newyorkone
Established
ywenz said:
If memory serves me right, you shoot Canon. Canon doesn't do this so why would you expect Leica to?
When the LCD on my 5D flaked out after only 3 months I had to send it in and they didn't send me a loaner. They had the camera a week the first time and then ended up NOT fixing it correctly. I had to send it in again. All told, I was without the camera for about 3 weeks. Canon also doesn't pay for return shipping...I had to argue for that.
ywenz
Veteran
newyorkone said:
Entirely different scenario. 'nuff said.
J. Borger
Well-known
Had the same experience with:newyorkone said:
Canon 1Ds (losing pictures at random)
24-70L Focus issues
70-200 LIS: IS froze the camera constantly
All was fixed in the end .... waiting times 3 weeks each case including shipping ... in 1 of 3 cases Canon payd return shipment .. that were my experiences with Canon Customer Care ............ no loaners, no excuses .. no personal letter/ note or whatever!
Did i whine about it .. no .. i did not expect anything else.....but it sound a bit unfair to put unreasonable expectations on Leica's shoulders where they already deliver more than other companies!
BTW ...I could tell the same story about a TaG Heuer and Breitling watches, a Sony LCD TV, Miele washing machine, Fujitsu computer, Epson & HP printers etc etc.......
ywenz
Veteran
J.Borger:
Did any of the Canon issues you experienced turn out to be a fundamental design deficiency in the product which Canon knew about, and still sold it to the consumer knowing very well that every unit will require additional service in order to remove the issue?
Did any of the Canon issues you experienced turn out to be a fundamental design deficiency in the product which Canon knew about, and still sold it to the consumer knowing very well that every unit will require additional service in order to remove the issue?
mfunnell
Shaken, so blurred
I know it may be difficult for you, being American at allywenz said:
(The Paranoid Style in American Politics was written for a reason) but most times there's a huge stuff-up like this there is no conspiracy just a series of mistakes, bad judgements etc.I've seen corporate stuff-ups, up-close and personal, and also "admired" them from a distance. Usually they happen because the low-level folks who know what's what are buffered from the decision-makers by a layer or 12 of management who make sure that the information flows like treacle.
This results in things like exploding space shuttles, major airports opening before they're ready to begin air-freight operations (Check Lap Kok in Hong Kong) thus costing a permanent 1.x% of Gross "National" Product due to consequent loss of business or going live with a new customs clearance system that's incapable of processing, um, goods arriving from overseas (Australia).
Messages like "if you launch the shuttle when its below freezing, it will explode" or "the airport is incapable of handling air freight" or "no computer, or bank of computers, in the world is big enough to run an application this bad" somehow never make it through to the upper echelons (sometimes because messengers get shot, sometimes through being too thick to understand the implications, sometimes because the person blocking the message created the problem).
No, a softened, re-worded and downplayed version is presented, often in the language of "risk management" and often with the false implication that a serious risk has really been managed.
That's how mess-ups happen. Nobody sits around the boardroom in Solms and says "How can we rip off our customers in a way that could send us all bankrupt?"
...Mike
jaapv
RFF Sponsoring Member.
ywenz said:
Since when are we talking about a design deficiency? Much as I hate it, this is a design compromise forced by the technical limitations of current sensor technology. Elegantly presented? emphatically no. Unavoidable? seemingly yes.
To paraphrase another poster in another forum: If Leica had told us two years ago: "the only way to design a digital RF with a file quality that is up with the best or better is to screw a 486 filter in the @ss of the photog.", we would have happily complied. So what are we whining about now?
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mfunnell
Shaken, so blurred
I think one of the problems here is the apparent disconnect between the engineering types who would have known of the high IR sensitivity (though not, perhaps, the full extent of problems that would cause in the field) and those in charge of the product launch, who built expectations of "Digital Perfection (tm)" but did not build expectations of Purple People (a not so desirable "tm").jaapv said:
I strongly suspect that (a) the engineers were underestimating the problem in the first place, through lack of work with real-world objects; and (b) any engineering concerns were passed on up the line as "underestimates of underestimates" by intervening management. That were then underplayed by PR types. They may even have believed their own bull****t enough that they underestimated the reports of problems coming back in from the field after the product was launched, and so believed they could "spin" the problem since, in their eyes, it was smaller than it really was.
It seems to me like a cascade of obvious-in-hindsight errors, each understandable, but which reinforced each other through the train-wreck of a product launch. Conditioning expectations is the name of the game, there, and (to put it mildly) it was not done well.
It may well be (in fact probably is) true that with current technology a combination of IR-cut filters, colour profiles, lens coding and consequent cyan-shift correction is all that can really be done for a digital M that provides high-quality-enough imaging. One hopes that Kodak has been told to go research thin IR filters for sensor coverings (or that someone else is doing the same).
Should Leica have held off producing a digital M until the "right" technologly was available? I sure don't know. There was huge market demand, and there may still be, despite problems with the launch (and the factory return, which is just an early bug but sure doesn't help). Looking here, as well on other forums, suggests a fair number of people are prepared to put up with all this to have an M8. I've no way of knowing if that's a large enough group to make this a commercial success.
But perhaps, given the demands for a digital M which had been building up, all they need is for the M8 not to be a complete commercial failure. It might just "hold the fort" in the digital space until the appropriate technology is developed. But they'd better spend a bunch of time fixing up their internal systems before they try another product launch. Because you don't stuff one up as badly as this, twice, and live.
...Mike
ywenz
Veteran
jaapv said:
My distaste with Leica is because they knew about the IR issue before the 1st M8 was shipped out to customer. This is what I'm talking about. I'm not flirting with a conspiracy theory here. For this reason alone, they should compentsate their customers as I have described. It's the decent thing to do, especially for a small, personable company such as Leica.