Problems with Light Meter in Humid Conditions

[wmspa]

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I spent my holiday on one of the Seychelles Islands and noticed that the light meter of my M8 did not work properly. In low light, the meter normally showed an exposure time that was much too long: often 16 or 32 seconds, where I would have expected something like 1/8 or 1/16. Test pictures were hopelessly overexposed. When I was back in Germany, everything was fine again.

 

I guess that the reduced sensitivity of the light meter must be related to humidity. The Seychelles Islands have, of course, a tropical climate with maybe 80 or 85% humidity, but it is not like in a tropical rain forest. On the other hand, I would expect a EUR 4000+ camera to deal with these conditions.

 

I wrote an e-mail to Leica's Customer Service, but got no real answer or explanation from them. They recommended to send them the camera for a check, although I told them that it works fine again.

 

I'm a bit reluctant to send the camera on the typically long journey to Solms. Has anyboday experienced the same problem and/or have an explanation for this? Is this a common problem or is something wrong with my copy? What could I do about it, when I go again to a tropical area? Keeping the camera in dry conditions most of the time (air-conditioned room, silica gel) did not really work: Sometimes the first two or three pictures were fine, but when I was outside the room, the problem started again.

 

Regards

 

Wolfgang

[marknorton]

Cold camera, hot humid exterior, guaranteed recipe for condensation to form on the circuit boards and form leakage paths which can distort the readings. Others here who live in places like Hong Kong and Singapore will tell you how they handle it; one approach would have been to keep the camera in an air tight bag and only open it after going outside when the camera had warmed up. Either that, or go native and switch off the aircon.

[orjanf]

keep the camera in an air tight bag and only open it after going outside when the camera had warmed up. Either that, or go native and switch off the aircon.

 

Second that, also, unless switching off aircon, treat notebook computers the same and be prepared to walk blindly for a while if wearing spectacles.

[wmspa]

Second that, also, unless switching off aircon, treat notebook computers the same and be prepared to walk blindly for a while if wearing spectacles.

 

Thanks for the advice. It is still surprising to me, though, that my M8 had so many problems. We set air conditioning at something like 26° Celsius. I wear glasses, but never had any problems with fogging. Often, the air con was off. We always turned aircon off overnight - same problem when I used the camera in the morning. In addition, my Canon 20D (which I used for underwater photography) performed flawlessly all the time. Seems strange that Leica cameras seem to be much more prone to fogging than other equipment.

 

Wolfgang

[Rono1]

Hi Wolfgang - It's funny to read your thread as a similar situation happened to me two days ago. I live in Miami Beach and have had the M8 for about 4 months. I've shot about 600 frames so far. Never had a problem. The other day, after being outside for about 30 mins. I took two shots that were horribly overexposed, clearly a missreading from the light meter. Minutes before, the shots I had taken were fine though. Anyhow, I shrugged it off as a one-time glitch. Haven't shot since, but will let you know if it does it again.

[Woody Campbell]

I have the same problem with my M8. With mine it doesn't depend on environmental issues - the meter is always unreliable in low light situations - it returns a 32 second value. So, for example, indoors at f8 if I activate the meter and pan from a bright part of the room to a dark corner at one point during the pan the meter starts to indicate a blinking 32 seconds. If I fire in A mode the camera actually takes a 32 sec exposure. The issue kicks in at exposures below f2.8 at 1/30s at iso 640 (this is approxmate). This started a few months back about the time that I updated to the new firmware but I don't know if the issue is related to the update.

 

This body needs to go back to Solms but I can't spare it right now because my other M8 is in Solms (for the second time) - this time to fix the "it looks like someone drove a nail through the shutter curtain" problem. It's been there close to two months.

 

With the body with the metering problem I've been shooting in manual mode in low light situations, guessing at exposure. This has actually worked pretty well for me, probably because I grew up shooting an M3. I'll send it to Solms once my other body comes back and I've tested it.

 

A Leica marketing strategy to encourange us to buy three M8 so two can be in Solms at the same time?

 

Seriously, with three cases of the same issue in this thread it looks like we've documented another "problem".