M11 freeze issues [Merged]

[Photoworks]

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9 hours ago, scott kirkpatrick said:

Having our next M firmware design team headed by a certified Agile Coach and Scrum Master may make for faster time to market, but I'm not sure this will reduce the bug population.  Still, beta testing is (for some of us) a source of stimulating challenges. 

Considering that bugs resist bug spray, I think we need to more aspect them!

[James J]

After reporting my crash issues to Leica they have got in touch with the shop I bought it from and issued a DOA under the warranty and apparently my M11 is being picked up tomorrow for an exchange with a new one. I’m hoping the issue is known to them and it’s just an early batch bug. 
 

I was quite sad to put it all back in the box I was so happy to see arrive about a week ago! 
 

great customer service though 

[Photojoejoe21]

Received my new m11 about two weeks ago and have had two freezes. It came with current 1.6.1 firmware. Froze up using a voigtlander 35/1.4 and a lexar memory card, then froze up again with a new sandisk 128gb UHS II with the most recent version of the summicron 35/2. 
 

Memory cards formatted before use each time, and factor reset the camera after buying the new Sandisk card. 

Called the dealer I bought from who said they will step in but only after the camera has froze more times and after I’ve sent the camera in to Leica for repair. 
 

absolutely love the camera but, a little disappointed so far.
 

Has anyone here had experience with Leica NJ fixing their freezing issues after having it serviced? 

[dkmoore]

I hadn’t had any freezes with the new firmware until this morning. Camera went unresponsive. Had to remove the battery to reset. 

Sandisk 64mb 280 mb/s card 

Hopefully this is a one off. 

[Guest]

hope dies last... old saying in germany. 

 

Edited August 7, 2023 by wellknown

[JefreyL]

On 7/19/2023 at 1:12 AM, mediumformula said:

Does the fact that M11 Monochrom owners are not reporting on freezing issues mean that the freezing issues of the M11 are hardware related and that this problem was addressed with the M11 Monochrom? 

I have had freezes in my M11 Monochrom. Bought as soon as it was available. I have the led light on and not going off at startup and I remove the battery and reset camera settings etc and it is fine for a while. My camera was updated to 1.6.1 with no issues updating as soon as I got it. I used Sandisk UHS I and I am currently using a Sandisk SDXC UHS II V90. Did not reproduce the issue yet. I will post an update if anything goes.

[Henners]

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I had a spinning icon show up on the back screen and never go away, after taking a photo with the camera the other day. First time I've seen that one. My wife was photographing at the time and she's not that familiar with the camera and it did that, she handed the camera to me and I tried to exit it but no luck. I thought maybe she has accidently used some kind of bulb mode but it turned out I think to be a freeze but hard to know as I wasn't the one using it at the time it occurred. Pulling the battery sorted it of course but has anyone else had this one?

[JefreyL]

4 hours ago, Henners said:

I had a spinning icon show up on the back screen and never go away, after taking a photo with the camera the other day. First time I've seen that one. My wife was photographing at the time and she's not that familiar with the camera and it did that, she handed the camera to me and I tried to exit it but no luck. I thought maybe she has accidently used some kind of bulb mode but it turned out I think to be a freeze but hard to know as I wasn't the one using it at the time it occurred. Pulling the battery sorted it of course but has anyone else had this one?

I had the same issue. I was taking single shots but one after another and moving the camera in my I hands I believe I pressed the “Fn” button on the back which is by default Live View. I suspect Live View in addition to buffering simultaneously somehow created the error. 
I might be wrong. I had freezes but not the spinning circle and the light on forever. 
Just guessing here.

[DBounce]

I experienced a freeze in my M11M yesterday.  Pulling the battery was necessary to reset. This problem seems widespread. I believe all M11-series owners either have or will experience this issue the more they use the camera.

Perhaps important to note: My M11M froze after leaving the camera on for about 10 minutes as I looked for opportunities to snap pictures. I cannot recall seeing the problem occur if I switched it off between takes. I don’t think memory card makes a difference. I also don’t believe replacing the camera would make any difference. I’m convinced this is a firmware related bug.

[lct]

44 minutes ago, DBounce said:

[...] My M11M froze after leaving the camera on for about 10 minutes as I looked for opportunities to snap pictures. I cannot recall seeing the problem occur if I switched it off between takes. I don’t think memory card makes a difference. I also don’t believe replacing the camera would make any difference. I’m convinced this is a firmware related bug.

Problem is what bug it can be, if any, given that some bodies freeze and others don't. May i ask which time settings have been chosen for camera standby and display standby in your case? just curious.

[JefreyL]

I think probably the default setting when I had the lockup. Now I use 30min for standby and 30s for display but I do not shoot in Live View and I don’t have Auto Review on.

[bighernan]

I’ve had a lockup or two every time I use my camera for months. M11 on 1.6.1 My habit is to turn off the camera whenever I’m not actively shooting it. This has been my process with every camera I’ve ever had even non-leicas. I’ve never let any camera go to sleep or standby. 

I usually use internal memory and no memory card and still experience lockups when turning camera on. What I’ve done the last few days is to turn off standby and display sleep. I also disabled Leica fotos connections, removed my iPad and iPhone. I also have USB mode set to PTP. 
 

no lockups since. I don’t really care for sleep or power saving functions. Don’t care much for fotos app wireless transfer. And I use PTP to my Mac Lightroom. 

[magnolia]

I had a number of freezes last week after not having any for my first month of ownership. 
 

A couple interesting data points: last week was the first time I had used an uncoded Leica lens (28mm elmarit version 4) and I only got freezes with that lens. Never with my coded ‘lux lenses. 

[lct]

30 minutes ago, magnolia said:

[...] last week was the first time I had used an uncoded Leica lens (28mm elmarit version 4) and I only got freezes with that lens. Never with my coded ‘lux lenses. 

Did you select "Manual M" in the Lens Detection menu for this lens? If so, which lens profile did you choose if i may ask? Just curious.

Edited August 21, 2023 by lct

[jakontil]

21 hours ago, bighernan said:

I’ve had a lockup or two every time I use my camera for months. M11 on 1.6.1 My habit is to turn off the camera whenever I’m not actively shooting it. This has been my process with every camera I’ve ever had even non-leicas. I’ve never let any camera go to sleep or standby. 

I usually use internal memory and no memory card and still experience lockups when turning camera on. What I’ve done the last few days is to turn off standby and display sleep. I also disabled Leica fotos connections, removed my iPad and iPhone. I also have USB mode set to PTP. 
 

no lockups since. I don’t really care for sleep or power saving functions. Don’t care much for fotos app wireless transfer. And I use PTP to my Mac Lightroom. 

One thing i notice in my use case scenario is to prolong the standby mode as aking up from sleep seems to be the culprit..i always use ext sdcard exclusively btw as i have no comfort using the internal one

but i regularly using wifi connection and usb mode depends on my usage, sometimes PTP other times mfi

to say the least the latest firmware have solved most of the problem and cut down the freezes substantially in my case

but one to each own we cant even single out the probalen that caused it

[R4p70r]

Since the most recent firmware update that I updated on on day 1 of the release the freezes were mitigated and had no freeze up. Last month I was on a 2 week holiday on Madeira.

I switched off thee stand by mode is set the power saving mode to 5 min, but when I don't use the camera between shots I just switch off the camera, no bluetooth connection, no setup to Foto app smartphone connection etc.

When I focus the camera I either use the rangefinder or the display. It worked almost the entire time of the holidays flawlessly, in the high altitude mountains, in the heat, sub-tropical climate etc. There was only 1 exception: On one day I was using the display excessively for focusing, in the hot sun. The camera got warm even though I switched off the camera when I was not shooting photos. Once I switch it off to take a photo, the camera didn't really turn on. The display was black and the red LED was permanently on, but the camera won't get into the state to be "properly" boot up like it was hung up in some kind of a loop. I waited, waited and waited.... Nothing changed. The only option was to pop out and in the battery to solve the problem.

Edited August 22, 2023 by R4p70r

[IkarusJohn]

On 8/20/2023 at 1:58 AM, lct said:

Problem is what bug it can be, if any, given that some bodies freeze and others don't. May i ask which time settings have been chosen for camera standby and display standby in your case? just curious.

I’m curious at your assumption that some bodies don’t freeze.  If true, that would suggest variance in hardware or software.  Surely a more likely assumption is that the hardware is (largely) all the same and there is no variance in firmware.  It follows that all M11 cameras will freeze if set up and used in the same way?

It’s amazing that such a common problem hasn’t been sorted in the months since the camera was beta tested then released.

[lct]

9 minutes ago, IkarusJohn said:

I’m curious at your assumption that some bodies don’t freeze.  If true, that would suggest variance in hardware or software.  Surely a more likely assumption is that the hardware is (largely) all the same and there is no variance in firmware.  It follows that all M11 cameras will freeze if set up and used in the same way?

It’s amazing that such a common problem hasn’t been sorted in the months since the camera was beta tested then released.

My M11 does not freeze at all but my question was related to what could be the cause or one of the causes of such freezes, namely the fact that some uncoded lenses are treated as coded ones by selecting an option (lens detection auto) that cannot work given that the lens cannot be detected by definition. Seems like i won't have the answer here but that sort of conflicting situation should be avoided by Leica IMHO.

[IkarusJohn]

1 minute ago, lct said:

My M11 does not freeze at all but my question was related to what could be the cause or one of the causes of such freezes, namely the fact that some uncoded lenses are treated as coded ones by selecting an option (lens detection auto) that cannot work given that the lens cannot be detected by definition. Seems like i won't have the answer here but that sort of conflicting situation should be avoided by Leica IMHO.

The fact that your M11 doesn’t freeze doesn’t mean that it won’t.  I think it is fair to say that all M11 cameras will freeze given the combination or series of combinations required.  The M11 is Leica’s flagship - it amazes me the issue still isn’t resolved.  My one worry is that, if it is a firmware issue, Leica would have fixed it by now; if it’s a hardware issue, that would require a general recall (we know Leica won’t do that).  Leica’s track record on resolving hardware problems has been to hope the issue goes away (most owners being like you, not triggering freezes, so not worrying).

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[hdmesa]

36 minutes ago, IkarusJohn said:

...that would suggest variance in hardware or software.  Surely a more likely assumption is that the hardware is (largely) all the same and there is no variance in firmware....

I think you're missing that the hardware electronic components can vary in production quality from essentially flawless to significant failure rates. Some of those failures could be catastrophic (bricked bodies), but some could have intermittent malfunctions.

7 minutes ago, IkarusJohn said:

The fact that your M11 doesn’t freeze doesn’t mean that it won’t....

I think this is true; however, we could say that for any camera. The type of freezing that has been fixed thus far have been freezes during operation. The remaining freeze issue is mainly freeze on startup, wake from sleep, shutdown – all power-related functions.

7 minutes ago, IkarusJohn said:

I think it is fair to say that all M11 cameras will freeze given the combination or series of combinations required...

Not necessarily. Variances in hardware performance combined with a firmware glitch could affect only certain cameras. Personally, I think the remaining issue cannot be repeated nor provoked with any combination of settings or conditions. If it could be, I think we would have discovered this as a group. We have all thoroughly and exhaustively compared notes, settings, SD cards, etc. It think it comes down to finding that line or lines of code that get interrupted when certain units have hardware hiccups but necessarily hardware malfunctions or failures.

7 minutes ago, IkarusJohn said:

...The M11 is Leica’s flagship - it amazes me the issue still isn’t resolved...

This is one issue I'm sure they are painfully aware of. As I understand it, the M11 firmware had to be a complete rewrite to accommodate the new full-time live view and new shutter sequence required to make that work. It would be like starting all over again without the benefit of all the debugging they did since the M8. Add to that the still-lingering supply chain issues for electronic components that have affected quality and reliability.

7 minutes ago, IkarusJohn said:

...My one worry is that, if it is a firmware issue, Leica would have fixed it by now; if it’s a hardware issue, that would require a general recall (we know Leica won’t do that).  Leica’s track record on resolving hardware problems has been to hope the issue goes away (most owners being like you, not triggering freezes, so not worrying).

I would have the same worry except I now have an M11 Monochrom which is flawless – over 1K photos over several weeks without a single hiccup. I'm using the same SD card, uncoded and coded lenses, thumb grip, even the same two batteries I used with my freezing M11s. We know the M11M firmware has to be slightly different, so they could look for differences there. Last reported M11M freeze on this forum was in May of this year, and that person was going to try some SD card formatting suggestions. There has not been any followups, so I'm assuming M11M freezes probably follow the same that the M10 and Q2 variants did – mostly SD card or use-case that are identifiable.