M11 freeze issues [Merged]

[SrMi]

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Almost every camera I own (Hasselblad, Sony, Leica, Nikon) froze. The issue was quickly resolved every time by removing and reinserting the battery. The problem becomes significant if the freezing occurs frequently. Fortunately, that is not the case with my two M11-s

Edited October 28, 2022 by SrMi

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[Chriseto]

Hello there.

I'm having a similar issue with my M11 bought several months ago. I'm running a Sony Tough SD card and everything worked well until two days ago. The camera has frozen and even by pulling off the battery it never started again since. I called Leica and it was told to me that it could be a problem with the charger. They advised me to charge the battery with an apple charger (for my laptop). But it didn't change nothing. I tried to turn off and on the camera with and without the SD card. Nada. The orange led is still on even if the camera is turned off. Weird. I'm waiting now from Leica to propose a solution to fix or replace my camera.

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[lct]

Problems have been reported with Sony Tough cards here and elsewhere. On dpreview, see https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4678635

[Chriseto]

4 minutes ago, lct said:

Problems have been reported with Sony Tough cards here and elsewhere. On dpreview, see https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4678635

Yes I just have read that. It was working well though until recently. It doesn't solve my problem unfortunately. The camera is totally f****d and I don't know how to reboot it. If you have a solution you're welcome.


I just read more about the issue and it seems I'll have to send back my camera. Thank you for sharing the link 🙂

Edited November 2, 2022 by Chriseto
correction

[SrMi]

1 minute ago, Chriseto said:

Yes I just have read that. It was working well though until recently. It doesn't solve my problem unfortunately. The camera is totally f****d and I don't know how to reboot it. If you have a solution you're welcome 🙂

Did you charge the battery in the camera or with an external charger?

[Chriseto]

49 minutes ago, SrMi said:

Did you charge the battery in the camera or with an external charger?

I tried both ways

[lct]

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38 minutes ago, Chriseto said:

Yes I just have read that. It was working well though until recently. It doesn't solve my problem unfortunately. The camera is totally f****d and I don't know how to reboot it. If you have a solution you're welcome.

Happened only once to me so i can just tell you what i did then. I changed the battery, put an old Sandisk USH-I card i was using on my M240 instead of the Sony card and did a reset of the M11. Worked fine so i ordered another Sandisk USH-I card for the M11. Never had any problem since then. The cards i'm referring to are Sandisk Extreme Pro UHS-I 95mb/s (64mb) and 170mb/s (256mb). I will stick to them and refrain from using any USH-II card as long as Leica does not fix this issue. FWIW.

[Chriseto]

1 minute ago, lct said:

Happened only once to me so i can just tell you what i did then. I changed the battery, put an old Sandisk USH-I card i was using on my M240 instead of the Sony card and did a reset of the M11. Worked fine so i ordered another Sandisk USH-I card for the M11. Never had any problem since then. The cards i'm referring to are Sandisk Extreme Pro UHS-I 95mb/s (64mb) and 170mb/s (256mb). I will stick to them and refrain from using any USH-II card as long as Leica does not fix this issue. FWIW.

Thank you for this hope ! But you write you did a reset of the M11. How come? I did also put another battery, fully charged with the Leica charger, and another card I was using with the M10 or the SL. But When I did turn on the camera nothing has changed. Orange led, black display, no answer from the buttons or the shutter. 

[lct]

1 minute ago, Chriseto said:

Thank you for this hope ! But you write you did a reset of the M11. How come? I did also put another battery, fully charged with the Leica charger, and another card I was using with the M10 or the SL. But When I did turn on the camera nothing has changed. Orange led, black display, no answer from the buttons or the shutter. 

Doesn't sound good... Was it an USH-I card? Just curious.

[Chriseto]

5 minutes ago, lct said:

Doesn't sound good... Was it an USH-I card? Just curious.

 

IMG_9780.HEIC

[lct]

3 hours ago, Chriseto said:

 

IMG_9780.HEIC 1.68 MB · 4 downloads

Same as my 64gb. There's nothing i can do for you then sorry .

 

Edited November 2, 2022 by lct

[TripH]

Removing and immediately reinstalling the battery may not 'reset' the camera. While I have no insight into the design/implementation of the M11's circuitry, there are probably some capacitors that would retain charge for a period of time after removing the battery. I would recommend removing the battery and waiting maybe 60 seconds before reinserting it. In general, this is enough time to drain charge from most small consumer device implementations. As always, YMMV...

2c,

h  

Edited November 2, 2022 by TripH

[SrMi]

8 hours ago, TripH said:

Removing and immediately reinstalling the battery may not 'reset' the camera. While I have no insight into the design/implementation of the M11's circuitry, there are probably some capacitors that would retain charge for a period of time after removing the battery. I would recommend removing the battery and waiting maybe 60 seconds before reinserting it. In general, this is enough time to drain charge from most small consumer device implementations. As always, YMMV...

2c,

h  

Most freezes have been fixed with a one to two seconds battery removal. If that did not work, I had to keep the battery out much longer (not with M11)

[Jewl]

vor 16 Stunden schrieb lct:

Problems have been reported with Sony Tough cards here and elsewhere. On dpreview, see https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4678635

"funny" that this forum lists the mentioned SD card in their "SD Card buying guide" on the first place. Maybe this should be changed or at least mentioned, the SD card might lead to issues in the M11...

I purchased mine as well based on the guide and my M11 is also with the Customer Care team due to the issues! 

Edited November 3, 2022 by Jewl

[lct]

2 hours ago, Jewl said:

"funny" that this forum lists the mentioned SD card in their "SD Card buying guide" on the first place. Maybe this should be changed or at least mentioned, the SD card might lead to issues in the M11...

Indeed... I did not know this list but i bought my Sony Tough card as a curiosity. My luck was to get rid of it at the first anomaly, so the camera was not damaged i guess. I hope your problem can be solved quickly.

[hdmesa]

On 11/3/2022 at 2:48 AM, Jewl said:

..."SD Card buying guide"...

Nothing more than an advertisement and should be removed from the forum, IMO.

[sdk]

Recently I had the M11 stop working and I think it had drained the battery after a couple of days in standby mode. It would turn on then off immediately. When I put in my charged spare battery that fixed the issue. I guess I have to remember turn it off. It seems like it wasn't doing this before, but I may have been using the camera more frequently and recharging regularly before the past couple of weeks when I got busy at work and wasn't doing as much photography.

[scroy]

Experiencing this now. M11 is completely unresponsive. Have tried 3 lenses. 2 Leica, 1 TT artisans. 3 different SD cards each of which worked previously and no card. 2 different batteries, and a USB-C power bank. 
Good thing I have my SL2 as backup, otherwise my current Australia trip would be less than stellar. 

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[TheEyesHaveIt]

My new M11 hasn't turned on twice, with two different SD cards. Once at the Leica Store in the presence of an employee there. Both times, popping out the battery and re-inserting fixed things. Just happened today but was issue-free for the rest of the afternoon. Not sure what's causing it.

[Qlan]

I read this thread (and others) about bugs plaguing the M11 but hoped they wouldn't be the common case. Alas... received my new Leica M11 3 days ago and been experiencing all the problems listed on this thread:

Bug #1. Most common bug: Camera freeze on start. Mechanical shutter opens up, but nothing is responsive and the screen is black (frame lines are shown, but no shutter speed value in the viewfinder). Turning on and off doesn't work. Had to remove the battery (It happens maybe in 2-3% of the time - I turned the camera on and off maybe a hundred times in those 3 days trying to reproduce this issue). This can also happen after taking a picture, but only happened once.

Bug #2. Sometimes, after pressing the shutter, the orange led near the directional pad stayed on for a couple of seconds. During that time, the photo wasn't taken. After a couple of seconds, everything went back to normal and the photo was taken (no it wasn't long exposure)

I tried everything in this thread: no SD card, no viewfinder, no sleeping, etc.

I have an hypothesis this could be related to uncoded lenses although I see many people on this thread having freezes as well using Leica coded lenses. Let me explain my theory:

I have two Voigtlander lenses, I set lens detection to manual M and have one profile for each lens. When I change lenses, I switch to the corresponding profile and thought this would work fine. Which is the case most of the time. But it seems like lens detection is never switched off, even if the "Lens Detection" setting is set to Off or Manual M/R. The camera will try to detect the lens every time a picture is taken (and at startup/waking up time, and maybe also every X seconds when the camera is on). Most of the time, this works fine, the lens setting is unchanged. But other times, the camera fails to detect the lens and freezes (maybe that causes bug #2). Similarly at startup time, sometimes lens detection fails and the camera freezes (bug #1). Why do I think lens detection is never off? During a session (no sleeping, no changing lenses, etc) the lens in the quick menu will sometimes switch to "no lens" (only saw it 2 times). Other times, the lens selection is unchanged from the one I have set, but the camera profile is no longer the one I set (the quick menu doesn't show the person logo with a number, but just the person logo without number), as if a setting has been changed, which could be that the lens detection decided to change the lens but ended up on the same lens I selected.

My serial number is 5593***. If serial numbers are generated in chronological order, it seems like my camera was produced before August (see comment #142). Maybe I should request an exchange and ask for a newer model? Although I doubt it is a hardware issue.

The freezes are not frequent enough to make me abandon the camera altogether but it is making the experience frustrating, especially for a $9000 camera that has been released for almost a year... Now I am a little apprehensive every time I turn the camera on.