Q3: The Last Leica Product I Will Ever Buy (**Jump ahead to post #141 by the OP**)

[Aram Langhans]

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2 hours ago, fotografr said:

Well, it does pay to have an established relationship with an authorized dealer. I've just had a very pleasant conversation about my problem and they have agreed to provide me with the next one they receive as a replacement. Fingers crossed that it comes soon as is a good one. 🙂 

Good news.  Hopefully the wait will not be too long and the new camera will be dust free..

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[gotium]

7 hours ago, fotografr said:

Well, it does pay to have an established relationship with an authorized dealer. I've just had a very pleasant conversation about my problem and they have agreed to provide me with the next one they receive as a replacement. Fingers crossed that it comes soon as is a good one. 🙂 

I’d definitely replace it. Even if it doesn’t bother you now, it will if you ever want to sell it.

[student]

On 5/20/2024 at 12:32 AM, fotografr said:

Where is the quality control we pay a premium price for?

 

There was a time (as in "once upon a time ..") that the reason Leica was the preferred choice was because the logo guaranteed quality workmanship. And made in Germany were bywords for top notch quality. Sorry to see these assurances vanish, and the Leica logo reduced to just a logo, desirable now for its past association with great photographers or a high end fashion accessory.

Of course commercial reasons may well explain these shifts 

[lct]

4 hours ago, student said:

There was a time (as in "once upon a time ..") that the reason Leica was the preferred choice was because the logo guaranteed quality workmanship

Just a myth if you asked me. This once upon a time era did exist before the M5 debacle which coincided more or less with the ridiculous (to me) red logo which appeared first on the M4-2. Has been the beginning of QC issues if memory serves and the once upon a time era did not come again since then. Just the feeling i had personally and i kept rightly or wrongly until now.

Edited May 21, 2024 by lct

[Mute-on]

50 minutes ago, lct said:

Just a myth if you asked me. This once upon a time era did exist before the M5 debacle which coincided more or less with the ridiculous (to me) red logo which appeared first on the M4-2. Has been the beginning of QC issues if memory serves and the once upon a time era did not come again since then. Just the feeling i had personally and i kept rightly or wrongly until now.

Interestingly, while having my BP M4 overhauled at Kanto camera in Japan I asked them why I was experiencing a (very minor) issue with it. Their response: “it’s not an M2”. This led me to understand that they consider the M2/M3 to be the high point in manufacturing quality.  

Edited May 21, 2024 by Mute-on

[warth man]

I've been following this thread for a couple of days and finally got twitched enough to check out my Q2M this morning.  I didn't have the benefit of a clear sky but one with an area of what I call "thread clouds" or wisps, to which I added a couple of shots of a clear white screen.  I have two dust bunnies, or what I have been calling dust bunnies.  One is what I call a normal size i.e the same as I find on my ILC cameras.  The other is about quarter to half that size, both in the same spots each time.  Both are blurry, "shadow" circles as usual (best way I can describe dust bunnies).  As I had only been following the thread without signing in until this morning, I had not seen the sample photographs until now.  I had not been looking for the very small, sharper spots that are in the OP's images so I've just gone back to mine.  There are some tiny dark dots in the sky pics but they do not appear in the same places and I cannot see them on the white screen shots.  I'm only an amateur so I'm curious now - would dust spots on the sensor not be much more blurred?   

I should add that I'm still happy with my Q2M.

 

[lct]

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Edited May 21, 2024 by lct

[fotografr]

4 hours ago, warth man said:

I've been following this thread for a couple of days and finally got twitched enough to check out my Q2M this morning.  I didn't have the benefit of a clear sky but one with an area of what I call "thread clouds" or wisps, to which I added a couple of shots of a clear white screen.  I have two dust bunnies, or what I have been calling dust bunnies.  One is what I call a normal size i.e the same as I find on my ILC cameras.  The other is about quarter to half that size, both in the same spots each time.  Both are blurry, "shadow" circles as usual (best way I can describe dust bunnies).  As I had only been following the thread without signing in until this morning, I had not seen the sample photographs until now.  I had not been looking for the very small, sharper spots that are in the OP's images so I've just gone back to mine.  There are some tiny dark dots in the sky pics but they do not appear in the same places and I cannot see them on the white screen shots.  I'm only an amateur so I'm curious now - would dust spots on the sensor not be much more blurred?   

I should add that I'm still happy with my Q2M.

 

I think the way the dust spots appear in you images depends on the size of the particle. A very tiny one won't appear blurred until you greatly enlarge it. A large dust particle will appear as a blurry spot.

If you shoot at apertures of f5.6 and larger, chances are you'll never even notice anything in your images. Fortunately, with that Summilux f1.7 lens, you can get along quite nicely at the larger apertures. 

[warth man]

I hadn't noticed a thing until those test shots this morning.  They were taken at f16 and ISO 100.  I do normally use wider apertures with the Q2M so hopefully I'll just carry on at that.  I think the lens is amazing.  

[Barralad]

On a tangent to this discussion I ordered my first Leica on Sunday (Q3) from the UK Leica Online Store. Today I opened the box only to find they’d sent me a Q2 Monochrom. Not the best first impression, I have to say. Maybe standards are dropping all over the place?

[jaapv]

For me - I would keep it 😇🤪

[Barralad]

Too late….the Q3 is already on its way. To be fair to the Leica store they’ve handled the situation very efficiently and a shout-out to Yumi at Leica Online UK who dealt with it most graciously. 

[coleica]

10 hours ago, lct said:

Just a myth if you asked me. This once upon a time era did exist before the M5 debacle which coincided more or less with the ridiculous (to me) red logo which appeared first on the M4-2. Has been the beginning of QC issues if memory serves and the once upon a time era did not come again since then. Just the feeling i had personally and i kept rightly or wrongly until now.

The M6 from 1985 had/has electronic issues with the light meter and the hot shoe.  A few weeks ago an old timer saw my M6 and immediately asked to see the S/N.  When asked, I was told the s/n below a certain number were known to have issues (can't remember the specific cause) resolved later in the production life of the camera.  Was it the M9 (2009) had corrosion issues which required a recall??? 

Leica is a small independently owned company which does not have the financial resources of Sony, Canon, Nikon, etc...  to test/simulate all possible failure modes.  Also, although Leica takes pride in their cameras being "hand made/assembled", the reality is when it comes to qc and repeatability humans cannot compete with automated robots.  I used to work for a manufacturing facility.  Out of necessity we hand inspected our final products.  From a statistical point of view, the best you can hope for is for a human to catch 90% of the defective products being shipped.

[LocalHero1953]

51 minutes ago, Barralad said:

Too late….the Q3 is already on its way. To be fair to the Leica store they’ve handled the situation very efficiently and a shout-out to Yumi at Leica Online UK who dealt with it most graciously. 

Pleased to know Yumi is still there. Towards the end of 2020 with another lockdown about to start, she pulled out all the stops to get me a SL2-S from Germany and swapped it (no price difference) for the SL2 I'd bought three months earlier. I was told it was ready for collection: I travelled to London to pick it up around 5.30pm the next day - the day after we were all in lockdown! Full marks.

[jaapv]

7 hours ago, coleica said:

The M6 from 1985 had/has electronic issues with the light meter and the hot shoe.  A few weeks ago an old timer saw my M6 and immediately asked to see the S/N.  When asked, I was told the s/n below a certain number were known to have issues (can't remember the specific cause) resolved later in the production life of the camera.  Was it the M9 (2009) had corrosion issues which required a recall??? 

Leica is a small independently owned company which does not have the financial resources of Sony, Canon, Nikon, etc...  to test/simulate all possible failure modes.  Also, although Leica takes pride in their cameras being "hand made/assembled", the reality is when it comes to qc and repeatability humans cannot compete with automated robots.  I used to work for a manufacturing facility.  Out of necessity we hand inspected our final products.  From a statistical point of view, the best you can hope for is for a human to catch 90% of the defective products being shipped.

I‘ve said it time and time again - on a mass production assembly line you can pull one in thousand products and test it to destruction as any fault will be systematic. Humans make random mistakes so you would have to test every single camera by dismantling in a hand production process. 
 

[frame-it]

9 hours ago, coleica said:

Leica takes pride in their cameras being "hand made/assembled", the reality is when it comes to qc and repeatability humans cannot compete with automated robots

don't hear about many issues with the X series [Apparently, handmade in Sweden ]

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[SLamb]

1 hour ago, jaapv said:

I‘ve said it time and time again - on a mass production assembly line you can pull one in thousand products and test it to destruction as any fault will be systematic. Humans make random mistakes so you would have to test every single camera by dismantling in a hand production process. 
 

I agree that it would be impractical to test every unit that comes off the production line. 

However, when I'm paying a high price for a premium product that is regarded by the manufacturer as being of the highest possible quality, I expect at the very least that a fundamental such as ensuring a dust free environment to assemble the Q3 would be in place. 

I am astonished that Leica has the dust on the sensor issue that has permitted Q3s to leave the factory and get into the hands of customers.  Yes, sensors can get dust on them, but for £5K I expect a fixed lens camera to start life with absolutely no dust on it.

[JohnW.]

2 hours ago, frame-it said:

don't hear about many issues with the X series [Apparently, handmade in Sweden ]

Ask X1D owners about dodgy thumbwheels (skipping and/or just not working).  Mine had to be returned twice and was only fixed when both front and rear thumbwheels were replaced with an updated version.

Edited May 22, 2024 by JohnW.

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[bobtodrick]

2 hours ago, SLamb said:

I agree that it would be impractical to test every unit that comes off the production line. 

However, when I'm paying a high price for a premium product that is regarded by the manufacturer as being of the highest possible quality, I expect at the very least that a fundamental such as ensuring a dust free environment to assemble the Q3 would be in place. 

I am astonished that Leica has the dust on the sensor issue that has permitted Q3s to leave the factory and get into the hands of customers.  Yes, sensors can get dust on them, but for £5K I expect a fixed lens camera to start life with absolutely no dust on it.

Actually there is no such thing as completely dust free.

While it is theoretically possible that a room has no dust particles, in manufacturing, clean rooms are classified by the maximum allowable amount of given particle sizes that are allowable per cubic foot or cubic meter of air. There are at least two classification systems, the US system, where numbers referred to the maximum number of “greater than 0.5 nanometer particles” per cubic foot (e.g. A “class 1000” room would have no more than 1,000 greater-than 0.5 nanometer particles per cubic foot) , and the ISO system, which just uses a number range and corresponding chart to measure max particles per cubic meter. 

[frame-it]

3 minutes ago, JohnW. said:

Ask X1D owners about dodgy thumbwheels (skipping and/or just not working).  Mine had to be returned twice and was only fixed when both front and rear thumbwheels were replaced with an updated version.

and the X2D as well?