Leica M240 Wakeup Time

[georgeqiao]

I have to say, so far the only big complaint I have about the M240 is the wake-up time. It is a big step back. I missed shots many times due to the slow wake-up time, even when I do not turn off the camera. I remember it was not the case with the Monochrom. The Monochrom I can shoot whenever I press the shutter, despite the loud music of its sound.

Does anyone know whether the M-P 240 solved this problem?

George

 

[acordes]

I have to say, so far the only big complaint I have about the M240 is the wake-up time. It is a big step back. I missed shots many times due to the slow wake-up time, even when I do not turn off the camera. I remember it was not the case with the Monochrom. The Monochrom I can shoot whenever I press the shutter, despite the loud music of its sound.

Does anyone know whether the M-P 240 solved this problem?

George

Due to other recommendations I also switched to a "SanDisk Extreme Pro SDXC 64GB Class 10 95 MB/s" and with this the startup time is much quicker!
The leica forum is full with that hints also... see: http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-m-type-240/

Regards Axel

 

[LCT]

Yes i would use a fast SDHC or SDXC card of 8, 16 or 64GB (32 GB look slower for some reason) or an old SD card of 1 or 2GB, format it with SD Formatter and disable the sleep mode ("Auto Power Off" to "Off") if need be. You will notice a significant improvement then. Couple of tests here: http://tinyurl.com/kp8qe83.

 

[flyalf]

Yes i would use a fast SDHC or SDXC card of 8, 16 or 64GB (32 GB look slower for some reason) or an old SD card of 1 or 2GB, format it with SD Formatter and disable the sleep mode ("Auto Power Off" to "Off") if need be. You will notice a significant improvement then. Couple of tests here: http://tinyurl.com/kp8qe83.

Thanks a lot for sharing!

 

[ray*j*gun]

Does this advice apply to M8's? I always felt mine was quite slow esp compared to my D610.

 

[Kwesi]

Yes i would use a fast SDHC or SDXC card of 8, 16 or 64GB (32 GB look slower for some reason) or an old SD card of 1 or 2GB, format it with SD Formatter and disable the sleep mode ("Auto Power Off" to "Off") if need be. You will notice a significant improvement then. Couple of tests here: http://tinyurl.com/kp8qe83.

Thanks a lot for sharing this!

 

[furcafe]

It's been a long time since I had an M8, but no, a faster card will do nothing to help w/the M8 or M9.

Does this advice apply to M8's? I always felt mine was quite slow esp compared to my D610.

 

[Godfrey]

It's been a long time since I had an M8, but no, a faster card will do nothing to help w/the M8 or M9.

I do notice that my M9 is slightly slower to start up with the 32G card I fitted compared to the 16G I was using before despite the cards being rated the same speed. I haven't done measurements, but just might.

G

 

[georgeqiao]

Thanks!! This is very very helpful. BTW, what is SD formatter?

 

[rhe]

It is a free software program developed by the SD Association to format SD cards and is available here: https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/

 

[georgeqiao]

I tried it, and it worked wonders. I am using a 95mb/s Sandisk card. Turning off the auto power off function, surely now I can shoot as quickly as in previous generations of cameras.
Thank you so much. You solved a huge mystery for me.

 

[LCT]

You're welcome. I would think to switch off the camera after shooting though failing which your battery could drain.

 

[gunston]

Just wonder will M240-P with 2gb buffers encountering the similar issue?

 

[Dante_Stella]

One thing that can help is to format the card in the camera. For whatever reason, all digital cameras' wakeup times are exacerbated by using a card formatted in another camera. And when you are done importing, format the card when it is back in the camera. That, and using very fast SanDisk cards.

Unfortunately, when my M240 is slow waking up, it's because the main switch is actually "off." 🙁

Dante

 

[bobby_novatron]

There's lots of good info and contributions from M 240 users on this thread, but I find the mythos around SD cards somewhat contradictory ... some people recommend using the SD Card Formatter utility, some people recommend using the in-camera format function.

So which one is better?

Personally I have tried both with my M 240 and haven't noticed any difference. Start-up times and write times have remained the same -- no matter what formatting system I've used.

IMHO I think that ultimately it's the brand and speed / capacity of the SD card that makes all the difference.

FWIW I'm using a Lexar Professional 16GB Class 10 / U3 card with 150MB/second transfer speed. It is one of the fastest cards currently available, and not expensive. I think I paid around $30 on Amazon for mine.

 

[Godfrey]

I've noticed that the M-P wakes up from sleep just a hair more slowly than my M9 used to with the same (fast) 32G card. I haven't found it to be an annoyance, however; the camera is much more responsive in every other operation.

G

 

[jim0266]

I haven't seen anyone mention formatting their card as exFat.

The fastest startup time I was able to achieve, from turning the camera on to being able to make an image with the M262, was 1.6 seconds. That was with a Panasonic Gold 8GB card.

Time of other cards I tested:

16GB Sandisk Extreme Pro (95MB/s): 1.8 seconds
16GB Panasonic Gold: 1.9 seconds
16GB Samsung Pro (white card): 1.75 seconds

In order to measure the time I turned on the camera while holding down the shutter button. I recorded this on video. The audio was imported into Audacity, which allowed me to "see" the sound of the on switch and end with the sound of the shutter opening. The audio spikes in Audacity allowed for a precise measurement.

Formatting the SD Card as exFat is the key. I also tried SD Card Formatter alone and in conjunction with formatting in the camera. That didn’t seem to make any difference. Once I formatted the cards as exFat I recorded my fastest start-to-shoot times. The 16GB Panasonic’s start-to-shoot time when the card was formatted only in the camera at the card's default MSDOS FAT format was 5.2 seconds. Formatting the card first in my computer as exFAT, then formatting the card in the camera reduced the startup time on this card to 1.9 seconds.

Try it on your M240's and see if the startup to shoot times drop below 2 seconds.

 

[krötenblender]

For me, the startup seems to depend very much on the number of images on the sd card. After a lengrhy discussion, I tried different cards, as suggested, different methods to format (in camera, only delete in camera but not format, use SD formatter, ...), but nothing of that made any difference. The slowest card I used had only very little slower startup time as the fastest cards I tried.

With really many pictures on the card, I had sometimes startup times of way over 10 seconds from off to first shot... You may like to read this thread with measured times and some replies to them:
http://rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153242

Regards

 

[jaapv]

That is weird and there might be something wrong with the camera. My 240 starts up in 1.5 seconds consistently using Lexar Pro 600x and 1000x , Panasonic Gold and Sandisk various types are a bit slower at about 2 seconds. All 16GB cards, formatted exFat.
But 10 seconds? Never, in no circumstances, in over 10.000 shots...

 

[krötenblender]

That is weird and there might be something wrong with the camera. My 240 starts up in 1.5 seconds consistently using Lexar Pro 600x and 1000x , Panasonic Gold and Sandisk various types are a bit slower at about 2 seconds. All 16GB cards, formatted exFat.
But 10 seconds? Never, in no circumstances, in over 10.000 shots...

Yes, I know, we had that discussion already... I can get a slow (compared to other cameras) but acceptable startup time around the time, that you mention, when the card is freshly formatted. It does make no difference, if formatted in camera or with SD formatter.

BUT if the card contains several thousand of RAWs already, I get these very slow startup times. This is not dependent on the write speed of the card, as I tested several cards as recommended in my and another thread.

I wrote to Leica customer service, but it seems, that with those preconditions, they don't see any problem with my camera, as they did not answer my question, if this is normal.