Leica M11 / M11-M / M11-P: Firmware Update v.2.0.2

[Warton]

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11 hours ago, lct said:

Firmwares 1.6.1, 2.0.1 and 2.0.2 did work fine for me but the wandering focus point of firmware 1.6.1 was painful actually so please Mr Leica, if you have to downgrade, do it to firmware 2.0.1 instead. Also please include the dust protection function of firmware 2.0.2 that i find very good from this viewpoint.

dust protection is the silliest function I have ever seen.

why on earth would a living being ever change a lens without turning off the camera first? 🤣

[lct]

3 hours ago, Warton said:

[...] dust protection is the silliest function I have ever seen. why on earth would a living being ever change a lens without turning off the camera first? 🤣

 You mean silly for clever people like you, and clever for silly ones like me i guess. Firmware 2.0.2 was made for both of us in that it allows to toggle dust protection off and on at will. As explained above or elsewhere, i could not use some of my uncoded LTM to M adapters before firmware 2.0.2, due to the shutter being closed the way dust protection was implemented. Since firmware 2.0.2, i just toggle off dust protection for some uncoded lenses and/or adapters, while keeping it on for coded lenses and adapters. Excellent firmware update for this silly user👏

Edited December 24, 2023 by lct

[scott kirkpatrick]

Firmware 2.0.1 was very quickly followed by 2.0.2 because of a problem caught immediately after the M11-P's shipped (which, like it or not, greatly increased the test coverage).  Reducing the focus point's wandering in 2.0.x was certainly nice, but there was much more done in the cleanup to 2.0 in order to eliminate race conditions, each of which would affect some different user but most of which had not affected me.   

I did a few tests once I had loaded 2.0.2 and concluded that the glitches that occurred from shooting too soon after a transition like turning power on or switching from review back to shooting were now confined to the first second after power-on, where before I had seen them up to 3-5 seconds after a power-on.  While I am not usually in such a hurry, it's nice to see the guard band increase.

Edited December 24, 2023 by scott kirkpatrick

[hdmesa]

On 12/23/2023 at 9:19 PM, Warton said:

dust protection is the silliest function I have ever seen.

why on earth would a living being ever change a lens without turning off the camera first? 🤣

Saves about as much time as using capital letters with the shift key 🙃

In any case, It's not about being lazy, it's about being forgetful and/or for convenience. It's easy for some of us to forget to turn off the camera when changing a lens in the field (getting caught up in the moment for example). It's also helpful if you have fleeting light so you don't have to wait for the camera to reboot after changing the lens. 

[FlashGordonPhotography]

On 12/24/2023 at 8:31 AM, Al Brown said:

@jaapv you said somewhere you never update your M firmware unless absolutely necessary. The wise folks at Red Dot Miami have explained here why it is a smart thing to do always and every time - what I have been saying all along:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0pfPf6vHCZ/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
 

“When you buy a Leica Camera, what you are doing is not just paying for the thing that is in the box.
What you are paying for is the thing in the box plus a bunch of software engineers sitting in an office in Wetzlar who are consistently for the entire life cycle of that camera making it faster, more reliable and have new features. Leica does not just put out a camera and say “here you go” and done, they put out a camera and they continuously improve the camera with firmware. Now of course if there is bugs or stability problems firmware updates will fix it but they are not just introducing fixes, they are introducing major new features. If you have a M (latest or older) and you are shooting on older firmware, go online and update your firmware so you can take advantage of all new features. Because if you don’t, you are literally just throwing money away because you are paying the salaries of these engineers and you are not getting anything for it”
-- Josh Lehrer, Red Dot, Leica Miami

Red Dot is wrong.

I never expect for a firm to provide new features when I plonk down my cash. I just want it to work as advertised. Sure, it's nice to have features but any update can also introduce bugs that weren't there before and I don't always need the new features that are offered. If you don't want the features then don't update, especially if the camera works fine.

Once upon a time cameras were released with finished firmware and that's what you got. Then Fuji started providing updates to older models to keep feature parity, which was nice. But now what that's morphed into is cameras rushed and released with basically beta firmware full of bugs and missing features that should have been there from the start with the attitude that they're doing us a favour. My M240 was stable and remained that way. My M11 was worse after 2.0.1 than before. This is not ideal.

2.0.2 seems to have resolved my issues but it's obvious that they haven't for some. I don't think that's good enough.

Gordon

p.s. Oh, and the other systems I own, which is all of them, seem to be able to offer updates that almost never cause new issues and when they rarely do, it's days, not weeks for a fix. My X2D's updates have been rock solid. Same with my Canon's, Fuji's and Sony's (despite the woeful update process for Sony cameras). Leica just seems to offer a different set of bugs with each update.

[FlashGordonPhotography]

On 12/24/2023 at 3:19 PM, Warton said:

dust protection is the silliest function I have ever seen.

why on earth would a living being ever change a lens without turning off the camera first? 🤣

In 30 years as a working photographer, I don't remember turning the camera off when changing lenses, unless it was already off. That could mean missed shots at a wedding. Waiting for the damn thing to shut down and then start up.

Gordon

Edited December 26, 2023 by FlashGordonPhotography

[M11 for me]

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Am 24.12.2023 um 05:19 schrieb Warton:

dust protection is the silliest function I have ever seen.

why on earth would a living being ever change a lens without turning off the camera first? 🤣

Simpel reason: You just forget. 

[FlashGordonPhotography]

4 hours ago, Al Brown said:

But imagine never updating the x2D. You surely know what you would be missing, right? One would have to be outright bonkers not to go to 3.2 from the original FW and leave all the awesomeness behind. That is exactly what Red Dot boiz were talking about.

It seems they’re saying you should expect the updates as part of a purchase. I disagree. I bought my X2D cameras expecting nothing more than what was there. Yes I’m happy for the upgrades. I’d be happier to wait a month or two and have those things there on release day. I bought them as they were. Not as they might become.

Also with the X2D I’m more likely to trust the upgrade wont introduce new issues. Leica doesn’t have the same confidence with me.

I will say that at least Leica does have a beta test program. It’s not that they’re not trying to improve. They are. And they have. They’re just not quite there yet.

Gordon

Edited December 26, 2023 by FlashGordonPhotography

[Tailwagger]

...lost shot #5...  out of 25.  And again, first shot after boot.  And again, the file was correctly saved to the internal SD card.

Moral of the story is that if you care about avoiding the mishap, set IN=>SD and avoid, as they say in the infomercials, any future regret, as otherwise when they're gone, they're gone.

[lct]

18 hours ago, Tailwagger said:

...lost shot #5...  out of 25.  And again, first shot after boot.  And again, the file was correctly saved to the internal SD card.

Moral of the story is that if you care about avoiding the mishap, set IN=>SD and avoid, as they say in the infomercials, any future regret, as otherwise when they're gone, they're gone.

Do you mean the file was corrupt on the SSD in this case? If so, what happens if you backup memory to the SD card? Is the file corrupt on the SD card also then? Just curious and sorry if i missed something.

[Tailwagger]

On 12/28/2023 at 5:47 AM, lct said:

Do you mean the file was corrupt on the SSD in this case? If so, what happens if you backup memory to the SD card? Is the file corrupt on the SD card also then? Just curious and sorry if i missed something.

Sorry for the confusion... mentally the internal memory AFAIC is just a hardwired, non remove-able card. 

To be clear.. hopefully... when shooting in mirrored mode ([storage management]-> IN=SD), the shot stored internally has been good, while the one saved to the SD card was corrupted.  After wiping the SD card (the firmware prevents the corrupt file on SD from being overwritten) transferring the internal version file to SD card, pulling it and uploading to my MBP recovers the lost file.

So again, if you're shooting anything important with 2.0.x, regardless of whether or not you've suffered any file corruption, dual writes (storage management->IN=SD) are your friend. 

[jaapv]

On 12/24/2023 at 5:19 AM, Warton said:

dust protection is the silliest function I have ever seen.

why on earth would a living being ever change a lens without turning off the camera first? 🤣

Me, for instance. When in shooting mode I pay little attention to such details.

[M11 for me]

vor 10 Stunden schrieb jaapv:

Me, for instance. When in shooting mode I pay little attention to such details.

Absolutely. I forget to turn off my M11 all the time. 

[nrecob]

Quote

 

On 12/7/2023 at 1:45 AM, douglas fry said:

The files however are great, there was another photographer at the venue with Canon R6 and R5 and we compared images......Lets say the M11 files looked far far better even at 12500 ISO 

Would love to see those images side by side  

[douglas fry]

12 hours ago, nrecob said:

Would love to see those images side by side  

The most obvious difference was colour balance, the Canon's had a heavy colour cast, the M11 was like daylight and very quick to assess and process therefore. The other difference was size and weight.

[M11 for me]

Yes, of course, Canon has no Leica look!

Only odd photographers use Canon. That is how it was for many years 😄

Edited January 4, 2024 by M11 for me

[DBAUDUI1]

Hello,

I have updated my M11 from 1.6.1 to 2.0.2 through the SD card and it went flawlessly in les than 10 minutes. I am happy to use my 11 with this new release.

Best regards.

Dominique