M9 memory write errors

[jsrockit]

The only time this has happened to me is when I am not patient and turn it off when it is writing. With the M9, as long as you give it (a lot) of time to write without turning off the camera, you'll be ok. It's slowness takes getting used to at first. Also, when this happened to me, the card died. No matter what formatting I did, it would not work anymore. I sent it back to Sandisk (Ultra).

 

[furcafe]

This has been similar to my experience, both w/the old & current firmware, especially when I've filled the buffer w/a succession of shots, i.e., the only time I've lost a file (& it's only been 1 @ a time, not a batch) has been when I turn off the camera, or the battery dies, while it's writing to the card. However, I've not had a problem w/a card dying or needing replacement.

Edit: I'm using Transcend SDHC 8 & 16 GB cards.

The only time this has happened to me is when I am not patient and turn it off when it is writing. With the M9, as long as you give it (a lot) of time to write without turning off the camera, you'll be ok. It's slowness takes getting used to at first. Also, when this happened to me, the card died. No matter what formatting I did, it would not work anymore. I sent it back to Sandisk (Ultra).

 

[Ben Z]

I have opened a service ticket and recieved an email saying I should update the firmware again. I did that, it did not help. I replied to Leica, that it did not help with the video above and I am not waiting for them to reply to my mail.

Leica Forum has quite a few users, that have similar problems and I posted here to see if this is a common problem, which could mean that I send my M9 to Solms and there is no available fix.

The weird part is that I have one old (2 years) Sandisk Extreme III 4GB card that works just fine on my M9. I have 3 Lexar Pro 8GB, 2 Sandisk Ultra, 1 Sandisk Ultra II 8GB and 2 Sandisk Extreme 8GB cards that all fail.

(ps. I am a systems engineer in a software business, so please dont tell me that this is normal behavior on electronic devices... well, it might be on poorly designed ones. )

The only thing I might suggest, if you haven't, is download the firmware update file again, and then reinstall that one. I've heard of corruption happening in downloading or unzipping the file. If that doesn't work, then I'm out of suggestions.

I'm using 2GB Sandisk Ultra cards, so if the problem is with the bigger capacity cards that could explain why it has never happened to me. Likewise I have never used continuous shooting mode, keep auto-review turned off, and have never pushed the play button while the red light was blinking. (I shoot DNG-compressed, and by the time I get the camera down from my eye I've never seen the red light still blinking). So I'd have to duplicate your actions to see if my M9 acts the same...and I'd rather not tempt fate, as my M9 has worked flawlessly thus far.

You seem to be convinced Leica won't be able to fix this issue, and not willing to let them try. Perhaps you're not wrong. But then what are your remaining options? Seems to me, either follow my original suggestion of "don't do that"...or sell the camera and buy something that functions in a way that pleases you? 😕 I guess what I'm wondering is, what do you think this forum can do to help?

 

[steelduck]

I am letting the Leica to try, but it takes them 7 days to answer every email reply I give them abou the issue, so I am trying to find out if there are others with the problem and has it been fixed by Leica or some other solution.

The issue occurs also without doing anything, but taking pictures. I had that two days ago. I was taking a series of pictures maybe 1 second apart and and the camera crashed on the fourth or fifth and lost all the pictures exept the first.

I am not the onlyone with this issue:
http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica...m9-eating-sd-cards-merged-13.html#post1775309

ps. I have downloaded the firmware again and reloaded, but it did not help. Thanks for the tip though. I just bought the 50mm Summilux ASPH, so I do not wnt to sell the damn thing either - I just want it to save my pictures to the memorycard. 😉

 

[250swb]

Just take it to your Leica dealer steelduck and let them send it to Leica for repair. What you are describing isn't normal and you have to consider the vast majority of M9 users don't have this problem at all so its not firmware related or a fundamental characteristic everybody can replicate. Some may have something that looks like a similar problem, some its users error, but yours is at a level beyond all of those.

It still feels like an SD card problem to me, but it could be an electrical problem in the slot as much a card itself. And if it started after you last upgraded the Firmware have you in any way second guessed the proceedure and omitted a step. Like not re-formatting the card after you uploaded the Firmware off it? Do you reformat the card in camera after downloading all images to delete them, otherwise if you have used a PC and say Photoshop this can add unwanted files onto the card that are alien to the M9. Have you considered all your cards may be fake or faulty, not unusual if all bought from the same dodgy dealer. You aren't placing your cards or camera on top of a cathode monitor, near hi-fi speakers or anywhere else highly magnetic?

Now don't get riled up, I'm just trying to think of the simple things that can go wrong because more often than not that is the problem. When the customer says the car is broken the mechanic should first check the tank for petrol.

Steve

 

[zleica]

I had similar experience with a Sandisk (Ultra) SD card. Once I used a different SD card, the problems went away. It has beed reported that M9 is a bit fussy on writing files on memory cards. WTB, I use Transcend SDHC 8 & 16 GB cards without any problems.

Cheers,

 

[steelduck]

From L-Forum. It seems that this is an old issue that is still going on...

"Sean Reid, far from being a Leica shill as some have claimed, reports that when firing in continuous mode, the M9 sometimes froze. On some occasions, he reports, these crashes caused the camera to lose some of the pictures that it had supposedly taken. In either case, the only way to get the camera working again was to remove and reinsert the battery.

This same problem with the M8 was frequently reported on the LUF. I often experienced it myself with my M8s when taking many pictures in rapid succession (I would do this in single shot mode, not continuous, mode). Leica certainly knew about this problem, and they supposedly fixed it for me a few times although the "fixes" never worked. It would be surprising and disappointing if the M9 has the exact same bug."

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-m9-forum/190113-my-m9-eating-sd-cards-merged.html

My M9 has been "invited" to Solms, I really hope they can fix it, but I starting to be afraid that there is no fix available. 🙁

 

[zleica]

From L-Forum. It seems that this is an old issue that is still going on...

"Sean Reid, far from being a Leica shill as some have claimed, reports that when firing in continuous mode, the M9 sometimes froze. On some occasions, he reports, these crashes caused the camera to lose some of the pictures that it had supposedly taken. In either case, the only way to get the camera working again was to remove and reinsert the battery.

This same problem with the M8 was frequently reported on the LUF. I often experienced it myself with my M8s when taking many pictures in rapid succession (I would do this in single shot mode, not continuous, mode). Leica certainly knew about this problem, and they supposedly fixed it for me a few times although the "fixes" never worked. It would be surprising and disappointing if the M9 has the exact same bug."

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-m9-forum/190113-my-m9-eating-sd-cards-merged.html

My M9 has been "invited" to Solms, I really hope they can fix it, but I starting to be afraid that there is no fix available. 🙁

I have experienced all of what you described. My M9 went into a loop and didn't write any files (it wrote file names but with zero contents). I had to pop out the battery and reformat the card before I can take another shot. But the problems continued after I took shots in rapid succession...

Then I changed my SD card and the problem went away completely. Now I can take continues shots up to the buffer is completely full without a glitch. In my case, I use SD cards with class 6 and class 10. I did have problems with Sandisk Ultra II 16 GB (class 4) SD card.

 

[steelduck]

I have experienced all of what you described. My M9 went into a loop and didn't write any files (it wrote file names but with zero contents). I had to pop out the battery and reformat the card before I can take another shot. But the problems continued after I took shots in rapid succession...

Then I changed my SD card and the problem went away completely. Now I can take continues shots up to the buffer is completely full without a glitch. In my case, I use SD cards with class 6 and class 10.

Can you tell me what cards are you using? I have bad luck with Lexar Pro 8GB and Sandisk Ultra 8GB cards.

 

[zleica]

Can you tell me what cards are you using? I have bad luck with Lexar Pro 8GB and Sandisk Ultra 8GB cards.

I use Transcend SDHC 8 GB (class 6) & 16 GB (class 10) cards.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Then I changed my SD card and the problem went away completely. Now I can take continues shots up to the buffer is completely full without a glitch. In my case, I use SD cards with class 6 and class 10.

I believe that Leica had a list of "supported" SD cards somewhere, didn't they?

I remember I had a card that my M8 absolutely refused to work with.

In order to avoid any issue, either use common sense when buying a card ("professional" grade vs. buy-two-get-one-free), do online research, or just stick to Leica's list --as last resort.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Can you tell me what cards are you using? I have bad luck with Lexar Pro 8GB and Sandisk Ultra 8GB cards.

I avoid Lexars (I've had QC problems with those cards since my Canon 10D days) and anything by Sandisk that isn't "Extreme" made before 2008.

I also usually check (and it's becoming increasingly difficult) to find a card that doesn't say "Made in China". Those made in Japan or Taiwan, even their cheaper ones, have proved very reliable to me.

 

[Paul Luscher]

Well, Phantomas and Steelduck, you can say I'm engaging in "fanboyism to the extreme," but I don't see what the big deal is. Why do you HAVE to look at the photos while the card is still writing? You only have to wait a few seconds before the card writes. You cant possibly wait that long?

I mean to me, this seems a very minor point, when taking the camera and its capabilities as a whole (ditto with your comments about the LCD screen, Phantomas). Sort of not being able to see the forest for the trees, from my viewpoint. Anyway, isn't the idea that you should have your eye in the viewfinder and be shooting, not chimping after every shot?

As I've said before, Leicas are not the equivalent of a state-of-the -art- features-loaded Lexus, but more like one of those old shift-it-yourself British sports cars. You just don't get everything with a Leica that you get on a DSLR. If you can't live with that, then maybe the M9 is not the camera for you.

Sometimes I'm glad I'm came late to digital--after years using essentially no-feature film Leica Ms ( OK, TTL metering--whoopee). That way, I'm happy with what I've got, rather than kvetching that the camera doesn't have this or that niggling feature....

 

[sevres_babylone]

Well, Phantomas and Steelduck, you can say I'm engaging in "fanboyism to the extreme," but I don't see what the big deal is. Why do you HAVE to look at the photos while the card is still writing? You only have to wait a few seconds before the card writes. You cant possibly wait that long?

I'm not sure I'd say "to the extreme", but since if the M9's Auto Review is set to ON, it will let you see the picture before it finishes writing to the card, there is nothing inherently problematical about not waiting for the "few seconds" to pass.

I have Auto Review set to off. I do chimp more than I'd like to -- that is I review as I do with my GRD3 and my Epson. I have had freezes, requiring me to take the battery out and put it back in. It's not zero-byte files that bother me -- I've had extremely few, if any (The reason I don't know for sure is I haven't checked the directory on the card; I have had very infrequent instances where Photo Mechanic has shown a file to be unreadable, which may be a zero-byte file). What doesn't bother is having to wait for the buffer to clear. What bothers me is shots lost in those instances, which have also been fortunately quite infrequent, where I lose shots because I'm occupied going through the exercise of replacing the battery.

All I'm asking for is that if the camera is working too hard writing the file to allow the preview, just don't show the preview.

I discussed my experiences in a flickr discussion about frozen M9s:
"This has happened to me twice. The first time might have been my fault. It was shortly after I'd gotten the camera. I was using the new Heliar 75mm, which is a bigger lens than I've been used to, and I hadn't got used to the lens yet. I think I inadvertently was pressing buttons as I was shooting.

The second time, last weekend, this was definitely not the case. I was shooting quickly in a crowded concert, and the buffer undoubtedly got filled. I was also chimping. Then everything just froze. Nothing on the screen. Shutter wouldn't work. I replaced the battery (which was not near empty by any means. At first nothing. Then the screen lit up and said that the SD card was full. This was also definitely not the case. I took out the SD card and put it back in, and eventually, everything was back to normal. If this were a job, I would nave been extremely frustrated (well I was anyway.)

In my opinion, the firmware should be designed so that, assuming the initial problem was a full buffer, that there be a warning to wait

The camera did feel quite warm, but I was not in an overly hot locale.

By the way, I use only Sandisk Ultra cards (8gb), and original Leica batteries. "

The Ultras had been recommended in other discussions, and generally have served me well. They are listed in Leica's FAQ. I will try the Transcends, for comparison purposes at least, the next time I buy a card.

Here is a link to the Flickr discussion:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/leicam9/discuss/72157625694884289/

 

[zleica]

Maybe Leica will take care of this during the next firmware update. I updated the latest version 1.162 but the problems were still there for my Sandisk Ultra II card. As I said in my earlier posts, after I switched the card to Transcend SDHC 8 GB (class 6) & 16 GB (class 10) cards, everything works normally - I can take continuous shoot until the buffer is full, then the M9 pauses for a few seconds then continues to fire and go on and on...

 

[Paul Luscher]

Fair enough, sevres babylon. And you pointed out something--if you have have to camera set up-you DO get instant preview of the last shot taken. Mine does that.

Suffice to say, that the only problem I've had with the M9 was one "shutter fault" message. My fault, I think, as I had the camera on "discreet" mode and was admittedly frantically pressing the button again and again while in "single-shot" mode--trying to capture a Big Moment and got a little overenthusiastic.

Only other time I had a card issue was with an M8--again blasting away in single shot mode, attempting to try to capture a moment--all of a sudden the pics showing up on the screen looked like they'd been hit with a eggbeater. Guess I've got to learn to slow down a bit....

 

[steelduck]

I will not go into the details as Leica has not given me a OK to copy paste the email here. I just say that Leica has acknowledged the issue and are working hard to figure it out.

 

[zleica]

I will not go into the details as Leica has not given me a OK to copy paste the email here. I just say that Leica has acknowledged the issue and are working hard to figure it out.

I can only guess that the operating software went into a loop when the M9 file writing speed in faster than that of the SD card while the buffer is full.