M11P feature?

[eaharman]

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I have numerous non-Leica lens that I regularly use on my M11P and have hand-coded successfully all but my most recent - a Voigtlander Heliar 15mm f4.5 behaves rather strangely -

I have coded with a black indelible marker that lens as the nearest matching Leica equivalent - Tri-Elmar M 16-18-21mm f/4 however unlike my other non-Leica lens that I have similarly hand encoded -

Voigtlander 50mm f2, 90mm f2

Zeiss Biogon T* 2.8/21 ZM

From power on and pressing the menu it detects the lens as 4/16 however if I press the lens value on the touchscreen  it shows the lens as Auto  greyed out and it displays the lens as a manually added M  lens type even though I have not enabled any manually coded lens in the camera and the following lens profiles show as enabled -

16-18-21/f4.0 ASPH @16mm 11626

and again @18mm variant & 21mm - all type 11626.

If I change profile to the built-in default S then the lens is detected as a 21/2.8 & no manual lens profiles enabled, and changing back to my user profile re-enables the phantom manually added ones as above and the camera displays the lens correctly as 4/16.

The above behaviour is repeatable by alternating between my user defined profiles and the default 'S' profile

I have tried performing a factory reset choosing not to save any profile info, Fotos settings etc and the above bug/feature is reproduced upon power up...

Further if I select either of my 2 user profiles with the lens showing as 4/16 but manually added if I then edit the list of enabled M lenses I find the Tri-Elmar is enabled, and if I disable that - i.e. no lenses are manually enabled, then the camera reports the lens as 4/16 manually added but none are manually enabled.

If I then switch profiles to the default 'S' the lens is detected as 2.8/21 and again no manual lenses enabled, however if I then switch back to one of my two user profiles then the lens is detected as 4/16  and now the Tri-Elmar once again is enabled.

Switching back to the default profile shows the lens as 2.8/21 and no manual lens enabled, and switching back to one of my user profiles once again shows the Tri-Elmar as being enabled.......

 

TBH this is of little concern in my actual use-case in that aside from Fotos pairing etc I define and use only two profiles with custom settings -

Profile 1 focus aid set to white, shutter type electronic, preview turned off

Profile 2 as above but shutter type mechanical

I use profile 1 day-to-day and Profile 2 is used sometimes when shooting under artificial LED lights some of which 'strobe' and can cause banding or when shooting fast moving action, or when using a flash

TBH this looks to me like some sort of bug specific to profile management as opposed to actual camera functionality and for my purposes as long as the correct lens profile is stored in the EXIF data then I'm happy to live with it...

If it's simpler I can post some annotated photos of the camera display which perhaps may better illustrate this bug.

Has anyone else seen this bizarre behaviour?

Edited 21 hours ago by eaharman

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[pedaes]

Is not the title a little harsh to discuss something you are doing that has no endorsement from Leica whatsoever and is not catered for in the software.

[eaharman]

Apologies for my choice of words - have amended that!

[Thorfinn]

The M-mount is 1950s design. The focal lengh group is transmittet mechanically to help the camera to show the correct frames. 70 years later it ist still done that way. 
That´s it. There are no electronic contacts, no communication, nothing. The Pro: There is no figurative trademark on the M-mount any more. It is a "open source" mount like m4/3. 

The 6bit code was introduced in 2006 as an add-on allowing 64 different codes: 6 photodiode read the 6 spots it they are black or white. It is electronics as we made it in the 70s.
Of the 64 possible codes 53 are taken. 

When you change the lense or change the profile the reading is done This way you can e.g. have a set of manualle announced lenses for every profile (like "makro", "portraits", ...) 
Your "marker made" dots are ether not bright enough white og dark enough black to be read in high enough consitent of quality. Recessed milled dots filled with acrylic paint can help.

But again: it is a feature not officially supported. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ne314satel]

4 hours ago, eaharman said:

Voigtlander Heliar 15mm f4.5

I have this lens version 2. It is correctly detected in auto mode Tri-Elmar M 16-18-21mm f/4  with the M11.

[eaharman]

Okay, perhaps I had misunderstood user profiles and/or lens profiles - it appears that manual lens profiles can be assigned to a user profile e.g. -

If I select User 1 profile, manually add a Tri-Elmar 16-18-21 then if I use an unencoded lens the camera will default to the 4/16 and if I change to User 2 then the lens switches back to 2.8/21

What is peculiar about my 15mm f4.5 is that even if unencoded the camera auto detects it as a 2.8/21 - i.e. 

Elmarit-M 21mm f/2.8 ASPH

11135

11897

011000

⬜⬛⬛⬜⬜⬜

It is the latest variant - a series III but I can't see how that might be relevant.

I am guessing that whilst not visible to the naked eye there must be something about the mount surface finish that causes this and in fact this is why when I try an encode it as -

Tri-Elmar-M 16-18-21mm f/4 ASPH

11626

-

010000

⬜⬛⬜⬜⬜⬜

28/90

Voigtländer 15mm f/4.5 (@16mm(link is external))

 

since the 2nd code position is seen as being black already the lens still isn't auto detected correctly. 

The fact that to the naked eye the mount looks clear I infer the camera perhaps is using infra-red illumination to read the codes.

 

So to prove this I need to get a white version of my indelible marker and see if 1st I can get this 15mm lens with no codes to be read by the camera as Unencoded, and if I can do that I can then see if a black mark at position 2 causes it to be detected properly

None of my other non-Leica lenses have needed white paint to be read as unencoded when 1st fitted to the camera - so 3 Voigtlanders and one Zeiss.

Apologies any confusion I may have caused !!

[justj]

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When I mounted a VM12v2 on my M11P, it always displayed as 21/2.8, even though the lens is uncoded and lens detection is set to auto.  I was expecting there to be no lens information at all since it's uncoded, but somehow the camera automatically selected 21/2.8 for me.

[Stef63]

40 minutes ago, justj said:

When I mounted a VM12v2 on my M11P, it always displayed as 21/2.8, even though the lens is uncoded and lens detection is set to auto.  I was expecting there to be no lens information at all since it's uncoded, but somehow the camera automatically selected 21/2.8 for me.

A screw on the lens mount in the area where the 6 bit reader is located can trick the camera.  The Elmarit 21 has 000001 as 6 bit code，so a screw aligned with the last digit position could result in the camera thinking this Leica lens is mounted.  You might have a look at the mount of your VM12v2 if this is the case. 

[lct]

There is no screw on the coding area of my Heliar 15/4.5 v2. It is pen coded as WATE (010000) and recorded in EXiF as "Tri-Elmar-M 1:4/16-18-21 ASPH" as expected. I suspect the black paint is not black enough or the location of the coding pit is not perfect. I would erase it and paint it again.

[justj]

7 minutes ago, Stef63 said:

A screw on the lens mount in the area where the 6 bit reader is located can trick the camera.  The Elmarit 21 has 000001 as 6 bit code，so a screw aligned with the last digit position could result in the camera thinking this Leica lens is mounted.  You might have a look at the mount of your VM12v2 if this is the case. 

I just took a look, and the area where the code should be has no screw. Maybe I'll give it a wipe and see what happens.

[lct]

1 hour ago, justj said:

When I mounted a VM12v2 on my M11P, it always displayed as 21/2.8, even though the lens is uncoded and lens detection is set to auto.  I was expecting there to be no lens information at all since it's uncoded, but somehow the camera automatically selected 21/2.8 for me.

It is probably because the last lens manually coded was a 21/2.8. If "VM12v2" means Heliar 12/5.6, my copy is pen coded as WATE too (010000) and recorded as such in the exif data. When using Leica perspective control, the lens behaves like a 16mm though.