M11-P freezes too

[londond]

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Just now, wizard said:

+1. Those are my thoughts, too. For the time being, switch off FOTOS and you're good.

 

That's exactly the point. The M11 is not "unreliable", it has an issue with the FOTOS app. Turn off communication with the FOTOS app until Leica has fixed that bug and you will have a perfectly reliable camera. Modern cameras are computers, and computers tend to have those kind of issues. People accept that with computers, but go bananas when it happens to their camera. As long as I know how to eliminate an issue, I am fine and stop bothering.

Well…I was recently responsible for developing and delivering a computer system comprising 2.5 million lines of code with over 40,000 tests, most run multiple times. I’m familiar with the kind issues computers tend to have, what can go wrong with releases and upgrades, and how best to manage them. While proud the work of the hundreds of people who contributed to the system, I understand  that go live bugs were very frustrating for hard pressed users - for them the system felt unreliable until we fixed them.

We were delivering a high stakes, fault intolerant system on which over a million people depended.  No one would have just accepted the level of unreliability i have encountered with my M11 and M11M - and I certainly don’t regard faults with my expensive hobby cameras as more serious than those experienced  by my users at work. 

However, many thanks for the suggestion. Will retest with Fotos off and hope this solves the problem. Many decades of system development mean I don’t yet share the confidence  that this is the one universal solution to the one universal problem with the release.   If it is , I’ll happily come back to reiterate my gratitude for the suggestion, and apologise for my grumpiness.

In the exchange of diagnostic information with the (polite and professional) Leica support people, they have never suggested the Fotos workaround. Ceratinly if at work we had a fix-all workaround  to a sporadic issues affecting some people, we would have told our thousands  of users asap. I hope this is the solution and the problems is merely remarkably  amateurish communications (you only learn about the fix on a user forum?).

 

 

 

[bilbrown]

1 hour ago, wizard said:

+1. Those are my thoughts, too. For the time being, switch off FOTOS and you're good.

Yep, and "one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand" from sleep.

 

1 hour ago, wizard said:

That's exactly the point. The M11 is not "unreliable", it has an issue with the FOTOS app. Turn off communication with the FOTOS app until Leica has fixed that bug and you will have a perfectly reliable camera. Modern cameras are computers, and computers tend to have those kind of issues. People accept that with computers, but go bananas when it happens to their camera. As long as I know how to eliminate an issue, I am fine and stop bothering.

 

I think this is the case.

I may even just put my phone into Airplane mode while shooting. Ain't no one gonna call me that is worth it during a shoot.

 

Anyone in US going to listen to the Tech Talk with journalists today?

[algrove]

5 hours ago, bilbrown said:

Yep, and "one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand" from sleep.

 

 

I think this is the case.

I may even just put my phone into Airplane mode while shooting. Ain't no one gonna call me that is worth it during a shoot.

 

Anyone in US going to listen to the Tech Talk with journalists today?

No, waste of time.

[Derbyshire Man]

I watched that. Slightly ironic to see the Leica guy with the roll neck out of focus on his face but in focus on his roll neck. Also a high number of the demo photo's had the classic rangefinder head in the middle of the shot (this is where the patch is and I don't want to re-frame and lose focus) with the feet cut off/poorly framed photo. It demonstrated as much the limitations of the technology as the benefits of the package size/sensor etc.

[tritentrue]

It was also very reassuring to learn from the video that one can shoot in "like total darkness pretty much" with the M11-P and get "you know, relatively no noise" as long as one keeps one's hands steady.  High tech, indeed!

Edited November 17, 2023 by tritentrue

[wizard]

vor 14 Stunden schrieb londond:

Well…I was recently responsible for developing and delivering a computer system comprising 2.5 million lines of code with over 40,000 tests, most run multiple times. ...

We were delivering a high stakes, fault intolerant system on which over a million people depended.  ...

While I hear you and do appreciate what you say, it does seem that you are comparing apples and oranges here. Give us an idea on what the customer had to pay for the computer system you and your team developed and then let everyone decide whether they think a relatively small camera company would be able to pay that kind of money for just the software of a product that is relatively low volume.

[londond]

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18 hours ago, wizard said:

+1. Those are my thoughts, too. For the time being, switch off FOTOS and you're good.

 

That's exactly the point. The M11 is not "unreliable", it has an issue with the FOTOS app. Turn off communication with the FOTOS app until Leica has fixed that bug and you will have a perfectly reliable camera. Modern cameras are computers, and computers tend to have those kind of issues. People accept that with computers, but go bananas when it happens to their camera. As long as I know how to eliminate an issue, I am fine and stop bothering.

I switched off FOTOS and the freezes continue, the first one after 30 frames. I don’t have a perfectly reliable camera.  It seems some people have encountered an issues with FOTOS, others clearly have some different issues, and some none at all. 

[londond]

3 hours ago, wizard said:

While I hear you and do appreciate what you say, it does seem that you are comparing apples and oranges here. Give us an idea on what the customer had to pay for the computer system you and your team developed and then let everyone decide whether they think a relatively small camera company would be able to pay that kind of money for just the software of a product that is relatively low volume.

Low volume but premium price. Of course people will use Ms  for different reason - for me its not IQ (already fine on my SL2 or Q2M) but user experience and the pleasure of using something so well engineered (like my film M). These are for me compromised by a sense that the M11’s excellent physical/mechanical engineering has been let down by some non-premium software engineering. 

I was trying to say that I know issues happen with new releases. These bugs are frustrating but non-critical and all will be good if they are fixed in due course.  I was more reacting to the posts saying that discussion of them should be curtailed on the forums.  All the suggested fixes (SD cards, FOTOS) are much appreciated and  I’m sure will work for those who  have the particular problem.

Seems to me some people are finding their M11s somewhat unreliable. There’s no objective standard about what level of reliability one can expect in such a premium but niche  product and peoples expectations vary. I don’t know the prevalence or severity of all the problems, but wouldn’t characterise discussion of them as “hysterical”. I think the exchange of information is helpful and its understandable if some people are a bit frustrated.  

 

[wizard]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb londond:

I switched off FOTOS and the freezes continue,

After switching off FOTOS (and WiFi), did you shut down the camera and restart it? I had to do that for those changes  to become effective.

[londond]

48 minutes ago, wizard said:

After switching off FOTOS (and WiFi), did you shut down the camera and restart it? I had to do that for those changes  to become effective.

No, will give that a try…thanks for the suggestion. 🤞

[bilbrown]

Update: Shoot without a hitch last night. 200 photos with flash and without, and even some bizarre shutter drag and no issue. Did not have to restart camera once, no freezes, no DNG corruption.

 

Things have seemed to work themselves out finally.

[SJH]

On 11/16/2023 at 5:16 PM, londond said:

There seem to be fairly frequent  threads along the lines of “I’m thinking of buying an M11 (/M/P)…” or “Would you buy one again?”  Are you saying that those experiencing freezes should be censored from replying to them if they have once flagged the freezing on the forum?  For example, I would reply “I have enjoyed both M11 and M11M up to the new firmware, where freezes on average every 40-50 frames have comprised the experience and undermined my confidence in Leica software engineering. I don’t know how prevalent these problems are but would advise caution if these things matter to you.” Perhaps only those replying “yes I would definitely buy the M11” should be permitted to post (some bots could be deployed to generate them if the general view is insufficiently positive).

I have been using Ms for over 25 years but am relatively new to the forum.   On other topics, some folks seem to repeat views where relevant on numerous threads. Presumably that would remain OK so long as they are not referring to the M11 unreliability? 

Nope not at all, I think it actually assists everyone (including Leica) with what I’m proposing in that there’s one thread where you post your freeze and what happened (plus serial number hidden from public view) and then another thread whereby everyone can dive in and discuss to their hearts content. The reason being just actually run through the M11 Freezing thread for example and find the actual number of reported freezes as opposed to everything else that verges on hysteria. This way everyone gets an actual sense of perspective on the actual number of freezes that are happening and then another thread to discuss it all. Personally I think Leica would much prefer this approach because it’s actually very useful for them.

I attended an event earlier this week with some leading photographers and for example they were all discussing the number of fake SD cards people were buying online now from a well known site that were causing numerous issues, in a wide range of camera’s, without them even realising this was their problem. Equally let’s face it we’ve come from an M3 to M11 and the Leica user demographic isn’t exactly the most technically up to date in many ways

[londond]

14 hours ago, SJH said:

Nope not at all, I think it actually assists everyone (including Leica) with what I’m proposing in that there’s one thread where you post your freeze and what happened (plus serial number hidden from public view) and then another thread whereby everyone can dive in and discuss to their hearts content. The reason being just actually run through the M11 Freezing thread for example and find the actual number of reported freezes as opposed to everything else that verges on hysteria. This way everyone gets an actual sense of perspective on the actual number of freezes that are happening and then another thread to discuss it all. Personally I think Leica would much prefer this approach because it’s actually very useful for them.

I attended an event earlier this week with some leading photographers and for example they were all discussing the number of fake SD cards people were buying online now from a well known site that were causing numerous issues, in a wide range of camera’s, without them even realising this was their problem. Equally let’s face it we’ve come from an M3 to M11 and the Leica user demographic isn’t exactly the most technically up to date in many ways

Ah, understand a sort of register thread for reference - makes sense.

[SJH]

37 minutes ago, Al Brown said:

Wow the amount of gaslighting, whataboutism and diss in this paragraph is just crazy.

Well that’s not my intention, if taken in the context of the whole post it was to try and bring some balance to the whole M11 Freezing thread which personally I feel has got completely out of hand. To be clear I really feel for those that have had a freezing issue and I of course champion the right to express those concerns here. However, my post overall was endeavoring to show a way forward where freezes could be reported factually in one thread and then discussed at length in another.

I’m a mediocre photographer just trying to learn but having had the good fortune to speak to some photographers recently, who I admire greatly (and use Leica gear), they appear to despair with the current approach but of course that’s their view to which they are entitled to and I also complete get it that it’s all anecdotal. Equally in today’s world we’re quick to want to reach for the keyboard to vent our frustration but if the approach contained in my post was applied to the M11 Freezing thread I suspect we would of all be able to take a more informed view as to the extent of the issue i.e. a relatively short series of actual freezing posts in one thread and then plenty of healthy discussion as to why it’s occurred in a much more lengthy one!!

I have to laugh at myself though on the basis that here we are chatting away in the M11P Freezing thread but I haven’t had any freezes with my M11P so I’m just adding to my original posts numbers re at that point there were only 3 actual freezing posts out of 46

[Derbyshire Man]

2 hours ago, SJH said:

Well that’s not my intention, if taken in the context of the whole post it was to try and bring some balance to the whole M11 Freezing thread which personally I feel has got completely out of hand. To be clear I really feel for those that have had a freezing issue and I of course champion the right to express those concerns here. However, my post overall was endeavoring to show a way forward where freezes could be reported factually in one thread and then discussed at length in another.

I’m a mediocre photographer just trying to learn but having had the good fortune to speak to some photographers recently, who I admire greatly (and use Leica gear), they appear to despair with the current approach but of course that’s their view to which they are entitled to and I also complete get it that it’s all anecdotal. Equally in today’s world we’re quick to want to reach for the keyboard to vent our frustration but if the approach contained in my post was applied to the M11 Freezing thread I suspect we would of all be able to take a more informed view as to the extent of the issue i.e. a relatively short series of actual freezing posts in one thread and then plenty of healthy discussion as to why it’s occurred in a much more lengthy one!!

I have to laugh at myself though on the basis that here we are chatting away in the M11P Freezing thread but I haven’t had any freezes with my M11P so I’m just adding to my original posts numbers re at that point there were only 3 actual freezing posts out of 46

Isn't the easiest way to gather the numerator and denominator to have a public poll 'If you have a M11 does it freeze yes/no'.

[SJH]

3 hours ago, Derbyshire Man said:

Isn't the easiest way to gather the numerator and denominator to have a public poll 'If you have a M11 does it freeze yes/no'.

Yes in principle and my suggestion just means you can go over and have lengthy discussion about it in another thread for that - a bit like we have threads for photo's only etc. I think though that the idea would be to have a bit of context around how the freeze occurred as well.

[bilbrown]

On 11/19/2023 at 12:26 AM, crvhegas said:

Big mistake. IMO the M10R is the Leica M to own. 

If I find a M10R Black Paint, maybe. But they seem to be relatively scarce. I liked my M10R very much, am keeping my M10M Leitz Wetzlar. But the M11R is growing on me, week three here. I think I have the bugs worked out and most of it was my own error, or card, or some things that can be simply turned off.

 

A color M can be replaced with a new color M. The M-P variants usually hang out with their owners for a bit longer. This is my first M-P, in a long list of digital M bodies, back to the original M8.

But yes, the M10R was certainly one of my favorite of all of them. So far, I feel like I am shooting the M11P more.

[SJH]

Just a thought everyone but it seems like we have 3 (very genuine) freezes reported since this thread started and there are now 77 posts, so the freeze reports account for 4% and of course I sympathise (I had a camera in the M10M batch that froze 4 or 5 times and got hot). So if we take this percentage over to the M11 Freezing thread of 1,787 posts it would mean that there were 71 freeze posts since it started and the last post was on 26/10 regarding the 2.0.1 firmware update. 

Now I know it's not a like for like and a much smaller sample etc but it does suggest that it might work better to adopt a 'fault logging' approach as one thread and then a 'general M11 freezing discussion' in another. To take one YouTuber 'there are hundreds of posts on Leica forums about M11's freezing' so partly true but misrepresenting us given the likely stats above.

I deeply sympathise if you are one of the unlucky ones to have a freezing camera but if the above stats are roughly true and there have been c100 actually posts regarding M11/P's freezing since launch it puts a rather different perspective on it, however, I haven't the will to go through all 1,787 posts but maybe Leica has done just that. I've now been to 4 Leica events since the M11 was launched and I've only had one person tell me that they've had a freeze with their M11, again I know it's a small sample and anecdotal etc etc but by logging freezes with serial numbers in one thread the most important outcome being it might enable people to spot any patterns, help Leica, get a resolution for those that have the anguish of a very expensive faulty camera.

Anyhow I've probably said enough on this now but we could always have a dialogue with Leica about how best to deal with this sort of thing in the future so that camera's and firmware can be fixed much quicker!

[londond]

On 11/17/2023 at 3:47 PM, londond said:

No, will give that a try…thanks for the suggestion. 🤞

Gave it a try, freeze after about 40 frames - but appreciate your taking the time to share the idea…

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[Derbyshire Man]

I bought a new M11-P and managed to get a whole 200 frames in before the first freeze and loss of frame. Not ideal. Additionally the 'as new' second hand summilux 35 ASPH FLE isn't sharp at infinity either (at any aperture).

Not entirely impressed with the circa £10,000 purchase!

Running latest firmware and other lenses (voigt 35 1.4 classic II and voigt 50mm nokton 1.2 are totally sharp)