shots upside down?

[marchyman]

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1 hour ago, Herr Barnack said:

I have experienced inverted files in Lightroom - files that were created with my M-P 240 and Q2.  This makes me suspect that Adobe has incorporated some  "improvement" ( 🙄 ) to Lightroom that is the culprit - or perhaps Lightroom code just does not work and play well with Leica code.

Don't guess.  Use something like exiftool and check the metadata in the original image.  The field is named "Orientation".  If the field reads

Orientation                     : Horizontal (normal)

and Lr shows it upside down it is a Lr issue.  Otherwise Lr is doing what the camera told it to do.

[LeicaR10]

Herr Banack,   One would think a company that has serious issues with a product would rethink where they are going, especially with technology that was never intended for a 75 year old manual camera.  Leica was doing pretty good initially with the digital M.  It found after several models, more is not better.  Hence IMO, the M10 was cleaned things up.  No video and several other things disappeared.  All very good decisions IMO.  Then someone or a group decided maybe during Covid times, the M11 could be a technology leap.  Yep...it leaped all right....IMO off the technology cliff.   I had to give up on the M11s...tried them all.  All found new homes.  I know some people have no issues and IMO those may or may not be the majority.  We will never know.  My choice and preference is now the M10-M and M10-R for M.  These have so far been the most reliable M cameras for me.  No issues for me.  Others may beg to differ and that is fine too.  I have written to Leica seniors and told them what I think and offered recommendations.  My correspondence was well received.  They know the M11 has firmware and hardware issues.  They are working hard to resolve them....but it gets back to basic questions.  Why did they field a camera that clearly was not ready for prime time.  I liken this to software companies what throw their products over the fence and let the users debug/find the flaws for them to fix.  In the case of digital camera manufacture, often the firmware can be the show stopper for successful fielding and sales.  All we can do is wait and see.  One of the things that IMO needs to go is the M11 shutter.  It needs a far better solution.  Followed by finally resolving the decade + camera freeze issue.  I know they are still working on that too.  Maybe they will decide to go back to the future and start over with the firmware from scratch.  Why do other camera companies not have camera freeze issues?  I do not know.  Again, Leica is a small company with a lot of smart, hard working employees who love what they do.  They just need to work a bit harder to finding solutions to the issues, bite the bullet(s) and if the camera design has too much "stuff" then dump the "stuff" and go back to basics.  At the end of the day, it is always:  Shutter speed, aperture, and ISO to create a photograph...oh and a creative, visionary mind that knows how to use the tool in hand.   Just my two cents.   r/ Mark

Edited January 13 by LeicaR10

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[Herr Barnack]

@LeicaR10 Very well said - it is encouraging that the brass at Leica received your communication and recommendations with open minds. 

I agree with you that ditching video recording was the right move - and the M11's shutter needs to go.  IMHO it doesn't get better than the shutter in my M10M.  I would like to see that shutter mechanism make a return in the M12, but it is apparently not compatible with off the sensor metering.  Off the sensor metering is not the holy grail and could be set aside.  What is the holy grail?  100% reliability - which is sadly missing from the M11 series cameras. 

As you have observed, the M11's dysfunctional firmware and hardware must be resolved for M11 owners - and it must not be carried over into the M12.  If that happens, perhaps there is hope for the M12 after all. 

Edited January 13 by Herr Barnack

[LeicaR10]

Herr Barnack,  Agree.  IMO, the best shutter for an M12 would be similar to the SL2 shutter.  In the SL cameras that shutter is reliable and simply works.  Whether an M12 could use a shutter of this type that includes IBIS, I do not know.  It would need to be engineered to fit in the M12 for sure.  Perhaps getting rid of "stuff", maybe a new and smaller mother board, totally rewritten from scratch firmware would be a good start.  The other ideas would be to get some of the Panasonic engineers to help work with the Leica engineers to start fresh, and perhaps by working together they would either find what is wrong with the current design or simply build a reliable M12 together from the ground up.  Guess we will see what happens with a M12.   r/ Mark

Edited January 14 by LeicaR10

[LanceR]

When I had this happen to me I took a few steps.  I use Capture One for my normal workflow, so I verified the files on the SD using other tools.  The images were inverted.  I put the SD card back into the camera, and the same images were inverted.

For my case, it is clear that it happened at the time I captured the image.

It has not happened since.