M8 Oh Drat

[kbg32]

"14,000 actuations is on the low end." ???

My M8 failed after just 1 month. I had the dreaded "shutter fault" error. Sent it to Leica NJ. Easily rectified as it was jammed. Had it back within 2 weeks.

 

[jaapv]

Actually what happens is that one of the " fingers" that sense the position of the sensor gets stuck, maybe by a spot of dust on the magnet. The shutter is a development of a Copal shutter, the same one used for the R8 and R9. Nearly all brands use these Copal shutters.

 

[Pioneer]

Know how you feel. Clicking away happily with my Sears Tower Type 3 and suddenly the shutter developed a different sound. After removing the film I looked inside and lo and behold only one shutter curtain was moving. I took out the battery and SD...ummm, wrong camera. Sorry!

Point is, everything needs repair at some point in time, even those wonderful little digital cameras.

 

[willie_901]

Mean Time Between Failures is just that: it is an arithmetic mean between the two ends of the bell curve. The shutters don't get "rated." In order for the MTBF to be accurate, there has to be something to the left of the mean failure point, if you know what I "mean."

Ben

Exactly.

It's no fun to be in the wrong tail of a Gaussian distribution curve. But somebody has to be there.

I hope your shutter issue is resolved quickly and inexpensively.

 

[Keith]

"It's no fun to be in the wrong tail of a Gaussian distribution curve. But somebody has to be there. "


LOL ... I like that! 😀

 

[raid]

I love seeing so many statistical concepts being infused here!

 

[Bob Ross]

I love seeing so many statistical concepts being infused here!

Yes, Statistics is the study of confused numbers....😛
Bob

 

[leicapixie]

The low numbers bothers me! My cheap Canon Point and shoot digital S590 has shot more than 75,000 images. Numerous gravity tests by fumble fingers.A few very long air trips. Severe weather conditions.My Leica M3 has reqd. many services and repairs. Some very major and VERY expensive.
The flash is history. Everything else still works..Any of those bumps, bad memory cards, faulty batteries would have cost dearly on a Leica.
The Canon cost new $107 incl. taxes., 4 years ago.
If it was only this Leica M8 in question, it would be OK. The fact he problem is elsewhere is disturbing. Do all the reqd. Use a new SD card. Fresh battery.
Check the contacts are clean. If still "no go" send to Leica.
Let us know the result..

 

[Faintandfuzzy]

Nowadays virtually every Nikon, Pentax, Sony or Canon DSLR is good for over 100,000 shutter cycles. Not sure why a cheap, plastic DSLR can last over 100,000 cycles and a $7000 Leica dies at 20 or 30k. So much for the Leica name.

 

[nikon_sam]

Nowadays virtually every Nikon, Pentax, Sony or Canon DSLR is good for over 100,000 shutter cycles. Not sure why a cheap, plastic DSLR can last over 100,000 cycles and a $7000 Leica dies at 20 or 30k. So much for the Leica name.

How does one defend that 14,000-30,000 actuations is acceptable...how is it that Leica has gotten away with this...???

My Nikon F4 has at least 35,000 shutter actuations that I have personally put on it and I bought it used and I've shot over 9,000 pictures with my used F5 and what I paid for both of these cameras together is a fraction of what digital Leicas are going for...just doesn't sound like a good deal to me...

 

[btgc]

I can point you to a friend of mine who's new M6 and Summicron-M 50mm lens went back and forth to Leica four times in the first six months he owned it during the early 1990s. They just couldn't seem to figure out why it wouldn't focus correctly, and why the meter was so far off. They finally replaced the entire viewfinder/rangefinder mechanism and the entire meter circuitry.

Terrible customer service, I think. If new camera failed they should have sent him replacement set and take in failed one, not making customer sick by 4 (FOUR !!!) repair iterations. By today's laws customer in first six months in a case of failure can take back money if he chooses so; well, this depends on country but this what I can choose from).

In another thread Bill Pierce writes how young photogs slowly turn off Leica. Truly, I wonder why this happens so slowly! With upcoming mirrorless rise (Fuji especially) some of old brands will slip away at faster rate. Because there's reason.

 

[sevo]

Nowadays virtually every Nikon, Pentax, Sony or Canon DSLR is good for over 100,000 shutter cycles. Not sure why a cheap, plastic DSLR can last over 100,000 cycles and a $7000 Leica dies at 20 or 30k. So much for the Leica name.

You'll find cheap plastic DSLRs failing at 10k releases as well - it does not get noticed that often, as consumer DSLRs usually won't even see 5000.

But technically they all use a shutter from the same maker (Seiko Copal), same family and with similar specs as the shutter on the M8.

 

[Frontman]

When Yoshihisa Maitani designed cameras for Olympus, he demanded that the shutters be good for at least 100,000 actuations, and that was half a century ago. One would think that 50 years later we could do better.

 

[mike_j]

Thank you all for the comments and advice especially loiusb. The camera was still dead yesterday afternoon but this morning I put a battery in and it worked normally.

I think that the SD card can be exonerated, as can the battery which was quite adequately charged when the failure occurred so I suspect the firmware.

I will report it to Leica but expect that they will just tell me to send it in for a checkup.

The problem is that I can't now trust it, I lost an exceptional photo opportunity yesterday and so will have to take two cameras all the time.

I had the same fault on my M8. Took the battery out and left it for a day. I also changed the SD card. Put the battery and a new card in and the shutter finished its cycle and worked perfectly until I sold it over a year later.

Here is what I think. The firmware is basic and uses a simple 'state machine' principle that it must complete each state before moving on. If, like me, your SD card is suddenly defective mid-write then the cycle cannot move to the next state and a shutter fault shows.

Incidentally, it was a SanDisk card and I switched to Kingston thereafter.

Of course, in your case it may be a genuine shutter fault. It could be dirt on the shutter blades, which if you can get the shutter to actuate again will eventually disperese, or it could be the shutter fault I had where a recharged battery and a new card is all that was needed.

Hope it resolves itself.

LouisB

 

[Keith]

I always remember listening to the staplegun 'wallop' of the shutter in my M8 when I first got it and wondering how long it could keep that up!

Now I know! 😀

 

[peterm1]

When Yoshihisa Maitani designed cameras for Olympus, he demanded that the shutters be good for at least 100,000 actuations, and that was half a century ago. One would think that 50 years later we could do better.

We probably could if anyone was willing to pay the price. But I guess the attitude with digitals is "why bother" - the chances are the camera body will be obsolete in a few years anyway. Its a different matter with Nikon etc - they have volume so its not a big deal as they can amortize their R and D costs oevr a larger production base. And their cameras are routinely used by pros not dilettantes like me who use Leicas. :^) Anyway, perhaps the Leica M8 is that first model piece of technology that everyone tells us we should not buy (but I did!).

Oh and Keith you are right about the shutter sound. Its appalling. KLOPP, like someone dropped a wooden clog into a toilet bowl. I have kinda gotten used to it (but not quite). I tried someone's 111f the other day and it was streets ahead in terms of the shutter sound.

 

[steveniphoto]

this is one reason thats been pushing me away from digital Ms. shutters failing before 50k is unacceptable and cost of repair being above $600 is too. my 5d must have at least 250k on the shutter and it looks like its been through hell and back yet it works without fail.

 

[Lss]

For all interested, there is an M8 shutter life database with dead/still working reports. The number of users who have input data is still pretty small and unlikely to get much bigger this far into the M8 product cycle. It probably gives a usable worst-case estimate for anyone who is concerned about the shutter life, though.

Some are lucky, some are not. I know of a user with well over 200k shutter actuations on his M8 who still had the original shutter and no service done. I can't verify the part about no service, but I did access the service menu to check the actuation count.


Edit. Please note that through the site map you can access a survey for pretty much any other digital camera, too.

 

[Michael Markey]

For all interested, there is an M8 shutter life database with dead/still working reports.

That fact alone is all the information I need.

 

[Lss]

That fact alone is all the information I need.

You mean the fact that there is such a database also for M8? There is one for about 100 or so Canon models. 🙂