Adieu

[Tom_W]

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Well, with a certain sadness but no regret, today I sold all my Leica M equipment. I am concentating on my Canon 1ds3 and its lenses.

 

The decision was arrived at by the camera 'locking out' again in continious mode - I consequently missed the shots. I was at the end of my tether so I cut myself free. My 1ds3 (or for that matter Canon *d*) has never failed.

 

Fundamentally we have always to remember that the camera is only a tool, it is the photographer that makes the pictures; I will miss the Leica lens clarity - when the body worked. I will be buying an R adapter for my Canon landscape work.

 

I wish you all the best and at some stage in the distant future I hope to return but it will take Full Frame and hiccup free firmware to bring me back.

 

T

[tashley]

Well, with a certain sadness but no regret, today I sold all my Leica M equipment. I am concentating on my Canon 1ds3 and its lenses.

 

The decision was arrived at by the camera 'locking out' again in continious mode - I consequently missed the shots. I was at the end of my tether so I cut myself free. My 1ds3 (or for that matter Canon *d*) has never failed.

 

Fundamentally we have always to remember that the camera is only a tool, it is the photographer that makes the pictures; I will miss the Leica lens clarity - when the body worked. I will be buying an R adapter for my Canon landscape work.

 

I wish you all the best and at some stage in the distant future I hope to return but it will take Full Frame and hiccup free firmware to bring me back.

 

T

 

 

Tom, sorry to hear of your grief and that you are off. I do understand, but I think you might miss the M8 at times.

 

I'm currently running a 1DSIII, an M8, a 5x4 field camera, a Ricoh GRDII, a Sigma DP1 and various P&S stuff and the M8 is the only one that feels like a camera. The others are variously good at what they do, or good for the price, or good at times. The M8 is the best of the bunch though, despite its infuriating flaws. Dang!

 

T

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[Photoskeptic]

A bit sad, really. In a perfect world we would all have multiple camera bodies and their lenses for all the different situations we encounter. Sorry it didn't work out, Tom. Better luck next time.

[guidomo]

Sorry to hear this.

 

I'm glad that I'm just an amateur who can put up with such flaws without too many sacrifices. I can understand professionals for whom those serious hiccups make the M8 a no-go. Shame Leica still hasn't ironed the real problems out to improve reliability. What happened to the continuous firmware improvements that were promised? (But not another firmware thread, please!)

[jaapv]

I wonder what these lockups in continuous mode are. Most of us never experience them, some don't seem to be able to get them sorted out. I think it is something in the firmware-SD card interface, as it seems to be SD card dependent as well. I suppose Leica is scratching its head over this one. Lets hope that a firmware revision that adresses SD cards which surely will come (but when??...) automatically solves this. Or is it merely the main drawback of SD-cards: greasy contacts??

[Guest rweisz]

I suppose Leica is scratching its head over this one.

 

I have a picture of them scratching something but it isn't there heads.

 

Tom, I fully understand your position. I have also used close to a dozen Canon digital bodies since the original 1D, put hundreds of thousands of activations on each of them, and never had a glitch that made it nonfunctional. My M6 has had to be serviced several times, I had an M7 for a year which had to be serviced, and my M8 is now in service. Despite the rah-rah-sis-boom-bah on forums, overall out there in the field the M8's confidence level is getting lower and lower, which is the opposite of what usually happens as a camera matures.

[charlesphoto99]

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Well, I'm sitting here anxiously awaiting the UPS truck containing my new Nikon D3. I have an upcoming trip to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, as well as a trip to Africa next month, both shooting for UNICEF. My original intention was to shoot with the M8 and a D200 (or a new D300) for backup. Then after a couple of conference calls where I learned we would be shooting in some dimly lit hospital interiors as well as the fact that it will be tight on time in some places, I decided I wanted a full frame camera that will just "run itself" so to speak. That way I can be the "navigator" and concentrate on composing and capturing the moment.

 

So the M8 is staying at home. If there was the budget for b&w film (it's being converted anyway for the ads) I wouldn't have thought twice about shooting it all with the M7, but the 8 is just too niggly for my tastes in those sort of high stress situations. But later this summer my wife and I will have a one month honeymoon in Europe. That is when the M8 will shine - I have no intention of carrying a 4 pound brick around with me for "fun".

 

But I probably will be jettisoning a bit of my M gear in favor of building up (and paying off!) the Nikon. It's an amazing machine - Nikon really hit it out of the ballpark with this one. Leica will certainly need to do that next time.

[Cirrus]

After I had my own personal M8 for a few months the U.S. agency I work for doing meterorlogical research decided to try four m8 cameras. Mine has been OK but in the department cameras there are multiple failures of various kinds including the various lockup type things. Our equipment manager said it looked like the electronics were designed and manufactured by Harpo Marx. These four cameras were disposed of after two monts I don't know where. The department uses mostly Nikon, about 80 bodies and lens kits and we have very few problems with them less that the four M8s. Too bad that a company like Leica that was once great has made this camera and not corrected the problems.

Dan

[Philippe D.]

I wonder what these lockups in continuous mode are. Most of us never experience them

I experienced a few lockups with my M8s, always when shooting some pictures too fast in C mode.

I suppose it comes from the too small buffer memory of the body and too slow SD cards (even Extreme IIIs).

But, IMHO, a Leica M is not a camera to take pictures like a machine gun, you made a composition and think twice before pushing the trigger.

[SJP]

AFAIK the electronics was not Leica or any of the Marx brothers but Jenoptik and Phase One

[JHAG]

I experienced a few lockups with my M8s, always when shooting some pictures too fast in C mode.

I suppose it comes from the too small buffer memory of the body and too slow SD cards (even Extreme IIIs).

But, IMHO, a Leica M is not a camera to take pictures like a machine gun, you made a composition and think twice before pushing the trigger.

 

I had some too (twice), when shooting a rapid series of 5/6 pics.

Just turned it off, turned it on, and run.

I don't mind that, and I don't mind a D300 or a D3 in a few months either.

What bothers me more is the comparison with M7 : I recently shot a series

of portrait in low light, both M8 and M7 (Portra 400). Huge difference.

That restriction bothers me more.

[diogenis]

The camera must have something like 110mb internal, fast memory. When this fills up the camera dumps it in the SD card. When you guys speak about lockups what exactly do you mean?

Because it is not a lockup when the camera tries to empty it's buffer into the SD card and you keep shooting (filling it). Then you are limited by the slowest transfer rate of the SD card, or the max transfer rate of the SD interface.

[JHAG]

I don't know.

When shooting in rapid succession, the red LED flicks sometimes indefinitely.

It's not the case for 2/3 shots, but for more.

[diogenis]

I forgot to say that (it's also written in the manual) you can only shoot 10-11 shots in succession. That is before the buffer fills up and the red led begins to blink indicating there is a write procedure under way. But this is normal. Also it doesn't mean that if the red led blinks you cant shoot more pics.

[Philippe D.]

When you guys speak about lockups what exactly do you mean?

Camera dead.

Can't make any picture, can't switch off, can't do anything. It freeze.

Have to pull the battery out, and put it in again. If you're lucky, this is enough to go on again.

(it's also written in the manual) you can only shoot 10-11 shots in succession

Haha... 5 or 6 shots DNG are enough to have problems...

[JHAG]

I forgot to say that (it's also written in the manual) you can only shoot 10-11 shots in succession. That is before the buffer fills up and the red led begins to blink indicating there is a write procedure under way. But this is normal. Also it doesn't mean that if the red led blinks you cant shoot more pics.

 

Both times it happened, I had :

1. Shot 4 to 6 shots.

2. Camera was unavailable, led blinking indefinitely, no other solution than shut it off.

Should it happen more often, I'd contact Solms and ask them if there is any use to

send it in.

[Philippe D.]

no other solution than shut it off.

Mine does even not wants to shut off. Have to pull the battery out to become the master of the situation.

[JHAG]

Mine does even not wants to shut off. Have to pull the battery out to become the master of the situation.

 

This happened to me once too, but never again.

Since then, it happened once, and I just shut it off.

For around 5000 pics in about a month, I deem it acceptable until now.

[Guest rweisz]

AFAIK the electronics was not Leica or any of the Marx brothers but Jenoptik and Phase One

 

From what I've been led to understand, and correct this if it's wrong because heaven knows we wouldn't want any misinformation on this forum , but all Phase One had in it was the C1-LE bundled with the camera. Jenoptik, again unless my Leica dealer is full of it, was the subcontractor for the firmware, and they and Leica got into a tiff (not a .tif kind of TIFF either ) over a failed buyout of Sinar by Leica, and Leica was left high and dry until they could find someone to take over the firmware, which may (or may not) account for how long it's taken for updates to solve the WB and other glitches, and why some glitches persist. It looks like the problem isn't that the M8 is a faulty camera, just that it's a victim of lots of subcontracting by a company with nobody in charge who really knows digital electronics well enough to coordinate it all. The same thing looks like it happened with the DMR due to upheaval in Imacon re: Hasselblad. One of the things that's helped Canon be #1 in digital is they do 99% of it in-house. If Nikon did that they would've had a FF several years ago.

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[mat_mcdermott]

Camera dead.

Can't make any picture, can't switch off, can't do anything. It freeze.

Have to pull the battery out, and put it in again. If you're lucky, this is enough to go on again...

 

This has happened to me twice while shooting in continuous mode in the past year. In both cases I lost one or two images that weren't on the card when I pulled the battery, but once that was done I just had to reinsert the battery to get it working again.

 

In the next statement I don't mean to sound like a Leica apologist (this crashing is annoying and whatever the issue it should be dealth with), but this has happened on my Nikon as well (not one of the newest, I'll admit). I have had hard drives fail on several of my computers as well. The point of this is that I have never had a computer that has not crashed at one point or another--Mac, Nikon, Leica, iPod, iPhone they all go down. To some degree it's the nature of the beast.

 

When I used be a Mac repair guy I used to tell people (in an effort to instill the need to back-up files to them) that it's not a question of if your hard drive crashes, but when. The same thing with system crashes. It's going to happen and if you want to use these devices you have to accept that.

 

This crashing when shooting in continuous mode (and each time I think I was nearly full on the card) is a genuine problem, and needs to be dealt with, but at least to me is inconveniencing at most. If it took more than pulling the battery I would be much more annoyed. I think of it just as force quitting the camera.

 

My 2p (the cent isn't worth so much anymore...)