M8: some good news

[johnastovall]

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I have waited several years for a digital M. In the last 48 hours I decided to put my order for one on hold and not start buying the 4 new lenses I had planed to get. What bothers me most about this is the lack of any truly public statement by Leica about the two major problems the IR and banding issues. They don't have to say how they are going to fix them but they need to admit they exist and state they are looking at solutions. If they are going to tell me just go buy 500+ dollars worth of filters I might as well just wait for PMA and see what my 12K will buy in a big heavy, noisy Canon 1D pro body if they have a replacement. At least I know with it, it will do the job as soon as I take it out of the box.

 

I don't want to be worrying about is that a synthetic black or is that a point source of light goin to cause banding? I want to worry about the art of my photography and not the technology. I thought Leica would deliver the tool to do that but now I'm very much waiting to see just what if anything they'll do.

 

I think my glass is half empty and may have crack in the bottom.

[roberth]

‘‘Nothing would be accomplished at all if a man waited to do it until he could do it so well so that no one could find fault with it.’’

by Cardinal Newman

[FastFashnReloaded]

I

 

I think my glass is half empty and may have crack in the bottom.

 

Yes, it is... Too many people are lawyers or doctors these days.

 

LOOK. No one makes a statement about a fix (except hey, we are working on it) until you HAVE A FIX because there are a bunch of lawyers out there who will jump on any statement as fact that cannot be changed or updated or negated. Trust me, there are people who will sue for anything.

 

You won't get a public statement on a fix, again, until there is a fix, John, which I suspect will happen shortly.

 

You know, you COULD go out and find a first gen D200, heard they had some issue too. Oh! Contax N Digital, how about one of those? Porsche 944 Turbo, 1986, cracked exhaust manifold bolts. New Airbus 320? Trees hurt.

 

http://www.alexisparkinn.com/photogallery/Videos/Airbus320_trees.mpg

 

So, forgive me when I say that people, whether they are buying a Leica or a Yugo with a computer it, are going to see bugs. That's why you don't buy anything in the first few months of production, unless you area whiney masochist, or perhaps like flirting with death in worst case situations.

 

-Dana

[johnastovall]

Yes, it is... Too many people are lawyers or doctors these days.

 

LOOK. No one makes a statement about a fix (except hey, we are working on it) until you HAVE A FIX because there are a bunch of lawyers out there who will jump on any statement as fact that cannot be changed or updated or negated. Trust me, there are people who will sue for anything.

 

You won't get a public statement on a fix, again, until there is a fix, John, which I suspect will happen shortly.

 

You know, you COULD go out and find a first gen D200, heard they had some issue too. Oh! Contax N Digital, how about one of those? Porsche 944 Turbo, 1986, cracked exhaust manifold bolts. New Airbus 320? Trees hurt.

 

http://www.alexisparkinn.com/photogallery/Videos/Airbus320_trees.mpg

 

So, forgive me when I say that people, whether they are buying a Leica or a Yugo with a computer it, are going to see bugs. That's why you don't buy anything in the first few months of production, unless you area whiney masochist, or perhaps like flirting with death in worst case situations.

 

-Dana

 

Strange I had no bugs or problems with my 5D bought just after it came out.

[TimF]

‘‘Nothing would be accomplished at all if a man waited to do it until he could do it so well so that no one could find fault with it.’’

by Cardinal Newman

Great quote.

 

I wonder. If Leica had postponed the release of the M8 to sort these problems, how many of the people now screaming that they must withdraw the camera until its fixed, etc etc, would have been screaming at them for delaying the release? Just a thought.

[vic vic]

danna - what exactly is garbage about what i said... can u explain yourself... your explanation is not convinient at all.... i think u miss a point if u say it.

 

no one is perfect and every one makes mistakes... but not that way....

 

besides... my suggestion was very clearin one of previous threads... i suggested not to talk at all about fixing and all that stuff, but only to make a "comunicative act"... just to say that "leica is looking into the rised issues and investigating it and as soon as there are educated findings they will inform the customers.. please be paitant meanwhile, we really want to check out and find out what might go wrong in the examples that people post, and we also ask customers to inform us about any problem they may have if such happens".... bingo.. no obligation... fully neutral and fully freindly and comunicative for first stage in order to gain some time....

[xrogers]

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Strange I had no bugs or problems with my 5D bought just after it came out.

 

I did. Visible banding at isos 800 and higher. Turns out the banding is visible in all jpgs, but vanishes in the RAW processing programs I tested (Capture One, ACR and Raw Developer). This was initially a show-stopper for me, but the raw workaround made it okay. Still, if I hop up the blue channel in the raw processor, the bands leap out.

 

The 5D also vignettes with my 24 f2.8 and 50 f1.4 (until I stop it down). And with both those lenses at or near wide open, the corners are pretty soft. The 50 at f8 is exceedingly sharp, I really like that lens. I can work around the vignetting in the photos where it really matters.

 

I really like my 5D, it is a great camera.

 

I also got a 24-105 L series IS zoom with the camera, but returned it. Many photos from the lens seemed fine, but on close examination, the lens just didn't cut it. Set to 50mm at f8, distant detail in landscapes went to mush---not even close to the 50 1.4 at f4. With those images, my kids (ages 9, 12 and 14) easily picked out the better lens on a 7x10 print. And distortion and even more vignetting at wide angle. The package (5D plus the lens) was uncomfortably frontheavy. The IS was amazing, but that didn't come close to making the lens a success in my book.

 

Oh, and my 24-105 lens wasn't one of the problem lenses---if you remember, a few months after they started shipping the 24-105, they had to recall them because of a nasty internal flare problem. Man, was there ever a lot of tiresome repetitive hyperbole on dpreview about that problem and the couple of months it took Canon to acknowledge it and start fixing the lenses.

[jelderfield]

Did the M7 or the M6 TTL have a bunch of bugs when it was released???

Jonathan Elderfield Photography

[gabbott4]

Leica's response reminds me of this story:

A man was buying a suit that didn't fit well. The right sleeve was half again as long as the left and the waist of his trousers was several sizes too large. He was told to grab the trousers with his left hand to keep them up and keep his right arm close to his body so the right sleeve wouldn't fall down. The result was a laughably awkward stride as he left to go outside. Two passersby noticed his funny gait and one said to the other, ""Boy, that guy sure walked funny". The other replied, " Yeah, but didn't his suit fit nice!".

 

I hope Leica realizes the absurdity of asking its customers to make the adjustments to a flawed product rather than endeavor to fix the fundamental problem(s) themselves, however extensive those fixes may ultimately prove to be.

[PeterJWhite]

Wow! That's deep! A piece of white paper! A little black dot! Wow! That's about the most significant idea I've ever heard. Well, maybe not. Here's the most sigificant thing.

 

Are you ready?

 

GOD, spelled backwards, is, drum roll, DOG!

 

Now, that's significant!

 

Don't you think?

 

Sigh....

 

I'm sorry. That was harsh. ;-)

[mitchell]

I was the third person to buy a J 24 sailboat. It was a revolutionary design. The first day I took her sailing on a beautiful day with a nice fresh breeze, she was fantastic, amazingly fast, agile, easy to handle. I was in heaven...until the rudder broke in half and the boat started going around in circles out of control.

 

A rudder is a pretty important piece of equipment on a boat if you want to go anywhere. The lamination schedule needed to be changed and was.

 

Some of you may know that the J24 is now, without exaggeration, one of the most successful, and influential classes in sailing history.

 

Two important differences from that situation to the M8.

 

One, the technology was not as complex as a digital camera, and the company was not dependent on the very technical expertise of other companies, i.e., Kodak and Jenoptik.

 

Two, the whole world (or at least camera world) wasn't watching, and freaking out. In fact the only people who know this story are my friends, JBoats, and the dealer.

 

Best,

 

Mitchell

[farnz]

Wow! That's deep! A piece of white paper! A little black dot! Wow! That's about the most significant idea I've ever heard.

 

Thanks, Peter, your input was most helpful.

[alexr]

I wonder. If Leica had postponed the release of the M8 to sort these problems, how many of the people now screaming that they must withdraw the camera until its fixed, etc etc, would have been screaming at them for delaying the release? Just a thought.

 

We waited patiently for two and a half years. We would have kept waiting patiently. What is important is the result. I want my tool-provider to come out with such an excellent product that it becomes a business imperative, for me, to purchase it.

[FastFashnReloaded]

Did the M7 or the M6 TTL have a bunch of bugs when it was released???

Jonathan Elderfield Photography

 

Actually, yes. People complained about the VF flaring on the M6, and I read more than a few whiney posts on the old board about M7 and MP reliability, M7 reading film speed correctly, M7 battery life, fit and finish on the MP's VF window (OMG, how did DUST get in there?).

 

So yes.

 

I heard the SAME things on the forums about the DMR (OMG, it doesn't work with my R8!), about the MP (guess Leica just doesn't care about fit and finish any more), about the M7 (no one will buy it, Leica users want a fully manual camera).

 

I rarely forget technical issues, but feel free to do your own research next time before asking a Mr. Obvious question.

[FastFashnReloaded]

We waited patiently for two and a half years. We would have kept waiting patiently. What is important is the result. I want my tool-provider to come out with such an excellent product that it becomes a business imperative, for me, to purchase it.

 

No, you and other people would NOT have kept waiting patiently. Go back and look at postings in the last year and a half. "Oh, they'll never get it out, it's the end of Leica, waaah!"

 

Go and make a golden camera god and take it to Canon, maybe they'll let you, maybe, start using their DSLRs again and save you from the Wilderness. Or, maybe they'll just take the gold, melt it down, and give you another cheap digicam in place of it.

[FastFashnReloaded]

I was the third person to buy a J 24 sailboat. It was a revolutionary design. The first day I took her sailing on a beautiful day with a nice fresh breeze, she was fantastic, amazingly fast, agile, easy to handle. I was in heaven...until the rudder broke in half and the boat started going around in circles out of control.

 

A rudder is a pretty important piece of equipment on a boat if you want to go anywhere. The lamination schedule needed to be changed and was.

 

Some of you may know that the J24 is now, without exaggeration, one of the most successful, and influential classes in sailing history.

 

Two important differences from that situation to the M8.

 

One, the technology was not as complex as a digital camera, and the company was not dependent on the very technical expertise of other companies, i.e., Kodak and Jenoptik.

 

Two, the whole world (or at least camera world) wasn't watching, and freaking out. In fact the only people who know this story are my friends, JBoats, and the dealer.

 

Best,

 

Mitchell

 

I bought a 1986 944 Turbo, was on the Interstate and tried to pass a Corvette. Engine went into limp home mode. This went on for MONTHS. Changed out computers, fuel pump, checked wiring... You know what it turned out to be? Vaccum hose.

 

A few years ago a firm came out with a revolutionary new shifting system for road bikes. It was expensive, it was pretty, it was electronic. It didn't work in the rain.

 

People have NO idea how complex all the interacting parts of a good digital camera are, and here we are mating sixty year old lenses to electronics designs from 2005 in roughly the same size case as an M7. You whiners have no concept, NO CONCEPT, of how difficult that kind of design is. Many people didn't think it was possible at all. Now there's a color shift issue that has shown up and people are, "I told you so"! You know what? YOU design something like this that'll work first thing, under pressure, in a company that's got financial pressures, staying up late nights and lots of weekends.

 

You say, "I'm not an engineer, I wouldn't be able to do that!" Then get off your high horse and go back to charging clients $400 an hour while you sit on your butt. You don't make the world work. You have no concept of how the world works outside of your Club. You can't fix a car, you can't program anything but maybe HTML, you don't even know how to use the defragger in Windows, do you?

 

So please, just be quiet and give the people who actually do the work at Leica a chance to fix this glitch, or DO go buy a Canon G7 and go away.

[Jamie Roberts]

Dana--all this vitriol over people being disappointed an expensive digicam can't properly record, um, blacks and greys?

 

That's not like a viewfinder defect. That's not like a little AF banding on the 5d--I can turn it off. Heck, that's not even like a fast write to CF card flaw, which can be easily fixed in firmware.

 

When I bought my D60, 10D, 1d2, 1ds2, DMR, and 5d, they all had technical limitations.

 

However, none of them produced an unusable colour picture out of the box (the part about the 5d vignetting--who said that? Ay carumba man. Put a Leica lens on that thing; the "vignette" is all in your 50 Canon lens, not the camera!)

 

Look, I'm very happy Leica has now responded properly. We'll see if this is, in effect, a hardware recall.

 

But people have just as much right to be upset about this as people getting Porsches with cracked manifolds. This is *basic operation*--not a nuance of use.

 

So please mitigate your techno-indignation and superiority. Some of us want to make a living of Leica's excellent equipment, and we want to tell people just how good it is. Thankfully, given Stefan's response, we can start doing just that.

[FastFashnReloaded]

Leica's response reminds me of this story:

A man was buying a suit that didn't fit well. The right sleeve was half again as long as the left and the waist of his trousers was several sizes too large. He was told to grab the trousers with his left hand to keep them up and keep his right arm close to his body so the right sleeve wouldn't fall down. The result was a laughably awkward stride as he left to go outside. Two passersby noticed his funny gait and one said to the other, ""Boy, that guy sure walked funny". The other replied, " Yeah, but didn't his suit fit nice!".

 

I hope Leica realizes the absurdity of asking its customers to make the adjustments to a flawed product rather than endeavor to fix the fundamental problem(s) themselves, however extensive those fixes may ultimately prove to be.

 

They are telling you how to adjust to compensate, so you can at least use it till they have a good fix. That isn't absurd, it's reasonable. And by the way, where has this dusty old story of yours been hiding, just WAITING for a chance to leap out and strangle someone? Next time you quote Groucho Marx or someone, please credit them in your post.

 

Women should be obscene and not heard. - Groucho Marx

[blovitch]

>>. You whiners have no concept, NO CONCEPT, of how difficult that kind of design is.

 

Yes I do, thats why I didn't do it myself. I left it to a camera company...

 

>>YOU design something like this that'll work first thing, under pressure, in a company that's got financial pressures, staying up late nights and lots of weekends.

 

>> You have no concept of how the world works outside of your Club. You can't fix a car, you can't program anything but maybe HTML, you don't even know how to use the defragger in Windows, do you?

 

This is a pretty broad generalisation, and besides which I suspect most of the members here are MAC users, so a nice little cron job runs the defrag whilst we are out at work, earning a living or enjoying our lives (something you ought to consider aquiring)

 

>>So please, just be quiet and give the people who actually do the work at Leica a chance to fix this glitch, or DO go buy a Canon G7 and go away.

 

Communication is the key to a succesful relationship, lets tell the people who actually do the work at Leica what needs fixing, as it would seem they didnt spot it themselves...

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Hallo,

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[FastFashnReloaded]

Dana--all this vitriol over people being disappointed an expensive digicam can't properly record, um, blacks and greys?

 

That's not like a viewfinder defect. That's not like a little AF banding on the 5d--I can turn it off. Heck, that's not even like a fast write to CF card flaw, which can be easily fixed in firmware.

 

When I bought my D60, 10D, 1d2, 1ds2, DMR, and 5d, they all had technical limitations.

 

However, none of them produced an unusable colour picture out of the box (the part about the 5d vignetting--who said that? Ay carumba man. Put a Leica lens on that thing; the "vignette" is all in your 50 Canon lens, not the camera!)

 

Look, I'm very happy Leica has now responded properly. We'll see if this is, in effect, a hardware recall.

 

But people have just as much right to be upset about this as people getting Porsches with cracked manifolds. This is *basic operation*--not a nuance of use.

 

So please mitigate your techno-indignation and superiority. Some of us want to make a living of Leica's excellent equipment, and we want to tell people just how good it is. Thankfully, given Stefan's response, we can start doing just that.

 

People have a right to be concerned, annoyed, yes. I think that people have a better chance of getting this fixed though, than we had a chance of kicking George W, Bush in his butt last Tuesday. However, miracles happen, like last Tuesday.

 

This, whatever it is, will be fixed - but that isn't why I'm upset. As I said before, I'm not an early adopter, so when I get mine it won't have these start-up issues - and EVERYTHING with a computer in it has start up issues whether you personally have seen them or not. I'm annoyed at people who are incapable of doing anything technically, but seem to think they can tell a manufacturer exactly what's wrong, how to fix it, and how it should have been done in the first place. Sort of like Rumsfeld telling the military how to fight a war.