Firmware for M9 is up!

[jaapv]

In the owners section of the Leica site

 

[Steve Ash]

Jaap, that is awful and makes it increasingly difficult to resist to get the M9...

Regards
Steve

 

[hudsong]

I wonder if the M8 will be updated..

 

[Pickett Wilson]

Be interesting to know if it speeds up the SD card operation. That's the biggest gripe I hear from M9 owners.

 

[dcsang]

Vignetting correction?

Bah.. I LOVE vignetting ..
That said.. good on Leica for updating the firmware and listening to their user base 🙂

Cheers,
Dave

 

[swoop]

Yeah, the vignetting correction seemed weird to me. Not that it was a huge deal. I never really had an issue with it in my pictures. But whatev. It was only really a big deal on anything wider than 28mm and f2.8. But I guess it's for the best.

The SD card formatting is super fast. It was about 16 seconds before the update. 4 seconds after update. Woo!

 

[alecgold]

Mmmmh, I don't know what should be updated on the M8 as it is working great, but I always like a good firmware update 😀
It has been well over a year now!

 

[proenca]

Ok, so its real.

I'm the proud owner of a M9. Camera came with FW 1.04 or whereabouts. I purposely took some pictures with the old firmware and then updated with the new, easy to spot differences :

- erm... vignetting correction ? my Noctilux vignetted before and still does, thank god actually ; I love vignetting and Im usually adding a touch more

- format the SD card : WHAT A DIFFERENCE .. good lord.. you first M9 adopters are HEROES. honestly, I cannot see how you stood the looooooooong formating waiting. I formated the card pre-firmware update and I started to moan and utterly lead me to desperation - now after the update its blazing fast

all the rest is just a smile from one side to another to have a M9, seeing live and for real the ISO gains, the 18mp, the full frame... oh well...

 

[jaapv]

Welcome to the club 🙂

 

[yanidel]

- I never had issues with slow card formatting before the update.
- I love vignetting
- I never noticed any red corners in my pictures
- so only worthwile improvement is the better thumbnails and zom in. But then, it just make you chimp more which is never good for picture taking. 😉

Meanwhile, issues that do impact the picture taking remain unsolved :
- exposure compensation does not reset after a shot.
- auto-iso still has limitations on speeds.
- lens detection options could be better (code overrides manual when detected)

No big deal, I love my M9 but I feel that 6 months to come up with that firmware is disappointing. Hope the next one does add to the capability of the camera and not just fix launch issues.

 

[GrahamWelland]

- format the SD card : WHAT A DIFFERENCE .. good lord.. you first M9 adopters are HEROES. honestly, I cannot see how you stood the looooooooong formating waiting. I formated the card pre-firmware update and I started to moan and utterly lead me to desperation - now after the update its blazing fast

When I first got my M9 and formatted the card I truly believed that I'd bricked it on the very first try. 😡 A little more patience was required after I'd powered it off and tried again. Slow as molasses didn't quite cover it.

However, the firmware update is a HUGE improvement and is scary fast by comparison. Ditto the zoom rendering is now very acceptable vs the go slow operation that it once was.

I'm a happy camper at least. :angel:

 

[bottley1]

I still cannot use my 8GB Samsung SD cards on the M9, even though they work fine on the D-lux3 and 4.

 

[arnulf]

Eeer, am I really the only one who has a problem with this update. After I installed it the RAW thumbnails load incredibly slowly. So slow I thought my shots were out of focus. It's really annoying.

Secondly, waking up the camera from sleep takes much longer than before. I've actually missed a couple of potentially good shots because the camera simply didn't respond.

Nobody else? Did I do something wrong? I followed the instructions really carefully.

 

[jamato8]

Yes, for me the "waking up" does seem to take longer and I don't care for it. It takes too long.

The formatting and thumbnail works far better now, as everyone knows.

 

[greggebhardt]

Be interesting to know if it speeds up the SD card operation. That's the biggest gripe I hear from M9 owners.

It brings the formatting of my 8gb card down to less than 5 seconds, which is where is SHOULD be. The image zooming in review mode is MUCH quicker which was my biggest complaint!

No problems with the update after 4 days of use.😀

 

[bottley1]

Eeer, am I really the only one who has a problem with this update. After I installed it the RAW thumbnails load incredibly slowly. So slow I thought my shots were out of focus. It's really annoying.

Secondly, waking up the camera from sleep takes much longer than before. I've actually missed a couple of potentially good shots because the camera simply didn't respond.

Nobody else? Did I do something wrong? I followed the instructions really carefully.

It would appear that slow RAW loading is dependent on the card used. As I said before, My Samsung Cards are very slow (the previous firmware didn't recognise the cards at all!!), and for some reason do not show the first image on the card, whereas my sandisk cards show the Raw files super quick with no problem. I suspect the M9 firmware is still a "work in progress" 🙁

 

[arnulf]

I'm using a SanDisk Extreme III 4GB card. That should work pretty painlessly, right? This is really weird...