges appeared to enable much few shots before the meter reached zero until a fully charged battery inserted in the camera always showed less 10% on the meter. I presumed it was a dud battery and complained to the seller (BatteryUpgrade.com) who agreed to provide a replacement without with me returning the battery to them - which I thought was excellent customer service! (Sadly I disposed of that battery when the new one arrived!) The same thing happened with this new battery so I looked on line and was prompted to consider that the camera's metre might be at fault. I then started to keep shooting even when the meter showed <10% and low and behold the camera kept on shooting for any many more picture. I recharged the battery and the same thing happened again. The battery gauge is now just an approximate guide to the the state of the battery and I look at image counter to see whether I might really be nearing <10% charge. Its a real disappointment if Leica no longer fix this problem (as mentioned by mrxclxst above) but it not a show stopper and I rarely take more than 150 pics in one day so the fault in the battery meter is a minor inconvenience. I'm now going to test my original battery in the same way - it may even be that it is actually still very useable - or maybe not. I'll soon find out! Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
DenverSteve Posted November 22, 2022 Share #9 Posted November 22, 2022 On 9/9/2022 at 4:02 PM, mrxclxst said: This isn't an issue with the battery. This is a Leica M9 defect that first appeared in 2011. There's a defective component inside the camera that fails to read battery levels correctly. All Leica M9s are affected sooner or later. My camera actually just started showing these same symptoms after 8 years of ownership. It is displaying battery levels being low before shutting off completely regardless if the battery is full charged. (I only own first party batteries. And they're specifically M9 batteries -- I know some people use M8 batteries too) Leica used to offer free repair for this... but I literally just received a call from them 10 minutes ago stating that they're no longer supporting this repair. As an alternative, they offered me a trade-in discount for the new M-system which basically gives me $3,000 off. But.. honestly .. I'm not interested anymore. What's the point of owning a professional system camera if the manufacture only supports repairs for a limited time. Now I'm going to have a $7,000 brick in my hands. great. Oooh, ooh - I know this one (even though I'm late and the OP was only here a couple of weeks) Leica has offered you $3000 for a (according to you) an aged, probably going to fail, due to the sensor anyway, 13-year old, brick in your hand. In other words, you were offered the golden egg and you scrambled it. Send it to me please, and I'll use your $3000 trade in on another M11. 🤗 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ko.Fe. Posted November 23, 2022 Share #10 Posted November 23, 2022 1 hour ago, DenverSteve said: 13-year old, brick in your hand. Sometimes reading and understanding helps. For some... Quote The battery gauge is now just an approximate guide to the the state of the battery and I look at image counter to see whether I might really be nearing <10% charge. Its a real disappointment if Leica no longer fix this problem (as mentioned by mrxclxst above) but it not a show stopper and I rarely take more than 150 pics in one day so the fault in the battery meter is a minor inconvenience. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bierniesen Posted February 6, 2023 Share #11 Posted February 6, 2023 On 10/22/2022 at 8:09 PM, IR-zero said: I've had a similar experience. A year or so ago I bought a second hand M9 with an original Leica battery but after a while it seemed it was not holding its charge so I bought a non-Leica replacement battery. This new battery worked fine with the camera battery meter showing it to be full when charged and near empty after a few hundred shots. This worked for the next full charge but subsequent full charges appeared to enable much few shots before the meter reached zero until a fully charged battery inserted in the camera always showed less 10% on the meter. I presumed it was a dud battery and complained to the seller (BatteryUpgrade.com) who agreed to provide a replacement without with me returning the battery to them - which I thought was excellent customer service! (Sadly I disposed of that battery when the new one arrived!) The same thing happened with this new battery so I looked on line and was prompted to consider that the camera's metre might be at fault. I then started to keep shooting even when the meter showed <10% and low and behold the camera kept on shooting for any many more picture. I recharged the battery and the same thing happened again. The battery gauge is now just an approximate guide to the the state of the battery and I look at image counter to see whether I might really be nearing <10% charge. Its a real disappointment if Leica no longer fix this problem (as mentioned by mrxclxst above) but it not a show stopper and I rarely take more than 150 pics in one day so the fault in the battery meter is a minor inconvenience. I'm now going to test my original battery in the same way - it may even be that it is actually still very useable - or maybe not. I'll soon find out! Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bierniesen Posted February 6, 2023 Share #12 Posted February 6, 2023 So how do I get Leica to offer me this $3000 trade in deal? Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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