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M8 frozen - assist please


spylaw4

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Help appreciated. I am away from home and using iPhone for this! Took Aries of continuous shots and filled buffer. Camera now totally seized up. Red light on when turn but shutter not fire & menus not showing. Is ther a quick cure or is it a trip to MK or Solms? I have taken battery out. Can't recall previous answers to this problem. Thanks fir any quick responses.

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Hi Brian,

 

Have you tried removing the SD card too, and if possible inserting a different card? It sounds as though the camera is trying desperately to talk to the card, but is getting no response. I hope that you haven't lost anything important or irreplaceable. :(

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Sorry to hear that it's still acting up. The only other thing I can suggest would be to remove the card and battery, turn the camera on, and leave it overnight to drain the internal battery. I've heard that this often works. Good luck. :)

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Help appreciated. I am away from home and using iPhone for this! Took Aries of continuous shots and filled buffer. Camera now totally seized up. Red light on when turn but shutter not fire & menus not showing. Is ther a quick cure or is it a trip to MK or Solms? I have taken battery out. Can't recall previous answers to this problem. Thanks fir any quick responses.

 

Just run to the closest Leica dealer to buy a M9! :D

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Only suggestion I can make is to remove the battery and short out the left and rightmost battery blades with something like a paper clip, though something like a 100 ohm resistor would be better. Depending on what is locked up, there may be a capacitor which is preventing a power-on reset sequence leaving the processor locked up.

 

Altenratively, leave the camera with the battery removed and wait to see if that fixes it.

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... Good advices above: Don't forget to recharge your battery! Whenever I have had a freeze, I have removed the battery, charged it, left the camera without a battery until the battery has been properly charged, and put it back in again. I have always managed to start the camera again after freezes. The M8 is like a motorcycle, sometimes. A primadonna when it comes to starting.

 

Well, the M8 is a primadonna.... Shit if this happens when you are going to photograph the British Royal Family. Fine then if any of them has a small and shiny Sonypanic, or what they are called, to help you out!

 

May be you'll need new batteries...?

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Most urgent to me seemes a well filled battery. Seems my M8 too avoids starting up after a freeze if the battery isn´t filled up to 100%. Insert an alternative SD-card and a well fittet battery - I´m shure, your M8 will start again, maybe the last fotos are not recorded.

 

lg and don´t despite from Willich/Germany

 

Dieter

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The patient has recovered after a good night's rest. :)

 

Dieter - your suggestion of a totally charged up battery was a good one. I made sure that a spare battery charged up overnight and when inserted this morning with a different card - success. Seems to be fine now. :D

 

My thanks for all the suggestions and help offered - once again the Forum has proved its worth.

 

BTW I've taken it off Discreet mode.

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The patient has recovered after a good night's rest.

 

I think residual power in the camera was keeping one of the processors running in its locked up state. The problem comes when a component can run on miniscule amounts of power and the camera will rely on a power-on-reset being done when the battery is removed and re-inserted.

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  • 6 months later...

I need help!

 

I'm a Nikon owner, living in Canada & working in India (in my mind, the greatest place for street shooting).

 

I made my homework by reading Leica's forum as well as M reviews & I made the decision to step into the M system. This is a costly decision but Leica seems very reliable and has a great resale value. As the M9 is very expensive and too young in my mind, I looked at a M8 coming from the first buyer. I got a used M8, (the camera looks like new) & lens. I read that early M8 had "frozen" issue, but the previous owner never faced it, as per his says he got the "6 bits up grade" from Leica (???). What I found on the net was telling about software fixing, so relying on the Leica reputation, I relaxed my wallet.

 

Here my first experience with the Leica world.

 

I landed in Montréal by April 2nd, for 2 weeks holiday, and got my new toys. I had few shots, the M8 froze, giving the signal (red led flasing) of a full sd card (the card recorded only few shots), top LCD & monitor completly blank. I removed the battery, replace the card & restart the camera, got few other shots, it was OK.

 

The firmware version was 1.00something, so I upgraded to 2.0004, I had few other shots, nothing bad. I got a shot early morning in low light, during the noise reduction process the M8 froze again but there is no way to restart it. I removed the battery, replace the sd card, put the camera up side down, burned incense, no way the get the M8 alive, still the same red led flashing, nothing on the top LCD nor on the monitor.

 

My only option was to send the camera to the New Jersey Leica service centre trough the local Leica dealer. I'm waiting for the estimate as it should not be under warranty as I don't have the original invoice. I don't like the idea of paying for the Leica learning curve in digital world but lets see!

 

My main concern is reliability. I'm flying gliders (I owned a German DG 800) and the price of the ship is reflecting the reliability required for safe flying as well as the performance. I'm expecting the same from Leica gear. How to justify the price otherwise? Great optics... I don't need to spend so much money for a shot that I could only register in my mind!

 

I bought the best street shooter camera in the world, light, compact, & reliable (I'm sure Leica will agree) and I'm facing a basic software problem, no way to reset. Is the Safari kit sold, big money, by Leica has a way to get out of software trouble during a safari? Is Leica reliable enough to not have my D700 as a back up (and a wheelbarrow to carry out my gear)?

 

M9 seems to freeze also. My suggestion to Leica is to set up an online service to get out of software trouble instead of sending the body to service centre. No reset procedure from Leica, no information coming from Leica, no online support, this is so basic in electronics. This short vision will damage the Leica reputation and the value of our gear.

 

There is big discussion about M8 software up grade. I hope that Leica will open the M8 software to the computer community, the computer freaks could do incredible things that will benefit to any M owners as well as Leica reputation, setting Leica as a creative organisation not afraid by competition. What's about technical secrets? Everybody knows how to make great lens but the Leica engineering is a unique pool of expertise, showing the road to competition.

 

OK I am frustrated. I'll fly back India without the M8, I don't know how much it will cost me and when it will be fixed nor not. There is no Leica dealer in India and posting is risky.

 

Is somebody face this kind of problem?

Could you give me some hint?

 

Thank you to help me to turn bad luck (I hope) into positive learning.

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Rejean--Welcome to the forum. Sorry it's with a problem like this.

 

Wait to see what Leica says. There were some component changes during the life of the M8, and whatever price Leica charges will include upgrading the camera to the latest electronics, with a one-year warranty on the whole camera.

 

FWIW, I think the M8's reliability improved greatly as Leica discovered the causes for the 'frozen' cameras. Your camera probably didn't receive the upgrade.

 

 

I'm a big fan of Leica, but I do think my cameras spend too long in for repair. Currently my M8 has been in the queue since January for a problem that it didn't show before I got the shutter upgrade. It's not that Leicas have a lot of problems, but even simple ones seem to take too long to fix.

 

Nonetheless, I so dislike the bulk and appearance of my dSLR that I will automatically pick up the Leica bag rather than the other except for special needs.

 

Maybe I just like the Leica results so much that I continue to use it despite its lesser reliability. :(

 

Good luck on your camera, and keep us posted on what happens. :)

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Rejean,

 

Welcome to the forum! Sorry to hear about your freezing problem - I know the feeling of frustration because it's happened to me too several times in the past although I haven't had to send my M8 into Leica to have it fixed.

 

One thing they don't tell you is that it's not wise to run your battery right down. One of the forum members discovered that the Kodak processor has a hardware bug that causes it to shutdown if its line voltage falls very slightly, which will happen when your battery starts to get low. The forum member learnt about the problem through reading the technical data on the processor, which included all the known bugs and error messages and one of them was this shutdown.

 

Fwiw, I now always change out a battery when the first segment goes out in the battery indicator window and it's cured the freezing problem for me. Hopefully when your M8 returns it will help you too. :o

 

Pete.

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