Official Leica Statement: Leica SL3 Issues

[LocalHero1953]

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46 minutes ago, jaapv said:

Do you really not recognize the ironic component here?

No, I didn’t - sorry! The thread was getting too tetchy for that subtlety.

[jaapv]

Legal responsibility is not quite the same as wildly blaming on the forum.   But in this context I’m fairly sure that you as a lawyer agree with post # 273, given that Leica has admitted to the problem and offered a temporary solution. 

Aside, with the M9 I seem to recall that I was chief Bayer. 

22 minutes ago, IkarusJohn said:

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.

 

[IkarusJohn]

7 minutes ago, jaapv said:

Legal responsibility is not quite the same as wildly blaming on the forum.   But in this context I’m fairly sure that you as a lawyer agree with post # 273, given that Leica has admitted to the problem and offered a temporary solution. 

Aside, with the M9 I seem to recall that I was chief Bayer. 

 

The forum is the most effective place to bay, as the M9 experience showed (among others).  I don’t think I’ve come across any premium product maker so reluctant to do the right thing.  They do it eventually, but it takes considerable pressure.  I remember one poor camera owner who was being stonewalled.  I eventually emailed a senior Leica executive I’d been dealing with, and only then did Leica do the right thing - something they actually had a legal responsibility to do.

I had my own experience with Leica thinking they could walk away from a contract for the Monochrom.

Why people don’t do what they’re legally (let alone morally) obliged to do without pressure is beyond me.  I blame my colleagues most of the time!

[jaapv]

In my experience many people are legally lazy or reluctant Except in Germany I regularly get a shocked reaction to reacting the German way ( I lived there for a while). The other side is that Germans often threaten spuriously without real legal grounds. I guess that is rhe reason that German companies have a high resistance to legal claims. German law in daily life can be fun. I was moving house, my wife had to deal with the movers packing. She kicked them out after they broke a number of things. We won the court case. The decisive evidence? One broken vase and the testimony of a friend of ours who found Patricia in tears after the incident. Another one? A court order forbidding a dog to bark between 20.00 and 08.00 on a request by a neighbor. Not addressed to the dog owner, but to the dog…

[FlashGordonPhotography]

2 hours ago, jaapv said:

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...

I wasn’t referring to you.

Gordon

[hillavoider]

i don't know I did alot of baying or whining about the SL2 on this forum after going through 3 faulty bodies and never got anywhere with Leica until I threatened them with Australian Consumer Laws and then got a very abrupt response and finally a working body after 3 months wait without a camera..........     and i still bought an M11 😆 after that horrible experience

[frame-it]

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2 hours ago, hjddd said:

where is the annoucement for the M11 freeze issue？

that announcement has frozen

[Indeepthought]

19 minutes ago, hillavoider said:

i don't know I did alot of baying or whining about the SL2 on this forum after going through 3 faulty bodies and never got anywhere with Leica until I threatened them with Australian Consumer Laws and then got a very abrupt response and finally a working body after 3 months wait without a camera..........     and i still bought an M11 😆 after that horrible experience

You are a better man than I am Gunga din..🍺

[Ko.Fe.]

9 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.

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 worked. Sometimes as the only accredited, authorized. Running and gunning with my rig. Or been just goofing around at events among assigned photographers. Shoulder to shoulder.

Here was nobody using any LCAG cameras on all events I have been by assigned photogs. Nor did I, if I needed results guaranteed. For my own pleasure - Leica all the way.  

Does LCAG even has ambassadors? Listed pros for different countries? Here is no Leica offices even in some G7 countries. 

LCAG is niche, boutique manufacturer. They are making best looking, pleasing to hold, wear cameras. Fashion and passion accessories. 

They knows and majority of pros knows if camera is going to be used for assignments, it is not a LCAG camera. And if where are few who insist for some reason to use it as so called pro... They are not LCAG priority (this demands stability and else lengthy and well organized tests).  For LCAG it is more important to release new camera, to grab money from those who are in majority of buyers. 

[FlashGordonPhotography]

1 hour ago, Ko.Fe. said:

I worked. Sometimes as the only accredited, authorized. Running and gunning with my rig. Or been just goofing around at events among assigned photographers. Shoulder to shoulder.

Here was nobody using any LCAG cameras on all events I have been by assigned photogs. Nor did I, if I needed results guaranteed. For my own pleasure - Leica all the way.  

Does LCAG even has ambassadors? Listed pros for different countries? Here is no Leica offices even in some G7 countries. 

LCAG is niche, boutique manufacturer. They are making best looking, pleasing to hold, wear cameras. Fashion and passion accessories. 

They knows and majority of pros knows if camera is going to be used for assignments, it is not a LCAG camera. And if where are few who insist for some reason to use it as so called pro... They are not LCAG priority (this demands stability and else lengthy and well organized tests).  For LCAG it is more important to release new camera, to grab money from those who are in majority of buyers. 

Again. I was not referring to you.

Yes. Leica has ambassadors. I know half a dozen personally. All working professionals. I am not and would not be as Leica will not be my only system.

Last weekend I had dinner with Stephen DuPont. Leica ambassador, World press Photo winner. Robert Capra gold medal winner. And a dozen other awards. And a simply great human. Each Leica country website lists their ambassadors, which currently includes Steve McCurry among others. Not that hard to find actually. Here are the Aussies.

https://leica-store.com.au/ambassadors?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw-uK0BhC0ARIsANQtgGMzocBvOlnYT4lbHxqkIOSQoheX1QD3Ckf-ORAfEwSOUK7jvR4lby8aAkotEALw_wcB

Gordon

[MediaFotografie]

FW 1.1.9 is there!

 

https://leica-camera.com/de-DE/fotografie/kameras/sl/sl3-schwarz/downloads?utm_source=CRM&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20240718_HQ_DE_FWUNL_SL3_serv&utm_term=https%3A//leica-camera.com/sl3-downloads

Edited July 18, 2024 by MediaFotografie

[MediaFotografie]

ERROR CORRECTION 

Sporadic error that resulted in unnoticed overwriting of existing recordings if the camera was not properly turned off beforehand (e.g., during battery replacement in standby mode or after an unexpected software interruption). 

Correction of errors in the firmware. 

 

IMPROVEMENT 

Optimization of the Leica FOTOS connection.

[LUF Admin]

 Update: Here is the fix:

 

[LocalHero1953]

Excellent news.

[slimsnapped]

Just downloaded the new FW, testing out today.

[BernardC]

18 hours ago, jaapv said:

They have taken their time and are slow in resolving the matter. That should have been done much, much sooner.

I totally agree that the fix should have come by now, but I doubt that Leica are taking their time.

If it was easy, it would have been fixed by now. We know that the SL3 uses an all-new technical architecture, co-developed with Panasonic. Previous SLs used the "Maestro" processor, sourced from Fujitsu. An all-new architecture means that all hardware-level libraries and routines have changed (BIOS and drivers). Typically, hardware-level code is supplied by the hardware vendor. Even Apple licenses most of their architecture from ARM, as does every other significant smartphone maker. I don't know what kind of chip(s) Panasonic and Leica use, but the situation would be the same.

One of the first questions raised when a new bug crops-up is "what's changed?" In this case everything has changed, other than high-level code (if they were able to re-compile it for the new architecture). It's very likely that the bug itself is hidden deep in a third-party hardware library, and the vendor does not feel the same sense of urgency as Leica does, for two reasons: Leica's orders are counted in thousands, not millions, and most modern devices don't let you pull the battery when they are running.

Question: has anyone reproduced this bug on an S5ii?

[OfeyKalakar]

Just updated the firmware! Werks great now and great AF with M lenses too!

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[jaapv]

38 minutes ago, BernardC said:

I totally agree that the fix should have come by now, but I doubt that Leica are taking their time.

If it was easy, it would have been fixed by now. We know that the SL3 uses an all-new technical architecture, co-developed with Panasonic. Previous SLs used the "Maestro" processor, sourced from Fujitsu. An all-new architecture means that all hardware-level libraries and routines have changed (BIOS and drivers). Typically, hardware-level code is supplied by the hardware vendor. Even Apple licenses most of their architecture from ARM, as does every other significant smartphone maker. I don't know what kind of chip(s) Panasonic and Leica use, but the situation would be the same.

One of the first questions raised when a new bug crops-up is "what's changed?" In this case everything has changed, other than high-level code (if they were able to re-compile it for the new architecture). It's very likely that the bug itself is hidden deep in a third-party hardware library, and the vendor does not feel the same sense of urgency as Leica does, for two reasons: Leica's orders are counted in thousands, not millions, and most modern devices don't let you pull the battery when they are running.

Question: has anyone reproduced this bug on an S5ii?

I tried and failed... 

[Manicouagan1]

Update installed for me

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica L-Mount

[Simone_DF]

1 hour ago, BernardC said:

Question: has anyone reproduced this bug on an S5ii?

I tried it on my S5II and I couldn’t reproduce it