Official Leica Statement: Leica SL3 Issues

[hdmesa]

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48 minutes ago, SrMi said:

Agreed. The only way to reduce the accumulation is to avoid changing lenses or quickly changing them in dust-free areas.

Which Canon? In my experience, 5D was bad, and R5 was good.

Unlike on the sensor, the dust will not cling to the shutter (static electricity of the sensor). This means that the dust that lands on the shutter can roam inside a camera until it finds its way to the sensor. If you blow the dust off the sensor or the shutter, it may still stay inside the camera. I wonder if an electronic shutter works better against the dust buildup. Unlike mechanical shutter, the electronic shutter does not create air movements that could move the dust onto the sensor.

Barring controlled experiments, this topic seems more a matter of belief than facts. To stress, my opinion on this topic is also based only on an educated guess

My R5 was really good at never showing dust in photos. Never once had to clean the sensor, maybe once or twice I blew on it with a filtered bulb blower. The best cameras for me for a dust-free experience have been all the GFX models. All the variants of the GFX sensors have the cover glass spaced 9mm away from the sensor, so even if there is dust, it won’t be a spot, it gets defocused just like minor dust in a lens does.

[Simone_DF]

15 hours ago, FlashGordonPhotography said:

If a system doesn't have the functions, I *need* at the time of purchase I just don't buy it. I can only assume that, unless the actual manufacturer releases an official statement, that the current feature set is final. IO find it interesting that anyone would just think that features will be added, unless they are actually announced.

This is an unfortunate byproduct of releasing wonky half-assed software on day 1 and promise to fix the rest later.

[jaapv]

Unfortunately a rather normal situation for releasing software nowadays. Ironvest even warns in advance for their latest update. 

[BernardC]

Some of us are familiar with the saying "if it doesn't ship it doesn't exist." It's been a common philosophy for a few decades in any industry where software plays a significant role.

Leica isn't alone here, every camera and lens brand releases firmware updates for their products. Your phone and computer probably load updated software every day. Your car gets software updates every time you rake it to a specialist, unless it's a modern car that gets updates "over the air."

I certainly understand the urge to disagree with this philosophy, but the alternative isn't shipping a "perfect" product. It's shipping a faulty product that never gets fixed. Or never shipping at all.

[CharlesDL]

Hello, thank you all for your responses. I found a solution to my problem.

I primarily choose Leica for the quality of their optics. I use, among others, a 100mm macro lens with a bellows system designed for the R system, which is still astonishing in 2024. Unfortunately, it’s unusable with the SL range, as the bellows allow too much dust to accumulate.
I find it unfortunate that Leica does things halfway with the SL range; I expected them to take this line as seriously as the M series, but apparently, they have decided otherwise.
This feature (the shutter closing when changing lenses) is clearly requested, otherwise, they wouldn’t have introduced it via a firmware update in the M11-P. By this, I mean that with a simple update, the M11’s sensor is now protected when changing lenses. So, I see it as a choice from Leica not to implement it in the SL range. A shame.
My solution? I put a Canon R5 on the 100mm macro R, and I no longer have dust on my images in the studio—life is good. I would have preferred another solution, but I was losing too much time, and therefore money, working with the SL bodies, and this has been going on for years. I have no doubt that if you only use your camera occasionally and at full aperture, it's not an issue. But some areas of photography require precision, which Leica systems can't always provide (limited ISO range, unprotected sensors, information messages requiring interaction on the screen—complicated when the camera is 5 meters up on a tripod and you have to go over just to press a simple OK).

thanks all for reading and for your adive

[tom0511]

good you found a solution which works well for you. My R5 however collects dust as well, maybe not as much on the sensor, but more on the outside since I prefer the handling etc. of my SL3, except AF. But I dont use bellows so I dont have that dust problem you did have.

I wish Leica would stay closer in cimmunication with its customers and what they need/want.

[kiwidad]

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On 8/13/2024 at 4:36 AM, CharlesDL said:

The M11 got this feature with the release of the M11-p through a simple firmware update.

the m-11 had this feature long before the m11p. I don’t have a copy of the original manual but it introduced on there at firmware 2.02 I believe which was about a year after release.

[Bernd B.]

Some days ago I had to send in my SL3 (bought in August) to Wetzlar. The image-stabilization (which works very well with my Leica L-mount-lenses on SL601 and SL2) does not work properly at all. All results were blurred, I got better results when switching off image-stabilization. Now I wonder if it is a firmware-issue, a hardware-issue and, of course, how long it will take to get my SL3 back 🙂 

[Photoworks]

The SL3 needs a stability update quickly, Yesterday I had a red carpet event to shoot. 

I had to pull the battery 3 times because it froze in some shooting mode. It is not stable for fast shooting with flash. I don't know what it is but Flash compatibility is not good.

I went back to the SL2 for the rest of the job. it is good, faster and stable!

Come on Leica! don't wait to produce stable firmware.

[jiggyb21]

21 hours ago, Photoworks said:

The SL3 needs a stability update quickly, Yesterday I had a red carpet event to shoot. 

I had to pull the battery 3 times because it froze in some shooting mode. It is not stable for fast shooting with flash. I don't know what it is but Flash compatibility is not good.

I went back to the SL2 for the rest of the job. it is good, faster and stable!

Come on Leica! don't wait to produce stable firmware.

My patience is running out. When you shoot the SL2s and SL3 side by side the SL3 feels like a 15 year old camera. The playback is atrocious as is the startup time and battery life. I am considering replacing the SL3 with an SL2. Unlike others here who seem to rave about Leica’s customer service and communication, I have had the opposite experience. I became a huge Leica fan when I switched from Canon to the SL2s and Q2 some years ago. Ironically had I never upgraded to their latest and greatest my opinion of Leica would still be very high. 

[nameBrandon]

32 minutes ago, jiggyb21 said:

My patience is running out. When you shoot the SL2s and SL3 side by side the SL3 feels like a 15 year old camera. The playback is atrocious as is the startup time and battery life. I am considering replacing the SL3 with an SL2. Unlike others here who seem to rave about Leica’s customer service and communication, I have had the opposite experience. I became a huge Leica fan when I switched from Canon to the SL2s and Q2 some years ago. Ironically had I never upgraded to their latest and greatest my opinion of Leica would still be very high. 

I'd suggest moving on and coming back when the feature set matches your needs. No sense in shooting with something that frustrates you. I did the same when the X2D was released and I found out they didn't even include a live view histogram.. I do agree with the, M11, Q3, SL3.. it seems as if Leica perhaps de-prioritized software development / testing and instead prioritized or invested in other aspects of the camera development / release for their latest generation. I'm thankful the M11 / Q3 situation has improved quite a bit since launch, but I empathize with you on the SL3.

[jiggyb21]

4 minutes ago, nameBrandon said:

I'd suggest moving on and coming back when the feature set matches your needs. No sense in shooting with something that frustrates you. I did the same when the X2D was released and I found out they didn't even include a live view histogram.. I do agree with the, M11, Q3, SL3.. it seems as if Leica perhaps de-prioritized software development / testing and instead prioritized or invested in other aspects of the camera development / release for their latest generation. I'm thankful the M11 / Q3 situation has improved quite a bit since launch, but I empathize with you on the SL3.

That’s likely where it’s headed. I’ve set a date for the end of the year. The thing for me is I’m not one complaining about features missing from a camera I purchased. I know what features were promised to me.  I am having trouble with freeze-ups, poor battery life, poor general performance and poor start up times. These are things anyone would assume wouldn’t be glaring issues on a brand new camera this day and age. The worst one for me, by far, is when I go to review a photo with a client and the camera just sits there for 3-4 seconds before displaying a picture. It doesn’t sound like a long time but it’s long enough for a few clients to say something like “is everything okay?”.  And at least once a week during that wait time the back panel will display a weird glitchy array of colors while I wait. Almost as if the camera is attempting to display the last picture taken but it doesn’t have all the information it needs. 
 

I’m certain that these issues aren’t unique to my camera and it’s a little bewildering to read dozens of people say “battery life is great” and “my playback is as fast as my Canon R5” etc. I’m becoming convinced that most people that shoot with the SL3 are casual shooters and likely share shooting time with other bodies. I assume anyone that uses the SL3 for paid work in front of clients must share my pain. I am genuinely happy for people that don’t experience these issues because without them this is my perfect camera. I love everything else about it. 

[Photoworks]

10 minutes ago, jiggyb21 said:

That’s likely where it’s headed. I’ve set a date for the end of the year. The thing for me is I’m not one complaining about features missing from a camera I purchased. I know what features were promised to me.  I am having trouble with freeze-ups, poor battery life, poor general performance and poor start up times. These are things anyone would assume wouldn’t be glaring issues on a brand new camera this day and age. The worst one for me, by far, is when I go to review a photo with a client and the camera just sits there for 3-4 seconds before displaying a picture. It doesn’t sound like a long time but it’s long enough for a few clients to say something like “is everything okay?”.  And at least once a week during that wait time the back panel will display a weird glitchy array of colors while I wait. Almost as if the camera is attempting to display the last picture taken but it doesn’t have all the information it needs. 

I agree with you. I would just have added a better refined AF system.

The SL2 is solid and it was solid when it came out!

[hdmesa]

8 hours ago, jiggyb21 said:

...When you shoot the SL2s and SL3 side by side the SL3 feels like a 15 year old camera...

I have to agree. Sold my SL3 fairly soon after getting it.

Two worst offenders with the SL3 for me were:

1. Battery life – perhaps some firmware refinement is in order, but I suspect the processor is too power hungry
2. EVF image feed quality that lags the SL2 and falls far behind the SL2-S – A) during magnification for manual focus, the image is not sharp enough to reliably focus wide open with low contrast M lenses, and when activating/using AF, the EVF image resolution drops dramatically, like when 4K YouTube video playback quality suddenly drops to 360p due to bandwidth issues. I'd even put the SL3 EVF experience behind some of the better 3.6Xm dot EVFs like the one in the Nikon Zf.

Edit: I have no idea how I that emoticon in there, lol, but I'm going to leave it.

Edited December 7, 2024 by hdmesa

[chrismuc]

I wait for the S1R II. I don't trust Leica camera electronics. 

It's ok for my M9 and S006 which I use occasionally for fun to enjoy CCD.

But for a camera to professionally rely on, a highly reliable equipment is inevitable. 

[Cronilux]

vor 20 Stunden schrieb jiggyb21:

That’s likely where it’s headed. I’ve set a date for the end of the year. The thing for me is I’m not one complaining about features missing from a camera I purchased. I know what features were promised to me.  I am having trouble with freeze-ups, poor battery life, poor general performance and poor start up times. These are things anyone would assume wouldn’t be glaring issues on a brand new camera this day and age. The worst one for me, by far, is when I go to review a photo with a client and the camera just sits there for 3-4 seconds before displaying a picture. It doesn’t sound like a long time but it’s long enough for a few clients to say something like “is everything okay?”.  And at least once a week during that wait time the back panel will display a weird glitchy array of colors while I wait. Almost as if the camera is attempting to display the last picture taken but it doesn’t have all the information it needs. 
 

I’m certain that these issues aren’t unique to my camera and it’s a little bewildering to read dozens of people say “battery life is great” and “my playback is as fast as my Canon R5” etc. I’m becoming convinced that most people that shoot with the SL3 are casual shooters and likely share shooting time with other bodies. I assume anyone that uses the SL3 for paid work in front of clients must share my pain. I am genuinely happy for people that don’t experience these issues because without them this is my perfect camera. I love everything else about it. 

May I ask what sd or cafe cards you are using? 
Just out of pure curiosity. Maybe they are again having issues with certain cards. 

[jiggyb21]

1 hour ago, Cronilux said:

May I ask what sd or cafe cards you are using? 
Just out of pure curiosity. Maybe they are again having issues with certain cards. 

What a great question. As much as I know that cards should always be considered as a catalyst for these types of issues, I rarely remember. Just like how a simple smartphone reboot generally takes care of 90% of its issues. 
 

I am certain that all of the issues I am experiencing existed before I upgraded memory cards.  I do feel as if the weird green and red line glitch I mentioned in an earlier post, during photo playback, started more recently. 
 

My workflow is to shoot raw to only the CF card slot with some exceptions where I will shoot simultaneous raw backup to the SD slot. When I got the SL3 at launch I was using a SanDisk Extreme Pro 128GB CFexpress (1700/1200MBs read/write) card and I’d be guessing at which sd card exactly.  I was experiencing incredibly slow transfer of files to my computer so a few months ago I upgraded to a PROGRADE GOLD CFexpress 4.0 1TB (3400/1500MB/s) and a PNYBEliteX-PRO60 512GB Sd(200/180MBs). 
 

I do a lot of time lapse and that is the reason for using such large capacity cards. Those are the only two CFexpress cards I own but I have several sd cards and I am going to run a few tests and will report back. Thanks again for the comment. 

Edited December 8, 2024 by jiggyb21

[Cronilux]

@jiggyb21 I was just remembering, that my M10-R couldn’t handle Sony tough memory cards, when all other cameras had no issue and that going back to SanDisk extreme pro for the M10-R solved all the issues. 

[jiggyb21]

@Cronilux I hope this isn't getting too far off topic but I think this should put an end to my comments on this part of it.

Big thanks again for the memory card suggestion because I think I have found some differences in camera behavior comparing the cards I own.   I did a sort of stress test where I turned the camera on, tried to immediately playback the last photo, turned it off and back on and took a short burst, playback, quickly half press to remove playback image, format the card, repeat etc, etc.  Basically just tried to make the camera hang up a bit.  I was attempting to stumble across one of the real world situations that might induce one of my common problems.  Mind you the only metric for these nonscientific tests was my level of frustration waiting for the black screen to show a picture.

I'll start backwards because that's where the results make the most sense.  

Using just an SD card, the results were basically exactly how you would imagine.  UHS-II cards were all faster and smoother than UHS-I cards.  And the faster the card the faster the experience.  The thing of note is that the same card tested over and over again gave similar results.  For example, if a certain card took about 1.5 seconds to immediately playback the last photo, it seemed pretty consistent over and over. 

Doing the same thing with the two CFexpress cards resulted in completely different results.  The SandDisk Extreme Pro 128GB card was consistently faster and more reliable at playback and startup times.  The most obvious trigger for lag that I found was to boot the camera from off, take a photo, quickly review it, and then half press the shutter to get back to the shooting interface.  I think this will cause some lag with any card but the SandDisk was pretty darn constant taking maybe 1 second after the half press to return to shooting normally.  

The ProGrade on the other hand was all over the place!  Instant, 1 sec, 2 sec, 3 sec, near freeze up.  

Without dragging it on I'll just say the card certainly plays a part in my issues.  I can hear people saying "you can make any camera lag if you do that". I want to say I understand that this test is a bit ridiculous and my aim is not to make the camera fail to prove my grievances but rather to try and randomly induce an issue through a combination of very common inputs from someone who is working quickly with a professional level camera.  I have used many cameras over the years and found some to vary widely in speed and performance but as long as they do it consistently, we can naturally adjust our expectations and muscle memory to meet the camera.  I don’t mind working slower and more thoughtfully, I’m not looking for a blazing fast camera.

When you compare to my previous camera, the Canon R5, I think the SL3 has an underpowered GPU or at least a half baked electronics system.  I think the SL3 is just slow.  Furthermore I believe it is having trouble with the ProGrade GOLD CFexpress 4.0 1TB and maybe with the 4.0 variants of other cards, I have no way of testing that. 

I will switch back to the SanDisk for now and if I can get consistent results, @Cronilux may have just saved my relationship with this beautiful camera!  Thanks again!

Edited December 8, 2024 by jiggyb21
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[hdmesa]

6 hours ago, Cronilux said:

@jiggyb21 I was just remembering, that my M10-R couldn’t handle Sony tough memory cards, when all other cameras had no issue and that going back to SanDisk extreme pro for the M10-R solved all the issues. 

Once I got my Sony Tough cards replaced under the recall, I've had great luck with them. My old ones would freeze up my M11s, but the replacements work perfectly in my M11-D.

I had thought my cards were not affected since I couldn't see any serial numbers at all. Turns out it requires looking at them at just the right angle of light to see (and with magnifying glass or strong readers).

https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/memory-cards-sd-cards/sf-g128t/articles/00246463