Official Leica Statement: Leica SL3 Issues

[LocalHero1953]

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This is a camera, not a high performance jet aircraft. Should we treat it as if it will only work if it is used according to a tightly specified sequence of operations? Or should we treat it as a device that will be used in a variety of unstructured scenarios where any number of actions may have to be taken in order to achieve the objective: getting the picture? 

If the SL3 is known as a camera that will, for certain, lose images if you take a certain simple action in the heat of the moment, then its future in a segment of the market that I am sure Leica is targeting will be short. Fortunately, Leica realises that, as I would expect. (See post #1, again, since it keeps getting forgotten). 

[Simone_DF]

38 minutes ago, Jim B said:

Well Simone, they are working on it. And in the meantime, they are suggesting people use the camera according to the manual, which will avoid them loosing their images. I rarely have ever stood up for a company, but in this instance, I think that there are a lot of hard working people that put a lot of dedication into making this camera. I do not think it is fair to them to have people constantly bashing the product over user errors. 

 

That is NOT a user error, but a programming error made by the hard working people at Leica

[jaapv]

Umm. Hard to tell which kind of error. If I use a tool differently from the way it is described by the maker, whose fault is it?  If the maker designs in a way that precludes reasonable use, whose fault is it?  And what is reasonable use anyway?  Opinions can differ. 

[jaapv]

27 minutes ago, LocalHero1953 said:

This is a camera, not a high performance jet aircraft. Should we treat it as if it will only work if it is used according to a tightly specified sequence of operations? Or should we treat it as a device that will be used in a variety of unstructured scenarios where any number of actions may have to be taken in order to achieve the objective: getting the picture? 

If the SL3 is known as a camera that will, for certain, lose images if you take a certain simple action in the heat of the moment, then its future in a segment of the market that I am sure Leica is targeting will be short. Fortunately, Leica realises that, as I would expect. (See post #1, again, since it keeps getting forgotten). 

And it is acceptable that they offer a temporary workaround and attempt to rectify the matter. But.  They have taken their time and are slow in resolving the matter. That should have been done much, much sooner. 

[LocalHero1953]

I have just read the SL3 manual. Among other matters, it advises:

• Do not use your camera in the immediate vicinity of devices that generate powerful magnetic, electrostatic or electromagnetic fields (e.g. induction ovens, microwave ovens, television sets or computer screens, video game consoles, cell phones, broadcasting equipment). Their electromagnetic fields can interfere with image capturing. [NB Computer screens and cell phones?]

• Using the camera near devices like microwave ovens or wireless phones that use the 2.4 GHz RF band may negatively affect the performance of both devices. [NB Keep away from wifi networks]

• Despite built-in safety circuits, you should avoid direct contact with external camera contacts like those in the flash shoe. [NB The SL/SL2/SL2-S cameras have no hot shoe cover - does the SL3?].

• The use of other chargers not approved by Leica Camera AG can cause damage to the batteries – and in extreme cases – cause serious or life-threatening injuries. [NB Are Nitecore chargers approved?]

• Any dust or dirt particles stuck to the glass cover of the sensor may result in noticeable dark stains or specks on the images (in system cameras). Alternatively, send your camera to the Leica Customer Care department for sensor cleaning. [NB No mention of cleaning the sensor yourself]

• Lithium-ion rechargeable batteries should only be stored partially charged, i.e. not fully depleted or fully charged. [NB Do not keep spare batteries fully charged?]

Hands up all those who diligently comply with all these recommendations.😁

Edited July 17, 2024 by LocalHero1953

[LocalHero1953]

12 minutes ago, jaapv said:

And it is acceptable that they offer a temporary workaround and attempt to rectify the matter. But.  They have taken their time and are slow in resolving the matter. That should have been done much, much sooner. 

I agree on all counts. I have no understanding of the coding that could lead to this problem, so I'm not in a position to blame Leica for it. I am certain this is not the way the camera was intended to behave. I'm more concerned that they acknowledge it as a problem and look to correct it - as they have.

I do have a problem, though, with those who call it user error. Or, in one case "perhaps they should stick with a film body as it seems they don’t have the mental capacity to use a digital body".

Edited July 17, 2024 by LocalHero1953

[jaapv]

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42 minutes ago, LocalHero1953 said:

I have just read the SL3 manual. Among other matters, it advises:

• Do not use your camera in the immediate vicinity of devices that generate powerful magnetic, electrostatic or electromagnetic fields (e.g. induction ovens, microwave ovens, television sets or computer screens, video game consoles, cell phones, broadcasting equipment). Their electromagnetic fields can interfere with image capturing. [NB Computer screens and cell phones?]

• Using the camera near devices like microwave ovens or wireless phones that use the 2.4 GHz RF band may negatively affect the performance of both devices. [NB Keep away from wifi networks]

• Despite built-in safety circuits, you should avoid direct contact with external camera contacts like those in the flash shoe. [NB The SL/SL2/SL2-S cameras have no hot shoe cover - does the SL3?].

• The use of other chargers not approved by Leica Camera AG can cause damage to the batteries – and in extreme cases – cause serious or life-threatening injuries. [NB Are Nitecore chargers approved?]

• Any dust or dirt particles stuck to the glass cover of the sensor may result in noticeable dark stains or specks on the images (in system cameras). Alternatively, send your camera to the Leica Customer Care department for sensor cleaning. [NB No mention of cleaning the sensor yourself]

• Lithium-ion rechargeable batteries should only be stored partially charged, i.e. not fully depleted or fully charged. [NB Do not keep spare batteries fully charged?]

Hands up all those who diligently comply with all these recommendations.😁

They missed quite a few things:

. Don't hit the camera with a heavy hammer
. Don't throw the camera into a fire
. Don't photograph the Titanic outside a submersible
. Don't hand the camera to Sony users
 

[Markey]

1 hour ago, jaapv said:

And it is acceptable that they offer a temporary workaround and attempt to rectify the matter. But.  They have taken their time and are slow in resolving the matter. That should have been done much, much sooner. 

I agree.

Its the companies lethargy which is the issue and which is unforgivable IMO.

Customer service is clearly not a key concern.

Edited July 17, 2024 by Markey

[FlashGordonPhotography]

You obviously haven’t read the tread. It seems you don’t actually know what the issue actually is. Nor does it seem you’ve worked in a fast paced, high pressure photographic environment.

The issue is not card corruption or loss of files writing to the card. The issue is the camera overwrites images already written safely to the card. Sometimes those images were written hours ago and the camera overwrites files in the middle of a sequence. Unless you really shoot in a set sequence you may not even realise you’ve had a few or many images overwritten. Leica understand this is unacceptable.

There is no way to know if the SL3 is sleeping or off. No indicators or lights. No physical switch. So you may have to wait for the camera to be turned on and then off again just to check. This is unacceptable in a working environment. In this case it’d be dead easy to pop a battery thinking the camera is off, when it’s asleep as you don’t actually know. Because of the way the camera operates it’s almost certain EVERYBODY will eventually pop a battery while the camera is asleep. Even the most careful make mistakes. It may be tomorrow or a year. But it’ll happen. You will do this, at some point. You’ll be *sure* the camera is off.

It is highly unlikely the lens issue mentioned was actually caused by a hot swap. Nor a firmware or circuit board failure. Nor the loss of files. The exFAT format used in cards basically means the card is stable except while writing. Once the write has finished the cards is safe to remove. Firmware isn’t just corrupted. It’s basically a modified ROM. Again if you pull the power or interrupt WHILE writing, sure. But in normal use? No. Turning the camera off guarantees the card write is complete. Lights flash and all that. But really if you wait until the write is finished you won’t have memory issues. It’s 2024 not 1984. And there’s not enough power to fry a properly designed lens or camera board, unless there was another issue. Changing the lens allowed the issue to happen but it wasn’t the cause. Just like when the gears of my four S lenses were stripped. Turning the camera on wasn’t the issue. Shitty plastic components was the issue and turning hooking up the lens just let it fail.

I also think the SL3 is the best small format imaging machine I’ve used. The files are epic. I love most of the usability, except for a few stupid decisions. But the camera is far from perfect and most of that is because they released it with beta software. The AF you cite isn’t complete. There’s serious bugs that just shouldn’t exist. They’ve removed customisation buttons that were there on the SL2. There’s no EFCS on a camera that NEEDS it due to poor sensor readout speeds so mostly we don’t actually get the maximum IQ from the lenses. I can still like the camera without  being in denial about its issues. How exactly are those faults to be rectified unless we get onto Leica about them? As you said. Leica will fix it. But ONLY because it was discovered by a user(s), reported, explained. And it took a few weeks for Leica to respond and confirm that it wasn’t isolated but a serious, repeatable bug. I also haven’t (as far as I know) had this problem. I had to try and try to replicate it. That doesn’t mean I don’t see that it’s serious just because I haven’t lost images, yet. 

We’re all glad you’re perfect and never have pulled a battery or changed a lens with the power on. But I will guarantee you that every working photographer, ever, has done it at some point. An infinitesimally few of us have an issue because the system is designed to protect us. This is not that.

Gordon

[FlashGordonPhotography]

1 hour ago, jaapv said:

Umm. Hard to tell which kind of error. If I use a tool differently from the way it is described by the maker, whose fault is it?  If the maker designs in a way that precludes reasonable use, whose fault is it?  And what is reasonable use anyway?  Opinions can differ. 

The camera is overwriting files when resuming from sleep. If your laptop did that it could be user error? It wakes up from sleep and your week long report is now a Youtube download. Yes you have to pull the battery to make it happen. But say you crash your laptop. An important file on your desktop is REPLACED by another file? I’m stunned that anyone thinks that overwriting files in the middle of a previously shot sequence, that could have originally been written hours ago, is remotely possibly user error? Losing files, perhaps. Overwriting them? Nope.

Gordon

[Jim B]

37 minutes ago, FlashGordonPhotography said:

You obviously haven’t read the tread. It seems you don’t actually know what the issue actually is. Nor does it seem you’ve worked in a fast paced, high pressure photographic environment.

The issue is not card corruption or loss of files writing to the card. The issue is the camera overwrites images already written safely to the card. Sometimes those images were written hours ago and the camera overwrites files in the middle of a sequence. Unless you really shoot in a set sequence you may not even realise you’ve had a few or many images overwritten. Leica understand this is unacceptable.

There is no way to know if the SL3 is sleeping or off. No indicators or lights. No physical switch. So you may have to wait for the camera to be turned on and then off again just to check. This is unacceptable in a working environment. In this case it’d be dead easy to pop a battery thinking the camera is off, when it’s asleep as you don’t actually know. Because of the way the camera operates it’s almost certain EVERYBODY will eventually pop a battery while the camera is asleep. Even the most careful make mistakes. It may be tomorrow or a year. But it’ll happen. You will do this, at some point. You’ll be *sure* the camera is off.

It is highly unlikely the lens issue mentioned was actually caused by a hot swap. Nor a firmware or circuit board failure. Nor the loss of files. The exFAT format used in cards basically means the card is stable except while writing. Once the write has finished the cards is safe to remove. Firmware isn’t just corrupted. It’s basically a modified ROM. Again if you pull the power or interrupt WHILE writing, sure. But in normal use? No. Turning the camera off guarantees the card write is complete. Lights flash and all that. But really if you wait until the write is finished you won’t have memory issues. It’s 2024 not 1984. And there’s not enough power to fry a properly designed lens or camera board, unless there was another issue. Changing the lens allowed the issue to happen but it wasn’t the cause. Just like when the gears of my four S lenses were stripped. Turning the camera on wasn’t the issue. Shitty plastic components was the issue and turning hooking up the lens just let it fail.

I also think the SL3 is the best small format imaging machine I’ve used. The files are epic. I love most of the usability, except for a few stupid decisions. But the camera is far from perfect and most of that is because they released it with beta software. The AF you cite isn’t complete. There’s serious bugs that just shouldn’t exist. They’ve removed customisation buttons that were there on the SL2. There’s no EFCS on a camera that NEEDS it due to poor sensor readout speeds so mostly we don’t actually get the maximum IQ from the lenses. I can still like the camera without  being in denial about its issues. How exactly are those faults to be rectified unless we get onto Leica about them? As you said. Leica will fix it. But ONLY because it was discovered by a user(s), reported, explained. And it took a few weeks for Leica to respond and confirm that it wasn’t isolated but a serious, repeatable bug. I also haven’t (as far as I know) had this problem. I had to try and try to replicate it. That doesn’t mean I don’t see that it’s serious just because I haven’t lost images, yet. 

We’re all glad you’re perfect and never have pulled a battery or changed a lens with the power on. But I will guarantee you that every working photographer, ever, has done it at some point. An infinitesimally few of us have an issue because the system is designed to protect us. This is not that.

Gordon

I’m glad you think I’m perfect 😍 and I’m happy to have a camera that’s working great! 

Let me ask you a question out of curiosity.  Have you ever had a camera act buggy, and had service tell you to reset the camera, and then it starts working fine again? What do you think is happening? Why would the operating program become scrambled or dysfunctional? Do you think hot swapping could cause such a thing? 

[jaapv]

If it is a known camera error - and it is-, using the camera in a way that triggers the error, no matter how legitimate, is indeed user error...

[FlashGordonPhotography]

6 minutes ago, Jim B said:

I’m glad you think I’m perfect 😍 and I’m happy to have a camera that’s working great! 

Let me ask you a question out of curiosity.  Have you ever had a camera act buggy, and had service tell you to reset the camera, and then it starts working fine again? What do you think is happening? Why would the operating program become scrambled or dysfunctional? Do you think hot swapping could cause such a thing? 

You mean like on a M11 where the camera hangs and you can’t do anything and even turning off the power switch doesn’t shut the camera down? So you have no choice but to pull the battery to get the camera working again? No.

But seriously. Not really. I’ve had to reinstall firmware after it said it was good but wasn’t. I’ve reset a camera when I couldn’t find a function I’d set somehow was driving me nuts. Sometimes me but usually because it’s a fuji and the menus are the worst on the market, besides Olympus and after an hour of searching I still couldn’t find it. Like everybody I’ve done what you say on a Windows PC. But with a camera? Really, I don’t think so.

I’m not saying it’s not possible. Just that I don’t think I’ve experienced an issue like you describe that wasn’t just a menu setting that I couldn’t find. Maybe if you pulled the battery while the camera settings file was writing, it’d be possible to make a glitch like that happen. But I’ve not had it.

Gordon

[LocalHero1953]

14 minutes ago, jaapv said:

If it is a known camera error - and it is-, using the camera in a way that triggers the error, no matter how legitimate, is indeed user error...

If you define things in a particular way, who are we to argue with you?*
Many users will not read this forum or see Leica's announcement, so the camera error won't be known to them - if they get a nasty surprise, you can call it user error as much as you like, but they will, rightly, call it Leica's error.

 

*“'When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’"

[Jeff S]

47 minutes ago, LocalHero1953 said:

Many users will not read this forum…

 

 

I’m glad that I started reading the forum after Leica released the M8, and have continued doing so through every subsequent model release.  And I especially remain thankful that there are so many knowledgeable “early adopters” of new models who report here. A cynic might call these early adopters “beta testers.” Their communications have been far quicker and helpful than those from Leica over the years. 

My own approach has therefore been to wait a minimum of 18 months before even considering a new Leica model. I skipped the M8 completely, eventually buying 2 M8.2s after issues seemed sorted. No problems with either (except a freeze that was attributed to an old battery).  I then skipped the M9, which long time forum members will recall had tons of issues and complaints here, well before the eventual corrosion problems.  I only bought an M Monochrom used, with warranty, following a Leica service and sensor replacement.  No problems with it to this day. Since then, remaining a cautious adopter, my M240 and M10 also required no servicing.  So far I’ve been equally fortunate with the M10M and M10R, my current tools of choice; zero problems. 

Likewise, I skipped the SL, and eventually bought an SL2 after following reports here.  It still serves well and remains problem-free, so I see no need for an SL3. But if I had considered it, threads like these would have proved useful and justified the wait for me.

I’m not suggesting this approach for anyone else. (If everyone did this, my approach would fail miserably, and the forum would be confined to bag threads and confused members asking about what lens to take to XYZ city.)  A bit of luck certainly helps, too, along with sticking with reputable dealers that offer warranty and, hopefully, replacement if needed. Hope I didn’t jinx myself. 

Jeff
 

[Indeepthought]

40 minutes ago, Jeff S said:

I’m glad that I started reading the forum after Leica released the M8, and have continued doing so through every subsequent model release.  And I especially remain thankful that there are so many knowledgeable “early adopters” of new models who report here. A cynic might call these early adopters “beta testers.” Their communications have been far quicker and helpful than those from Leica over the years. 

My own approach has therefore been to wait a minimum of 18 months before even considering a new Leica model. I skipped the M8 completely, eventually buying 2 M8.2s after issues seemed sorted. No problems with either (except a freeze that was attributed to an old battery).  I then skipped the M9, which long time forum members will recall had tons of issues and complaints here, well before the eventual corrosion problems.  I only bought an M Monochrom used, with warranty, following a Leica service and sensor replacement.  No problems with it to this day. Since then, remaining a cautious adopter, my M240 and M10 also required no servicing.  So far I’ve been equally fortunate with the M10M and M10R, my current tools of choice; zero problems. 

Likewise, I skipped the SL, and eventually bought an SL2 after following reports here.  It still serves well and remains problem-free, so I see no need for an SL3. But if I had considered it, threads like these would have proved useful and justified the wait for me.

I’m not suggesting this approach for anyone else. (If everyone did this, my approach would fail miserably, and the forum would be confined to bag threads and confused members asking about what lens to take to XYZ city.)  A bit of luck certainly helps, too, along with sticking with reputable dealers that offer warranty and, hopefully, replacement if needed. Hope I didn’t jinx myself. 

Jeff
 

Your money, your choices & wise decisions.. 🍷

[jaapv]

2 hours ago, LocalHero1953 said:

If you define things in a particular way, who are we to argue with you?*
Many users will not read this forum or see Leica's announcement, so the camera error won't be known to them - if they get a nasty surprise, you can call it user error as much as you like, but they will, rightly, call it Leica's error.

 

*“'When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’"

Do you really not recognize the ironic component here? The fault happened and it is a bad one. It shouldn’t have but might be understandable and there is a workaround. However Leica's response was and is far too slow and sketchy .
Attempting to pin blame is useless. It has never solved anything.

[jaapv]

4 hours ago, FlashGordonPhotography said:

You obviously haven’t read the tread. It seems you don’t actually know what the issue actually is. Nor does it seem you’ve worked in a fast paced, high pressure photographic environment.

It appears that you haven't read it - otherwise you would be aware of my opinion on the matter, expressed in a number of posts. And I guess photographing a charging Rhino head-on doesn't count as as fast-paced high-pressure? I doubt whether your clients threaten to impale you...

[IkarusJohn]

30 minutes ago, jaapv said:

Attempting to pin blame is useless. It has never solved anything.

Being in the business of attributing responsibility, I can’t agree with this statement, whichever way I look at it.

Without considerable baying on this forum after the M9 corrosion, Leica would have continued in denial.  Pinning blame always works, provided you’re dealing with reasonable and responsible people, or have access to the rule of law.

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Hallo,

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[hjddd]

where is the annoucement for the M11 freeze issue？