M9 suddenly died.

This looks like a problem with the electronics and should be covered under warranty. This happens with electronic devices of all types, and is "infant mortality". Send it in, get it repaired or replaced.

My wife's 3 month old Ricoh P&S just died on vacation, had been fine. Big blue card in the box on where to call for warranty repair. Same with a Nintendo DSI- called in for repair, shipping envelope sent to us, new DSI provided within one week.
 
gb hill said:
I was talking with a fellow yesterday who was in Cairo when his Nikon DSLR went down. Also a fellow photographer with him on the tour had a Canon D5 which went dead also. So it happens to all mfgs products. Don't blame Leica, electronics as well as mechanical camera's go bad sometimes. I'm sure you will be covered.
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Sorry about such crap happening to you after spending lots of money on these cameras.

When I was in Cairo last summer, the opposite happened to me; a film camera failed while a digital camera saved the trip.
 
Maybe Leica could learn a thing or 2 from Apple - take out 3 year cover and if it goes pop for any reason other than misuse then you just take it back to the shop and they give it back fixed. free (other than the price of the warranty package of course)

i don't see why any manufacturer of any electronic item should give you a "sucks to be you: that'll cost £/$xxx to fix" response within the first 3 years of ownership without offering some kind of extendable warranty to cover the fact that 'infant death' as it has been put is an inevitability among some of it's products.

there are cars that cost less with better warranty plans! - maybe Leica will have to wake up to the fact that it's selling a completely different product now for it to survive.

you should choose a company and a product on reliability, customer service and product excellence - 3 things that Leica should be offering as a matter of course when their products are priced astronomically. hell! i would go so far as to ask why for that money they wouldn't offer a lifetime guarantee against product failure.

As i've never bought new from Leica I've just been on the website looking for warranty products and support information and beside their 'service network' which i assume is basically offering services at cost after purchase and i have failed to find anything that would reassure me that my investment is a safe one.
 
Umm- the M9 has a 2 year full guaranty and it will be extended for a year should it be opened in the customer service for any reason... So just send it in for a CLA at the end of the warranty period...And why are people malignantly supposing it should not be covered by Leica in this case?😕
 
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This is more reason why we need Zeiss and Voigtlander to seriously consider making a digital M mount. Hell, if it had the crop factor of the M8 that would be fine, as long as it had better high ISO!!!!!!
 
JSU said:
Have you any real statistics for film Leicas reliability in the first four years of their manufacture? I'm not talking M3's or any M cameras, I'm talking about the original series of Leica film cameras. The M8, M8.2 and M9 are still relatively new products compared to the legacy that preceded the M3.

I wouldn't be so quick to permanently label the digital Leicas as never potentially having the reputation of the film Leicas. My own pair of M8.2's have been and still are flawless. They survived a grueling 12 mile hike into the Grand Canyon this past Saturday in better shape than the one carrying them.
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Yes, the M8/9's electronics are newer and unproven in recent years, there were a lot of issues with the M8's electronics when it was first introduced, and I personally had one die on me. But besides that they are NOT weather proofed. My old M6 would still function when the batteries died and the camera was wet. I doubt my M9 can stand up to that challenge.

Considering Leica has not proven themselves in this area, I don't believe it's naive of me to doubt the reliability of their newer electronic cameras. Not sure about you JSU, but my livelihood depends on my cameras functioning, and so I choose the tool that is most suitable to fulfilling that need. Again, I own and love my M9, and maybe over time it will earn my trust, but for now, I am still doubting the reliability of the tool.
 
Few camera manufactures if any, are large enough to produce all of the ICs used in a product. The Sensor, and processor, being most important are often produced by the Big guys. Nikon is rumored to be making their own sensors currently. All of this electronics rely on chips produced by others. The world is full of knockoffs. It's true in the electronics world too. Forgeries are common and cost makers of electronics products much grief. Have a look at the article and search for many others if you're interested. Many of us have had this trouble and it comes to a trace of custody from the maker to the buyer. It's a very serious problem. Don't blame Leica..

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/news/4253628
 
Just as a comparison, my sister's M8 was dropped in lake and survived after a simple cleanup. Only the clock has a small problem and increments backwards, it is now around year 1969 and make it the oldest M8 ever made!
 
PKR said:
Few camera manufactures if any, are large enough to produce all of the ICs used in a product. The Sensor, and processor, being most important are often produced by the Big guys. Nikon is rumored to be making their own sensors currently. All of this electronics rely on chips produced by others. The world is full of knockoffs. It's true in the electronics world too. Forgeries are common and cost makers of electronics products much grief. Have a look at the article and search for many others if you're interested. Many of us have had this trouble and it comes to a trace of custody from the maker to the buyer. It's a very serious problem. Don't blame Leica..

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/news/4253628
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While we should be sure not to make this into a Leica bashing thread, I have to disagree when you say 'Don't blame Leica'. Who do you blame then? They are responsible for the product regardless of who makes every part. Nikon don't make their own sensors as far as my info goes. They get there's from Sony.

Anyway at the end of the day Leica fans can argue all they like but the M8/M9 cameras still need time to prove themselves. The M8 was a tad off, the M8.2 has been better and the M9 is pretty good so far. There are always going to be issues, but at the end of the day if something goes wrong, the manufacturer (Leica in this case) is to blame, considering that the terms of the warranty weren't broken.

I have faith in Leica and believe their cameras will continue to improve in this area, and just hope they can fit in some weather proofing in the near future without increasing the dimensions of the camera.
 
Nikon Bob said:
NathanJD said:
hmm… a lot of damning talk in this thread for Leica. how many M9 sudden deaths have we recorded so far that have nothing to do with mishandling? just curious.

P.S. google search D700 died and count the threads

As annoying as it is electronics with microscopic components and tiny little tolerances die all the time. i have a tv cabinet with 2 dead laptops in there both died just over a year in. as technology gets smaller and more sophisticated there is simply more and more to go wrong.[/QUOTE

I think you a quite right about electronics part but there is a very high expectation of what is acceptable from Leica regarding reliability/quality. When a good part of your reputation is based on perfection and you charge accordingly for your product the let down is greater when it DOAs. Reliable stats re M9 vs D700 DOAs would be nice but not forth coming. It would be fair to say that for every M9 sold there may possibly be 100 to 1000 D700s sold. The same failure rate for both would generate substantially higher numbers for the D700 in any case. That brings me back to your last bit on electronics, the M9 is just another digital camera subject to the same problems as it's supposed lesser brethren.

Bob
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Nikon probaly sold more D700s in the first month of production than Leica will sell M9s for that model's entire run!

And they didn't cost seven grand!
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Keith said:
Nikon Bob said:
Nikon probaly sold more D700s in the first month of production than Leica will sell M9s for that model's entire run!

And they didn't cost seven grand!
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Agreed. I know many Pros using this semi pro body and it has proven itself over and over, and so have most of Nikon's cameras. Can't say the same for Canon though. :bang:
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jaapv said:
Umm- the M9 has a 2 year full guaranty and it will be extended for a year should it be opened in the customer service for any reason... So just send it in for a CLA at the end of the warranty period...And why are people malignantly supposing it should not be covered by Leica in this case?😕
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6000 posts! thats a lot of talking about cameras! 😛
 
Keith said:
Nikon probaly sold more D700s in the first month of production than Leica will sell M9s for that model's entire run!

And they didn't cost seven grand!
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given the fact that they have made so many you would have thought that they would have been able to produce a more reliable camera. sadly we all know that it doesn't work like that and there's only so much reliability you can expect from anything electrical. the only statistic that really matters to any one person is that it's 50 50 - either your camera will die prematurely or it wont despite how many brothers and sisters it has or whose name is written in white (or black) paint across it's body. it's not really a quality issue; it's an inevitability. which is why no matter what any professional photographer shoots he always has some kind of back up - a truth older than me and most everyone on this forum.

why are D3's, 1D's and all other cutting edge cameras like bricks? is it to keep chiropractors in business? nope - it's because in 2010 that is the state of the art - to give the consumer what it demands the manufacturer has to make compromise, what Leica has done is push the boundaries of that compromise by taking a design that was engineered early in the previous century in the way that it was due to constraints such as film size, canister size, ergonomics and component size and due to user demand cram a state of the art digital camera into it. there is so much that isn't recognisable in there that it would be like cracking open a coconut and seeing a watermelon inside. now as careful as Leica has surely been and as well as the product performs it's not as simple as replacing a wooden sash window with a PVC double glazed unit, it's a bit more like trying to stick a rover v8 engine in a mini.

nothing consisting of more than 2 moving parts is 100% guaranteed never to fail.
 
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My $0.02: Regardless of which manufacturer's products are less trouble prone, the turnaround on repairs for Leica is a lot longer than Nikon or Canon (at least here in the USA), and even if the initial cost of the flagship cameras are nearly equal the prices of out-of-warranty repairs are far higher with Leica. And with Nikon and Canon there's a selection of lower-cost backup bodies that use the same lenses, whereas with an M9 you need to look into second-hand (M8 or RD1) or a micro-4/3+adapter. Those issues are of more concern to me than whether Leica's cameras live up to their mythological legends.
 
I hope the OP subscribed to Leica's proservice, which entitles him to a loaner camera if the repair cannot be done within two working days. For us lowly footfolk the standard turnaround o the M9 is 5 working days, however, spare part problems mess that up from time to time. And, if the repair cannot be done in NJ, the shipping time from/to the USA , including customs holdups, must be added.
 
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