M11 freeze, almost sure it is battery-related

[Svet]

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I was waiting for new firmware hoping that my freeze issues will be resolved. Yesterday had another freeze 😞 but it seems that finally I found the root of this issue. 

To reproduce the freeze I do the following:

- the battery is 100% charged
- let camera go to power save mode
- do a quick full press 
- the camera freezes, and the only way to use it again is to remove and reinsert the battery; happens with and without SD card

If I first wake-up the camera with gentle half press and then take a picture with full press everything is ok. This is almost 100% reproducible with battery at 100%. However if the battery is at 60-70% everything is working well and above process is not reproducible.

Just wrote to Leica and waiting for their answer. Meanwhile, have you seen anything similar? Could you try to reproduce it? 

 

[colint544]

Just tried that, with firmware 2.1.1, and a 95% charge, but no freeze.

[kiwidad]

1 hour ago, Svet said:

I was waiting for new firmware hoping that my freeze issues will be resolved. Yesterday had another freeze 😞 but it seems that finally I found the root of this issue. 

To reproduce the freeze I do the following:

- the battery is 100% charged
- let camera go to power save mode
- do a quick full press 
- the camera freezes, and the only way to use it again is to remove and reinsert the battery; happens with and without SD card

If I first wake-up the camera with gentle half press and then take a picture with full press everything is ok. This is almost 100% reproducible with battery at 100%. However if the battery is at 60-70% everything is working well and above process is not reproducible.

Just wrote to Leica and waiting for their answer. Meanwhile, have you seen anything similar? Could you try to reproduce it? 

 

I experienced a couple of freezes where I tried to use my finger like a motor drive, push push push as action occurred in rapid succession. Similar kinda problem. I think the new update will fix it it from the description in the release. Once the day begins I'll have to try that agina dn see what happen under the new firmware

[Svet]

39 minutes ago, colint544 said:

Just tried that, with firmware 2.1.1, and a 95% charge, but no freeze.

Thank you for trying. Let's hope it is just my battery and not the camera.

[bilbrown]

15 hours ago, kiwidad said:

I experienced a couple of freezes where I tried to use my finger like a motor drive, push push push as action occurred in rapid succession. Similar kinda problem. I think the new update will fix it it from the description in the release. Once the day begins I'll have to try that agina dn see what happen under the new firmware

Aha! Yes this is what I do and it seems to freeze my camera. I upgraded to the new FW 2.1.1 and hope it's fixed but, otherwise I have made my own fix to where my freezes are much more infrequent. 

I was told by one of the Akadamie reps the M11 doesn't like jamming the shutter like the M10/M240 did (actually said just don't do it). However in my experience, this seems to be radically different in the different resolutions (18MP, 36MP and 60MP.) Could this be the older processor in the M11?

Now, when I am in a situation where I think I need to do that I put it into another mode and typically at 36MP or even 18MP because I think the buffer of the Mastro II processor won't pull those larger files like that (this is not an issue with the SL3 and the newer Mastro III processor however, but there are other issues with it like a sliding scale of 14bit to 8bit files at the speedier shutters, not what I am looking for!)

On my M11-P I think of 60MP as my "studio mode" and frankly, don't need it very often anyway. When you think of it as the "hero" shots or where you need to crop, then it figures your mind to change it as need be. Not rely on the larger MP count.

 

Yes, it's unfortunate. But I would rather get A SHOT at ANY resolution than have to stop and pop the battery and miss the millisecond I had to get that one shot.

Edited May 26, 2024 by bilbrown
clarity

[elmars]

Am 25.5.2024 um 11:37 schrieb Svet:

To reproduce the freeze I do the following:

- the battery is 100% charged
- let camera go to power save mode
- do a quick full press 
- the camera freezes, and the only way to use it again is to remove and reinsert the battery; happens with and without SD card

I cannot replicate that with the M11-P at 100 % battery and 2 minutes auto power off.

[lct]

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On 5/25/2024 at 11:37 AM, Svet said:

[...] it seems that finally I found the root of this issue.
To reproduce the freeze I do the following:
- the battery is 100% charged
- let camera go to power save mode
- do a quick full press
- the camera freezes, and the only way to use it again is to remove and reinsert the battery; happens with and without SD card [...]
[...] have you seen anything similar? Could you try to reproduce it?

I can't seem to reproduce this issue under firmware 2.1.1 on my 2022 M11 with 100% full battery and 2 minute auto power off, sorry. You may wish to try my tip 7 below if it is of any interest to you.

https://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/357248-m11-freeze-issues-merged/?do=findComment&comment=5304935

 

[Svet]

10 minutes ago, lct said:

I can't seem to reproduce this issue under firmware 2.1.1 on my 2022 M11 with 100% full battery and 2 minute auto power off, sorry. You may wish to try my tip 7 below if it is of any interest to you.

https://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/357248-m11-freeze-issues-merged/?do=findComment&comment=5304935

 

Thank you for trying to reproduce the problem. I never use User Profiles actually but will play with them ... who knows. Also this week new battery will arrive and will test with it, I really hope it is battery and not camera problem. 

[Svet]

Thanks everybody for trying to reproduce the issue. When I wrote the first post, for me it was possible to reproduce it at almost 100%. Since then received a new batter and it is not reproducible anymore. After full discharge/recharge of the original it works well too. So, mystery is not solved. Maybe something was (temporary) wrong with my original battery?

It should not be the problem but up to now I was using Apple-branded USB-C charger. This time used the M11-included adapter and cable. 

[Xavi]

Hello,

it happens to me too. It happens to me with the battery below 75% and after having been put to sleep several times. It's usually happened to me on the fifth time.

I'm going to test if it's a battery issue

[geoffc60]

My M11 has never experienced any anomaly whatsoever. Perfect.

[ianforber]

I’m not sure this is the same issue or a related one. As it’s the first glitch I’ve had with my M11 I thought it worth reporting. Sorry for the length of this post  

A few weeks ago, after switching the camera on to check the battery level, the rear screen showed “SD Card Error” with an OK button underneath. Press the button and the warning went away and the camera behaved normally, including capturing images on the card. I can’t remember now whether there were any images on the SD card that I had downloaded to my Mac first before switching the camera on in the first place, or whether I had formatted the card in camera immediately beforehand and switched the camera back on to see the error message. I definitely then took the card out, reinserted it and formatted it in camera. Problem went away. The camera had the latest firmware and the battery was around 50%. I was not taking pictures at the time so only shot a handful to check that the camera was working

I decided to replace the card and bought an identical one - a Sandisk Extreme Pro 300MB/s 64GB. In both cases I bought them direct from the western digital website. I put the new one in the camera, formatted it, checked it worked. All good. 

Today the problem reoccurred with the new card. This was the first time I had used the camera for real since the new card had been inserted and formatted. I was using the camera with around 50% battery charge. Initially, I used it for a handful of shots with exposures of around 1/320s. I then put it on a tripod to take longer exposures for infrared shots, using FOTOS to remotely operate the camera, with ISO varying from 64 to 2000 and with exposures no longer than 4s. After taking the camera off the tripod and wandering off to buy a coffee and sit down to review the pictures. The camera had gone to sleep and when I pressed play it said the battery was dead and needed to be replaced. This was despite FOTOS showing that there was 35% battery remaining when I took the camera off the tripod. 

I replaced the battery with one that had been sat in the bag for ages and was at 90% rather than 100% charge. Switched the camera on and got the SD card error again. This time, after pressing the OK button on the rear screen the camera appeared to behave normally but was not saving the images to the hard drive. Switched it off, waited a couple of minutes, switched it back on and all back to normal. 

So, it’s not a freeze, just an annoying glitch. I’m currently charging up the batteries to 100% to see if that helps. Both batteries have cycled through 100% to around 5% charge about 10 times each so I’m assuming they are taking a full charge when they claim to. Here’s hoping that fixes the glitch!

[Mr. Protocol]

My M11-P has only once frozen repeatedly.  I've had one or two (no more than that) freezes at odd times, but this one shoot I was doing outside on a sheltered balcony in 90º heat, it froze at least four times.  It seems to freeze at the point where the camera is reading the optical code on the lens.  I think, just possibly, that it's getting a bad value, is trying to look up the bad value in the camera's internal lens table, and shooting off into memory la-la land.  Just a theory.  Next time it happens I'm going to try removing the lens, cleaning the optical markers and the photodiodes, and see if that helps.

 

FWIW I think the camera's firmware has no internal protection against jumping off into a random memory address, so every single bug that causes this will freeze the camera.  Hence I think the most recent firmware update probably did fix one or several such bugs, but more remain.  Cameras by other manufacturers appear to catch the exception and deal with it.

[JohnQ]

I find this an interesting suggestion re. feezing. The only Leica lens I use is a legacy uncoded one otherwise my lenses are all Voigtländer and Zeiss which are also uncoded. I have never had a freeze.