Do You Have A Trouble Free M11 or M11M?

[lct]

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1 minute ago, Smogg said:

Even the M11's problems with the terrible magenta cast faded into the background. Leica give us the opportunity to roll back to the previous firmware and don’t do anything else so as not to break it

Thanks no thanks. The current firmware works perfectly for me. BTW this is not a thread for complainers, there are plenty of them in this very forum already.

[DadDadDaddyo]

Exactly one freeze for my M11, way, way back when (....unless I'm forgetting something... but... if it's freezing and I don't remember, what's the problem? After all, they say the memory is the second thing to go. What's the first, you ask? Umm....Gimme a sec....)

No problems with subsequent firmware. And I use Fotos whenever I want to transport a shot quickly to my phone. No problems. 

My M11M has frozen exactly never. 

My M10M froze maybe three times during the period of my heavy use of it, but, again, only in the early days. 

The one thing in common among all of my freezes? I wanted to see a shot RIGHT NOW, so I powered on the camera, then mashed the PLAY button with my thumb before the red light went out. 

And even that resulted only in the freezes listed above.

Corrupt card?

Corrupt camera?

Corrupt company?

I just don't see a scandal here. 

I mean, the gearboxes in a car may make a grinding noise if one tries to shift before the clutch pedal is fully depressed. (...Interestingly, this seemed to happen more frequently for me very early on... maybe they did an over-the-air firmware update of the 4 speed manual transmission in my '74 Super Beetle without me knowing it. But at least the company took responsibility for their screw-ups.....)

But seriously,

Yet again, I invite readers of this forum to enter the name of ANY digital camera make and model into Google, followed by the word 'freezes', or 'frozen' or 'froze' (you get the idea....), then hit ENTER, and see what turns up....

... it may be eye-opening....

[fotografr]

9 hours ago, tuna said:

Almost two years of regular to heavy use - no problems. Haven’t updated the last 2 or 3 times an update was released. 

So you're on 1.6.1?

[tuna]

53 minutes ago, fotografr said:

So you're on 1.6.1?

1.6.0. I remember doing one update soon after I got the camera. It performs well and does all I ask, which isn’t all that much. When using it I am still having to conform my shooting habits to the slow reaction time coming awake from sleeping but that is just normal for the camera, not a glitch in software…

Edited March 2, 2024 by tuna

[fotografr]

6 hours ago, DadDadDaddyo said:

Exactly one freeze for my M11, way, way back when (....unless I'm forgetting something... but... if it's freezing and I don't remember, what's the problem? After all, they say the memory is the second thing to go. What's the first, you ask? Umm....Gimme a sec....)

No problems with subsequent firmware. And I use Fotos whenever I want to transport a shot quickly to my phone. No problems. 

My M11M has frozen exactly never. 

My M10M froze maybe three times during the period of my heavy use of it, but, again, only in the early days. 

The one thing in common among all of my freezes? I wanted to see a shot RIGHT NOW, so I powered on the camera, then mashed the PLAY button with my thumb before the red light went out. 

And even that resulted only in the freezes listed above.

Corrupt card?

Corrupt camera?

Corrupt company?

I just don't see a scandal here. 

I mean, the gearboxes in a car may make a grinding noise if one tries to shift before the clutch pedal is fully depressed. (...Interestingly, this seemed to happen more frequently for me very early on... maybe they did an over-the-air firmware update of the 4 speed manual transmission in my '74 Super Beetle without me knowing it. But at least the company took responsibility for their screw-ups.....)

But seriously,

Yet again, I invite readers of this forum to enter the name of ANY digital camera make and model into Google, followed by the word 'freezes', or 'frozen' or 'froze' (you get the idea....), then hit ENTER, and see what turns up....

... it may be eye-opening....

Nobody has alleged scandal. There have been lots of suggestions that Leica are perhaps in over their heads with digital technology, but the words "scandal"  and "corrupt" suggest intent,  whichi don't think anybody on the forum has been alleging. 

I did take your suggestion about doing a Google search for other digital cameras along with variations of "freeze ups," and you are exactly right. I was unable to find any cameras that didn't have this problem. The primary question is whether these are isolated incidents or widespread. With the M11, they do seem exceedingly common. That was the main purpose of this thread--to try to determine the extent of the problems. 

Where you and I disagree, I think, is that you imply the errors are mostly caused by users. I think the fault is in software and hardware deficiencies. A lot of M11 owners on this forum who are having problems are advanced users, as well as software and electrical engineers. They aren't first timers who don't know how to use digital cameras. 

Edited March 2, 2024 by fotografr

[lct]

12 hours ago, lct said:

[...] 2 examples: my good old Tele-Elmar 135/4 and a clone of the Summicron 50/2 v5, the Hexanon 50/2 in M mount. I have setup a user profile for them in which lens detection and dust protection are set to off. This way, each time i use those lenses the camera sets itself lens detection and dust protection to off. [...]

For those interested, this works fine with other lenses too. I have currently an uncoded Summilux 35/1.4 v2 on my M11. The status screen says "Uncoded" and the dust protection is off the same way as for the Tele-Elmar and the Hexanon.

Edited March 2, 2024 by lct

[thrid]

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M11 / #5673xxx / Firmware 2.02

So, far so good. Never had a freeze.

The only weirdness I have experienced was one occasion where it said that the internal 64GB was full after a half dozen shots. After I reformatted internal storage it went away and everything has been fine since.

[Chris_Jenks]

I used to experience frequent freezes with all my 3 lenses (Super Elmar 21mm, Summicron 35 & 50mm) all bought new in the last 6 months. About 2 months ago I installed the SD Card Formatter App on my MacBook Pro and started formatting my cards on the computer, then again in camera. This lowered the incidence of freezes, but I still experienced the odd one. I then tried switching from SanDisk to Lexar cards about a month ago (2000X v90 XCII 128GB) and since then have only had one freeze in about 1,000 shots. 

[Stef63]

More than 2 years of M11 ownership: zero freezes, zero corrupt DNGs. This cannot be said of my previous digital M’s (M10, M240, M9 and all the Monochromes except the M11M, which I do not have). 

Edited March 3, 2024 by Stef63

[lct]

7 minutes ago, Chris_Jenks said:

I used to experience frequent freezes with all my 3 lenses (Super Elmar 21mm, Summicron 35 & 50mm) all bought new in the last 6 months. About 2 months ago I installed the SD Card Formatter App on my MacBook Pro and started formatting my cards on the computer, then again in camera. This lowered the incidence of freezes, but I still experienced the odd one. I then tried switching from SanDisk to Lexar cards about a month ago (2000X v90 XCII 128GB) and since then have only had one freeze in about 1,000 shots. 

Interesting thank you. May i ask if you tried to format a card with SD Card Formatter only?

[Derbyshire Man]

If you'd asked me this question two weeks ago I'd have said 'trouble free', once I used internal memory etc. Initially I'd had 1 in 100 shots freeze. Then 9,000 freeze free!

And then last week a whole set of freezes and lost files, in one bout for no apparent reason/change of settings/behaviour on my/camera's part.

What I find annoying is that at some point Leica will come up with the M12, it may be better and freeze free, due to all of the issues with the M11 people will be exhorted to steer clear of the M11, significantly impacting potentially on re-sale value of the M11. The consumer is therefore taking a loss due to manufacturer failure.

UK law is that a product warranty is not a fixed 12 or 24 months but has an expectation of lifespan related to cost. A £10 heater which breaks after 13 months is dead but a £8000 camera which cannot reliably do what it was designed to do will remain the problem of the manufacturer for 6 years and I totally intend to hold them to it. Via the courts if needed.

That said I've actually only had a limited number of freezes.

Edited March 3, 2024 by Derbyshire Man

[lct]

16 hours ago, fotografr said:

[...] Where you and I disagree, I think, is that you imply the errors are mostly caused by users. I think the fault is in software and hardware deficiencies. A lot of M11 owners on this forum who are having problems are advanced users, as well as software and electrical engineers. They aren't first timers who don't know how to use digital cameras. 

Yes but with all due respect, some (all?) of them tend to behave like beta testers more so than mere users. They try to push the camera into fault more so than looking for concrete solutions. This can be useful, I've been beta testing (on the M240) myself, but it can give the impression that the camera has more drawbacks than it does for normal users. As for errors mostly caused by users, i think it is true too, otherwise i could not explain why some of us have no problem with their camera, aside from the faulty hardware theory. The main criticism I'd level at Leica is that they seem unable to foresee these errors, as they should be able to avoid them. YMMV 😎

Edited March 3, 2024 by lct

[Chris_Jenks]

1 hour ago, lct said:

Interesting thank you. May i ask if you tried to format a card with SD Card Formatter only?

Hi, no I haven’t tried that. I might do if I experience more freezes. At the moment things are acceptable. 

[fotografr]

3 hours ago, lct said:

Yes but with all due respect, some (all?) of them tend to behave like beta testers more so than mere users. They try to push the camera into fault more so than looking for concrete solutions. This can be useful, I've been beta testing (on the M240) myself, but it can give the impression that the camera has more drawbacks than it does for normal users. As for errors mostly caused by users, i think it is true too, otherwise i could not explain why some of us have no problem with their camera, aside from the faulty hardware theory. The main criticism I'd level at Leica is that they seem unable to foresee these errors, as they should be able to avoid them. YMMV 😎

Faulty hardware is more than just a theory. Let's go back to the M8 days. My first M8 arrived, one of the first ones in the US. I charged the battery, inserted my SD card, inserted the battery and went outside to shoot. I put the camera to my eye. Dead. Nothing would bring it back. I return it to my dealer in Germany and he sends me another. I go through the same process and the camera works for about 20 shots, then dies. Again, nothing will bring it back. I return it and get a third camera from the dealer. This one works for two weeks, then the same thing happens. By this time I'm working with the chief engineers in Wetzlar because the same thing is being reported by several other M8 users. My camera went in for a complete tear down and after a couple more weeks I'm notified that the problem has been diagnosed. Leica had received a shipment of faulty transistors. I don't know how many cameras were eventually replaced, but there were a lot of very unhappy customers. 

The point is, these things go happen with hardware issues and can be difficult to diagnose. A user should not be able to brick a camera simply by turning it on and using it as instructed. 

[lct]

The faulty hardware theory is just that, a theory or an hypothesis so far. For now, 2 years after its launch, nobody knows if there is any hardware issue with the M11. The next firmware update will prove that here is none hopefully. Will be its only merit for me as i don't need it personally but if it can help others, so much the better  👏

[fotografr]

6 hours ago, lct said:

The faulty hardware theory is just that, a theory or an hypothesis so far. For now, 2 years after its launch, nobody knows if there is any hardware issue with the M11. The next firmware update will prove that here is none hopefully. Will be its only merit for me as i don't need it personally but if it can help others, so much the better  👏

True, it's only a theory with the M11. It was an acknowledged fact with the M8. For the M11, nobody knows the answer yet. If it is a firmware issue, I would think two years would be sufficient to figure it out.

For the past two days, as suggested in a prior comment, I've been doing Google searches for camera freeze ups with every Canon, Nikon, Fuji and Sony digital I can think of and I have yet to find any camera where they haven't been reported. It seems a lot of the problems can be traced back to users NOT formatting their SD cards in the camera prior to the first use. 

One suggestion I'd make based on reading many freeze up stories is that the SD card should be formatted in the computer with SD Card Formatter, then formatted in the camera before attempting to shoot anything for the first time. With the M11, it also seems prudent to format the internal memory prior to the first use. 

Edited March 3, 2024 by fotografr

[lct]

34 minutes ago, fotografr said:

[...] One suggestion I'd make based on reading many freeze up stories is that the SD card should be formatted in the computer with SD Card Formatter, then formatted in the camera before attempting to shoot anything for the first time. With the M11, it also seems prudent to format the internal memory prior to the first use.

About SD Card Formatter, i've been suggesting its use since 2014 for the M240. It did allow to reduce startup times by 2 seconds in average. Since then i use it for all my SD cards on all my cameras. It did nothing useful for my M8.2 though, i don't know why.

Edited March 3, 2024 by lct

[Ray Harrison]

A trouble-free M11 here, no freezes, no corrupt DNGs, FW 2.0.2, in my hands since June 2022. ProGrade Digital v90 ii 300r memory cards, always formatted in camera.

—Ray

[jgeenen]

My M11 is 12 months old, started with FW 1.6.1 and now on 2.0.2. Using Lexar UHS-II 64GB card that I used on my M10 before (usually deleting pics in camera after reinserting). Using Bluetooth/GPS always and Visoflex occasionally. Lenses between 21 and 90mm, partly original and partly hand-coded. No freezes, no exposure issues, works like a clockwork.

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[lct]

On 3/3/2024 at 12:30 PM, Derbyshire Man said:

UK law is that a product warranty is not a fixed 12 or 24 months but has an expectation of lifespan related to cost. A £10 heater which breaks after 13 months is dead but a £8000 camera which cannot reliably do what it was designed to do will remain the problem of the manufacturer for 6 years and I totally intend to hold them to it. Via the courts if needed.

Too bad i'm retired,i would gladly be your opponent. With this thread in my exhibits and the success of the M11 (link), i would defend the case pro bono 😄