M8 shutter fault in 2025

[m8u]

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Hello everyone,

My M8 shows a “Shutter Fault” error.
At first, I disassembled it following Marknorton’s “Anatomy of the Leica M8” guide. I checked the shutter, magnet, and related parts — nothing looked unusual. After reassembling, the camera fired a few shots normally, but then the same error appeared again.

During my latest inspection, I found that one line on the circuit cable is broken (marked in red in the picture I borrowed from Mark’s post).

Could anyone tell me what this cable does? Is it related to the shutter fault?
Also, is it possible to repair or resoldering this line? I’d really like to give it one more try before sending it for service.

Thanks in advance for any advice or discussion!

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[farnz]

On 10/23/2025 at 4:07 PM, m8u said:

I found that one line on the circuit cable is broken

To help you find a solution, that's usually called "a wire in the ribbon cable" rather than a line in the circuit cable.  A break in a wire in a ribbon cable can be repaired with solder but the heat risks damaging the insulation of neighbouring wires and re-insulating the mended wire can be tricky.

I don't know what that wire does but my guess would be that it provides power (rather than connecting a logic circuit) because it's on the outside of the ribbon where it would be cooler so it might be the connection between the M8's battery and the shutter motor.

When the M8 came out there were a number of instances of shutter failure reported and it turned out that the problem was low battery, which meant that during shutter re-cocking there wasn't enough power to fully re-cock and latch the shutter so the controller couldn't detect the signal from shutter to say it was fully re-cocked and therefore the cycle was complete and so to turn the power off.  Consequently the controller would decide that the shutter was 'in an indeterminate state' and declare a "shutter fault" that prevented the shutter from working.

What M8 users worked out was not to let the battery get too low - which for the M8 that shows 3 battery rectangles when fully charged - not to let the battery get down to 1 battery rectangle before swapping the battery out for a fresh one.  Personally I change the battery as soon as I notice it's down to 2 rectangles and I haven't had a shutter error for over a decade.

I don't know if what I've written above will help your problem but even if it does you will still need to convince the M8's controller that the shutter is okay.  You could simply put a freshly charged battery in and hope.  Other people have reported here that holding the M8 tightly and smacking it against the palm of your hand to jolt it into action has worked for them.  I leave you to decide if that's something you want to do.

Another reported cause of a jammed shutter is when grit or something else gets between the metal shutter blades so checking for that and removing any obstructions with a soft brush might help.  The shutter blades are necessarily very thin and travel very fast and some people have reported that the metal edge can tear slightly and obstruct the shutter.  Have a look for this but if that's what you find then it'll be a trip back to the Leica Mothership for sure.

Good luck!

Pete.

[m8u]

Thank you, farnz, for the helpful advice.
I have two batteries and have tried both when fully charged. The camera can take a few shots before the error appears again, so I might need to test with a new battery.
I also tried the “smacking” method, but it didn’t work for me either.
I’ll take a closer look at the metal shutter blades.