Space Shuttle Launch: My M8 Really Let Me Down

[RSL]

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I would say your battery went dead. I would mark that battery and try some deep discharge cycles with it to see if you can get the capacity back. In the future, I would put a fresh battery in just prior to critical shot.

 

Unfortunately, "deep discharge cycles" won't "get the capacity back." That's a Lithium-Ion battery. It has no "memory," though it occasionally needs to be discharged as far as its internal minimum charge circuits will let it go in order to synchronize it with the camera's "fuel gauge." There's a whole lot of misinformation on this forum about Li-Ion batteries. You need to go to Welcome to Battery University and read up on Li-Ion batteries.

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[blado]

That has happened to me (quite a while ago now). It must be something with those batteries. I wonder what we can do to solve this type of thing once and for all. It must be a traceable problem. And I'm not trying to be negative!

[Jamie Roberts]

If it *is* a battery problem it's likely to be a contact issue. If you have build up on the contacts, you can have a current problem that might prevent continuous operation or long exposures.

 

Short of spraying the battery contacts with cleaner and swabbing the internal contacts, I don't know how to keep them clean. One advantage of a DMR / Canon 1 Series type megabattery is that the contacts are obvious. They may get dirtier, but they're easier to clean.

 

I'd like to know if Leica introduced something odd in the latest firmware though. It appears that there are more reports here lately than there has been for a very long time. But that's a difficult row to hoe...since it may just have to do with more users, or the cameras aging (back to contacts again...)

[wlaidlaw]

I have had much less in the way of lock-ups since I took to cleaning my battery terminals with iso-propyl-alcohol (Eclipse E2 in its most expensive form or £4-50 a litre from electrical equipment suppliers).

 

I have every sympathy with missing a shuttle launch. I too missed the only one I am likely to see. I was on a UK to Miami flight when the captain announced that if we looked out of the right hand windows, we would see a shuttle launch. Sadly by this time my aisle seat had been taken over by a large Spanish lady, who had had to be cable tied to the seat to restrain her, after being caught 4 times smoking in the toilets and started screaming, flailing about and shouting (great flight!!). She refused to make any move to allow me out and by the time I had got out the other way, all I saw was an exhaust trail through the sky.

 

Wilson

[robsteve]

Unfortunately, "deep discharge cycles" won't "get the capacity back." That's a Lithium-Ion battery. It has no "memory," though it occasionally needs to be discharged as far as its internal minimum charge circuits will let it go in order to synchronize it with the camera's "fuel gauge." There's a whole lot of misinformation on this forum about Li-Ion batteries. You need to go to Welcome to Battery University and read up on Li-Ion batteries.

 

I meant to try to get the camera/charger in sync with the battery so the battery gets fully charged. I was just suggesting how to do it not why it needs to be done.

[jaapv]

I have had much less in the way of lock-ups since I took to cleaning my battery terminals with iso-propyl-alcohol (Eclipse E2 in its most expensive form or £4-50 a litre from electrical equipment suppliers).

 

I have every sympathy with missing a shuttle launch. I too missed the only one I am likely to see. I was on a UK to Miami flight when the captain announced that if we looked out of the right hand windows, we would see a shuttle launch. Sadly by this time my aisle seat had been taken over by a large Spanish lady, who had had to be cable tied to the seat to restrain her, after being caught 4 times smoking in the toilets and started screaming, flailing about and shouting (great flight!!). She refused to make any move to allow me out and by the time I had got out the other way, all I saw was an exhaust trail through the sky.

 

Wilson

 

There used to be spray cans with "contact cleaner" for electronics. I wonder if they are still around.

[wlaidlaw]

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There used to be spray cans with "contact cleaner" for electronics. I wonder if they are still around.

 

Jaap,

 

Yes there are and they also contain IPA. They are something I would never be without. In the UK it is marketed as Servisol. They do various formulations but sadly no longer the bromo-chloro-fluorethylene, which was another excellent cleaner but made too big holes in the Ozone layer.

 

Wilson

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[Jamie Roberts]

Jaap,

 

Yes there are and they also contain IPA. They are something I would never be without. In the UK it is marketed as Servisol. They do various formulations but sadly no longer the bromo-chloro-fluorethylene, which was another excellent cleaner but made too big holes in the Ozone layer.

 

Wilson

 

Wilson, thanks--that's exactly what I was thinking about. What's the residue like with IPA? I always hesitated on those cleaners because there were supposedly better ones (like, I guess, the b-c-f stuff you mention).

[wlaidlaw]

Wilson, thanks--that's exactly what I was thinking about. What's the residue like with IPA? I always hesitated on those cleaners because there were supposedly better ones (like, I guess, the b-c-f stuff you mention).

 

Jamie,

 

As long as you get IPA designed as circuit board cleaner and not medical IPA it is fine. Medical/chemists shop IPA is usually 70% IPA; about 25% water and some Methyl Isobutyl Ketone and Bitrex, which make people vomit if they drink it (even with tonic or Red Bull, it is not great). These can indeed leave a deposit and fail to clean lenses etc properly.

 

BCF was great but you had to watch, as it could attack certain plastics (acrylates from memory). I used to get it from when I had the fire-extinguishers refilled in my racing cars every three years. I know some people who would fire off the extinguisher when it needed servicing, as it cleaned the engine beautifully.

 

Wilson

[steich]

@Gary and Steve:

As both of you obviously had problems with digital cameras of different makes at the same location in the same moment- could it have to do with electrical fields/radiation in KSC? I can imagine there is a lot of radio transmission, radar beams etc. there... A colleague of mine once made a radio report on an aircraft carrier, and the "George Washington´s" radar beams made a lot of his recordings unusable.

I could also imagine they have some kind of jamming systems active during launch to prevent terrorist attacks (I think I read something about this a few months ago, but I haven´t bookmarked it).

Just my two Euro cents...

Stefan

BTW: Sometimes when shooting with the M8, my Polar Sports watch/heart monitor starts running- something in the camera seems to work in the same frequency range as the pulse sensor of the watch....

[girphoto]

@Gary and Steve:

As both of you obviously had problems with digital cameras of different makes at the same location in the same moment- could it have to do with electrical fields/radiation in KSC? I can imagine there is a lot of radio transmission, radar beams etc. there... A colleague of mine once made a radio report on an aircraft carrier, and the "George Washington´s" radar beams made a lot of his recordings unusable.

I could also imagine they have some kind of jamming systems active during launch to prevent terrorist attacks (I think I read something about this a few months ago, but I haven´t bookmarked it).

Just my two Euro cents...

Stefan

BTW: Sometimes when shooting with the M8, my Polar Sports watch/heart monitor starts running- something in the camera seems to work in the same frequency range as the pulse sensor of the watch....

 

 

 

Thanks for the note, There are no radio transmission allowed, unless the frequency is approved by NASA. All remote cameras are triggered by sound & or vibration. This wakes the camera and sets it for firing. The problem that we had at the Cape, were all on one side of the launch where the cloud cover could have been the thickest together from the launch cloud from the water being pushed to the bottom of the launch pad.

But for those of us that o this every launch (not just one time) and set up many remotes and cameras that we are controlling by hand, we have built in backup in some cases 20 times over.

Now I do not expect some one off base to have 20 cameras set up, but shooting a night launch (which is impressive) with only one camera is a bit risky (one of my own shooters did this and also wound up with an image that I could not use. He should have had another camera set up that he shot, but oh well, all in a days shooting).

 

I hope that Steve gets an other chance to shoot a day launch with his M8 and he will see the difference.

 

Thanks

Gary

Gary I. Rothstein, Photography

[calvinboy24]

Seems like there were a lot of photographers there (which I assume there always would be for space shuttle launches). Here's a great image from Getty Images of photographers silhouetted against the glow of the launch.

 

(The image is Getty copyrighted so I'm including a link to the Getty site)

 

Getty Images

 

Anyone spot any Leicas in the pic?

[FastFashnReloaded]

Sadly I've had at least three similar failures in the 11 months I've owned the camera. Even though I purchased a second M8 as backup it obviously doesn't help with those one in a lifetime shots. I just can't rely on it for such work.

 

Symptoms have been very similar to yours. Take the camera with freshly charged battery out of the bag. Switch it on - nothing - totally unresponsive. Take out the battery and put it back in, all works again as normal. I've had a similar occurence after the camera has timed out and gone to sleep. It would not wake up with a shutter press or when switched off and on again. Removing and putting the battery back everything returned to normal.

 

These type of problems are very difficult to debug and I often wonder if it's a result of Leica using other manufacturers off the shelf standard components to build a complex system. The camera isn't truely integrated where if Leica had designed custom circuits they would know most of the idiosyncrasies of the design. You really have to know what's going on to be able to power up and power down functional blocks and get the sequencing of various signals and supplies correct under all circumstances.

 

Bob.

 

 

"These type of problems are very difficult to debug and I often wonder if it's a result of Leica using other manufacturers off the shelf standard components to build a complex system."

 

Everyone does that though... The only company that might be able to have truly custom ICs would be Canon (in their high end DSLRs), maybe Panasonic and Sony, everyone else would make due with sensors and support chips that are a "package". The sensor and processor manufacturers give you a circuit diagram showing exactly how to interface to the LSI, and you can tweak things a little, but the basics are the same. The shutters are a package too since we've gotten away from the in-house built Leica cloth shutters for the new cameras. The AF motors too... You buy everything from a catalog based on dimensional, usage and power requirement variables.

 

It's probably an ESD or RFI issue, but unless you are "in" at leica you'll never know for sure. That metal top plate and bottom plate have to discharge ESD to somewhere...

 

Did anyone ever have issues with the M7 locking up?

[girphoto]

Seems like there were a lot of photographers there (which I assume there always would be for space shuttle launches). Here's a great image from Getty Images of photographers silhouetted against the glow of the launch.

 

(The image is Getty copyrighted so I'm including a link to the Getty site)

 

Getty Images

 

Anyone spot any Leicas in the pic?

 

So what is the point, I know the person who shot the image, he works next to me at the Cape and the idea is that I have used my M8 on three launches with very good results. This just happen not to be one for Steve.

 

As a matter of fact, I think I am the only shooter at KSC who uses an M8. Does not mean that it is not the right camera, just that there was a problem at the time of the shoot.

 

Gary

Gary I. Rothstein, Photography

[calvinboy24]

So what is the point, I know the person who shot the image, he works next to me at the Cape and the idea is that I have used my M8 on three launches with very good results. This just happen not to be one for Steve.

 

As a matter of fact, I think I am the only shooter at KSC who uses an M8. Does not mean that it is not the right camera, just that there was a problem at the time of the shoot.

 

Gary

Gary I. Rothstein, Photography

 

Was I implying something in my post? I just thought it was a nice shot of the event that had photographers in the pic. You can use a Holga for all I care, I never implied the M8 wasn't the right tool for the job.

[telewatt]

.. :o ..what a bad day for you!..

 

Leica had to fix the problem fast..so you can't work professional ... .

..if the problem was a old software you have to change it quick!....the pictures are gone!..

 

regards,

 

Jan

[jedisdl]

Sorry about the M8 failing - nothing is worse than for a camera to fail to shoot at such an important event!

 

I have both an M8 and a Nikon D200 - and I have the same problem with both, albeit more often with the M8 - i.e. the shutter fails to fire -

for both cameras, the fix is the same - remove the battery and put it back in and it has always worked for both.

 

It is interesting that the M8 isn't the only digital camera with this problem - M8 owners have paid a lot for their M8, correctly expect more and are more exacting. Yet Leica is a less experienced digital company.

 

Anyway, it was something of a relief to find out that Leica isn't alone with this problem.

 

I aslo still enjoy shooting with a rangefinder much more than a DSLR.

 

Steve

[calvinboy24]

So what is the point, I know the person who shot the image, he works next to me at the Cape and the idea is that I have used my M8 on three launches with very good results. This just happen not to be one for Steve.

 

As a matter of fact, I think I am the only shooter at KSC who uses an M8. Does not mean that it is not the right camera, just that there was a problem at the time of the shoot.

 

Gary

Gary I. Rothstein, Photography

 

Oh, I see now. My joke about spotting any Leicas in the crowd implies that I'm not saying the M8 is not the right tool? Hardly. The joke was intended to show if we saw the OP and his Leica in the shot. Reading this reply upset me because it was not my intent at all. Why would I make the claim that an M8 isn't the right tool for the job?

[photolandscape]

Thanks for the note, There are no radio transmission allowed, unless the frequency is approved by NASA. All remote cameras are triggered by sound & or vibration. This wakes the camera and sets it for firing. The problem that we had at the Cape, were all on one side of the launch where the cloud cover could have been the thickest together from the launch cloud from the water being pushed to the bottom of the launch pad.

But for those of us that o this every launch (not just one time) and set up many remotes and cameras that we are controlling by hand, we have built in backup in some cases 20 times over.

Now I do not expect some one off base to have 20 cameras set up, but shooting a night launch (which is impressive) with only one camera is a bit risky (one of my own shooters did this and also wound up with an image that I could not use. He should have had another camera set up that he shot, but oh well, all in a days shooting).

 

I hope that Steve gets an other chance to shoot a day launch with his M8 and he will see the difference.

 

Thanks

Gary

Gary I. Rothstein, Photography

 

Gary, thanks very much. Live and learn for me. I will definitely do it again. I was so impressed by what I saw--even from so far out. The reflection of the light on the water was unlike anything I've seen, and forgive me for using the wrong term, but the "flame" was just an amazing color--the most intense, saturated color I've ever seen. I'd really like to try another night launch. I've already looked ahead at the schedule and will try again. Thanks.

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[girphoto]

Gary, thanks very much. Live and learn for me. I will definitely do it again. I was so impressed by what I saw--even from so far out. The reflection of the light on the water was unlike anything I've seen, and forgive me for using the wrong term, but the "flame" was just an amazing color--the most intense, saturated color I've ever seen. I'd really like to try another night launch. I've already looked ahead at the schedule and will try again. Thanks.

 

Steve

As in the past, If I can be of any help, just let e know.

Gary

Gary I. Rothstein, Photography