Brand new MP/M-A/M6 film scratches [Merged]

[logan2z]

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1 hour ago, Huss said:

I've asked three times now w no reply.

It's interesting. The M2 I recently bought had just been to Wetzlar for a complete overhaul.  When I received it, the camera included the service paperwork and it had a detailed list of the work that was performed.  Unfortunately, when I received the camera, I noticed a problem that required a return to the factory.  It took a couple of months to get the camera back and it was returned with no paperwork and no information on what was repaired.  So it seems that, for some reason, Leica provides details on the work performed for overhauls but not smaller repairs.

[M9reno]

1 hour ago, logan2z said:

It's interesting. The M2 I recently bought had just been to Wetzlar for a complete overhaul.  When I received it, the camera included the service paperwork and it had a detailed list of the work that was performed.  Unfortunately, when I received the camera, I noticed a problem that required a return to the factory.  It took a couple of months to get the camera back and it was returned with no paperwork and no information on what was repaired.  So it seems that, for some reason, Leica provides details on the work performed for overhauls but not smaller repairs.

It makes sense: they describe elective work done for a fee, but do not describe work done (for free) under warranty.

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[logan2z]

1 hour ago, M9reno said:

It makes sense: they describe elective work done for a fee, but do not describe work done (for free) under warranty.

Yeah, maybe fee vs. free accounts for the difference.  It would still be nice to know what was done to one's camera when it was repaired,, even if it was at no cost.  

In contrast, when I get my car repaired under warranty I get a full report as to what was found and what was repaired. The dealer doesn't usually just hand me the keys and say 'all done'. 

[Huss]

I just received the invoice and tracking #.  Invoice says:

scratches on the film

check, adjust, clean

Pressure plate

 

 Fingers crossed that whatever they did, fixed it.  I will find out this weekend.

[Huss]

1 minute ago, Mooshoepork said:

I had a 16mm camera that scratched film and the solution was to just polish the pressure plate more. No real indication of where it was happening

I don't care how simple (or complicated) the fix is, as long as it is fixed!  I had cleaned the pressure plate myself after seeing the first couple of rolls scratched, but it didn't make any difference.  If their cleaning required a polishing/adjusting/whatever, and it fixed it, that is good with me!

[Crem]

43 minutes ago, Huss said:

I don't care how simple (or complicated) the fix is, as long as it is fixed!  I had cleaned the pressure plate myself after seeing the first couple of rolls scratched, but it didn't make any difference.  If their cleaning required a polishing/adjusting/whatever, and it fixed it, that is good with me!

I really wonder if they ran a roll through it. If it comes back and still scratches film this thread is going to go nuclear.

Edited January 25, 2023 by Crem

[Fotoklaus]

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vor 5 Stunden schrieb Crem:

I really wonder if they ran a roll through it. If it comes back and still scratches film this thread is going to go nuclear.

We will know in about 6 month.

[mshchem]

It really is astonishing that we have M6 and MP (s) scratching film. And we have heard nothing about this from the influencers who make videos,. Not a single fault. I should be out taking pictures but it's quite frigid. I will finish up my darkroom remodeling, that story later. 

[28framelines]

23 hours ago, Crem said:

I really wonder if they ran a roll through it. If it comes back and still scratches film this thread is going to go nuclear.

For Huss’ sake, I hope all will be well. For the sake of Leica finally fixing this BS and get its QA together, I will contribute an email or two (or sign a petition) for Leica to get it together. We keep seeing this pop up. This is happening to not-new members, where some new person came and signed up just to see if others are experiencing this problem. This is happening to people who have been around for a while. What’s the likelihood of a hit rate so high for such a small fraction of regulars on this forum who chose to buy the new hotness and got stung? It can’t be just “bad luck.” There’s something going on at Leica. My MP viewfinder arrived brand new in box with a misaligned rangefinder (some might remember) and it wasn’t even CLOSE to being aligned (inches out of focus, even with a forgiving 28mm focal length). Thankfully it doesn’t scratch the film, but it makes no sense what these irregularities are caused by other than bad QA. There’s a growing sentiment (it seems to me) that new Leica products are not nearly as high quality as older ones, which bodes poorly for the company we love: “I could buy this Summilux FLE 2 that may have the broken aperture blades where I have to send it in because I can’t just be given a new one, or I could buy this Voigtlander 35mm f1.5 that I know won’t for 1/5th the money”

[Crem]

36 minutes ago, 28framelines said:

For Huss’ sake, I hope all will be well. For the sake of Leica finally fixing this BS and get its QA together, I will contribute an email or two (or sign a petition) for Leica to get it together. We keep seeing this pop up. This is happening to not-new members, where some new person came and signed up just to see if others are experiencing this problem. This is happening to people who have been around for a while. What’s the likelihood of a hit rate so high for such a small fraction of regulars on this forum who chose to buy the new hotness and got stung? It can’t be just “bad luck.” There’s something going on at Leica. My MP viewfinder arrived brand new in box with a misaligned rangefinder (some might remember) and it wasn’t even CLOSE to being aligned (inches out of focus, even with a forgiving 28mm focal length). Thankfully it doesn’t scratch the film, but it makes no sense what these irregularities are caused by other than bad QA. There’s a growing sentiment (it seems to me) that new Leica products are not nearly as high quality as older ones, which bodes poorly for the company we love: “I could buy this Summilux FLE 2 that may have the broken aperture blades where I have to send it in because I can’t just be given a new one, or I could buy this Voigtlander 35mm f1.5 that I know won’t for 1/5th the money”

My rough take on it is that Leica is more or less ramping up film camera production after years of ramping it down. It's a passion project for the company and we are the beta testers for new suppliers and assembly technicians. They will sort it out... and we will all keep buying. I won't be surprised if all these scratchers cause a new QA step to be introduced at the factory or a supplier. Is this acceptable? Definitely not. Will it impact their sales? Probably not.

[Jewl]

vor 5 Stunden schrieb Crem:

My rough take on it is that Leica is more or less ramping up film camera production after years of ramping it down. It's a passion project for the company and we are the beta testers for new suppliers and assembly technicians. They will sort it out... and we will all keep buying. I won't be surprised if all these scratchers cause a new QA step to be introduced at the factory or a supplier. Is this acceptable? Definitely not. Will it impact their sales? Probably not.

It‘s the same for digital. For me similar situation with my M11 where I needed to hand it in 2 times just because of a RF misalignment (fron focus). Needed two attempts and was brand new!

[Crem]

7 minutes ago, Jewl said:

It‘s the same for digital. For me similar situation with my M11 where I needed to hand it in 2 times just because of a RF misalignment (fron focus). Needed two attempts and was brand new!

Yeah I can’t really defend the M11 QA issues even though I think it’s the best digital M ever. Mine had vertical alignment off straight out of the box. I’m just happy it hasn’t crashed since I switched to Lexar sd cards. If you just lower your expectations you will always be happy. That’s what I did. 😂

[logan2z]

2 hours ago, Crem said:

If you just lower your expectations you will always be happy. That’s what I did. 😂

You're a better man than I.  For $9K, I don't think I'd be able to do that very easily.

[Jewl]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb Crem:

Yeah I can’t really defend the M11 QA issues even though I think it’s the best digital M ever. Mine had vertical alignment off straight out of the box. I’m just happy it hasn’t crashed since I switched to Lexar sd cards. If you just lower your expectations you will always be happy. That’s what I did. 😂

Yeah of course, it is way better than my M10P feature-wise and overall I am happy in the meanwhile. But was quite a bumpy road until then and for such a high price I expect sth different. Especially the waiting times you need to undergo if you send it in. I'd understand if you send in a 10 years old camera that is out of warranty anyway. But I do think, as it feels that demand and market distribution is increasing over the last years, they do need to improve their efficiency/speed and still keep the promise of high class service quality! And this seems to drift apart a bit 🙂

[Crem]

 

4 hours ago, logan2z said:

You're a better man than I.  For $9K, I don't think I'd be able to do that very easily.

Haha I am not. I just decided long ago that photography is a hobby for me and I want to focus on enjoying it fully well knowing about long repair times. If I were a professional I’d have to really think about having multiple spare bodies or switching brands. 

4 hours ago, Jewl said:

Yeah of course, it is way better than my M10P feature-wise and overall I am happy in the meanwhile. But was quite a bumpy road until then and for such a high price I expect sth different. Especially the waiting times you need to undergo if you send it in. I'd understand if you send in a 10 years old camera that is out of warranty anyway. But I do think, as it feels that demand and market distribution is increasing over the last years, they do need to improve their efficiency/speed and still keep the promise of high class service quality! And this seems to drift apart a bit 🙂

It seems like they have grown in sales faster than they have grown all the departments that support those sales. Like QA, product testing, firmware engineering, repairs, etc. 

Edited January 27, 2023 by Crem

[hdmesa]

@Huss if it makes you feel any better, which it probably won't, Canon, with all their glorious and wonderful and speedy repair service, they won't tell you what they fixed until you open the package and read the short, barely descriptive single sentence about what they did (or likely didn't do). The only thing they record into the system is that you need a repair, they did the repair, and they shipped it back to you. They don't seem to record what they did except for the repair person's schizophrenic doodling on the napkin they return with the equipment. Anyone you call at Canon repair will not be able to tell you anything. And I don't think they ever addressed me by name in any email correspondence, either. That was a $4K camera and $3K lens, so close enough to Leica dollars to be comparable.

Edited January 28, 2023 by hdmesa

[Huss]

1 minute ago, hdmesa said:

@Huss if it makes you feel any better, which it probably won't, Canon, with all their glorious and wonderful and speedy repair service, they won't tell you what they fixed until you open the package and read the short, barely descriptive single sentence about what they did (or likely didn't do). The only thing they record into the system is that you need a repair, they did the repair, and they shipped it back to you. They don't seem to record what they did except for the repair person's schizophrenic doodling on the napkin they return with the equipment. Anyone you call at Canon repair will not be able to tell you anything. And I don't think they ever addressed me by name in any email correspondence, either.

Wow, that actually did make me feel better!.. ok, not really.  But sort of on topic to show I'm an equal opportunity caller-outer, aka curmudgeon, I recently sold my Fuji Xpro3.  This is because that camera apparently has a design flaw where the rear LCD fails - the big panel where you view the pics.  There have been multiple reports and apparently now a class action suit because Fuji refuses to acknowledge it but charges $500-is for the repair.  Seeing I barely used that camera (if I was going to shoot digital I preferred my Leica), I just sold it.

Hey, my M6 came back today!  Will test soon.  Fingers crossed, a camera this pretty deserves to work!

[hdmesa]

6 minutes ago, Huss said:

Wow, that actually did make me feel better!.. ok, not really.  But sort of on topic to show I'm an equal opportunity caller-outer, aka curmudgeon, I recently sold my Fuji Xpro3.  This is because that camera apparently has a design flaw where the rear LCD fails - the big panel where you view the pics.  There have been multiple reports and apparently now a class action suit because Fuji refuses to acknowledge it but charges $500-is for the repair.  Seeing I barely used that camera (if I was going to shoot digital I preferred my Leica), I just sold it.

Hey, my M6 came back today!  Will test soon.  Fingers crossed, a camera this pretty deserves to work!

So glad it's back. Waste a roll and run something through it immediately and yank it out to inspect. No sense in risking 24 or 36 actual memories to just see scratches again.

Yeah, Fujifilm makes weird gear, nice in many ways but also cheap in others. I'd gone back to the GFX 100S after giving up on the M11 (for now), but it just felt so cheap after using an SL2-S that I couldn't deal with it.

[jonnyc]

I recently got an MP as well with the same build date. I just got my first two rolls developed and both have scratches along the length of the film. Really sad to see that this is a common issue. I added a screenshot showing scratches along the top of an image.

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Hallo,

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[Mikep996]

I feel compelled to tell my Seiko Watch customer service story.  

When I was in the US Army many years ago, during a mission a piece of shrapnel hit the Seiko watch that I had purchased at the PX and was wearing on my left arm.  The shrapnel broke the crystal and embedded itself in the watch-face.  Later that day someone noticed that the watch said "Shockproof" on the bezel and jokingly suggested I send it to Seiko under warranty since it clearly wasn't "shockproof."  I thought it was funny so I did exactly that, boxed it up in a C-ration box with a note in the box and sent it back with the next re-supply chopper with a request that it be sent to Seiko.

Two weeks later, out in the woods, the resupply chopper brought us rations and ammo...and a brand new Seiko watch for me with an apology letter from Seiko for the watch's failure!  

I suspect Leica would not do that!🤣   

TBF, Seiko probably wouldn't either nowadays but they were just getting established in the US market and I guess they decided it was good business.  Anyway, it's my favorite "warranty" experience.  Lucky for me, I've never had to return a film or digital Leica or have one serviced.