The curse of expensive equipment?

[Vince Lupo]

Just heard back from the Service Manager again -- it is safe to carry the camera around my neck with the lens. Whew!

Don't get me wrong - I love love love this lens. I just think it's ridiculous that a lens that costs as much as this should be making the trip to the repair dept so often for what I deem to be relatively little use (at least compared to less expensive lenses that I use much, much more).

On the flip side, my Monochrom has been working perfectly.

 

[YYV_146]

Just heard back from the Service Manager again -- it is safe to carry the camera around my neck with the lens. Whew!

😱 I would have flown to where he was and slap him in the face if he said otherwise!

Maybe you just got a bad copy. The X-e1 I bought in 2012 had a dead pixel cluster on the sensor, a dead pixel cluster on the LCD, another dead pixel in the EVF (on separate locations) and a dead Q button. Sometimes you're that unlucky guy, just saying...

 

[Vince Lupo]

Maybe I'm being unreasonable, but for $11,000 there should be no 'bad' copies.

 

[sig]

Maybe the curse of expensive equipment is that you expect it to be more reliable? But in the end it is just as reliable as the cheap stuff from Canikon, at least expensive equipment is cheap to repair 😀

 

[Vince Lupo]

That's entirely possible, but I think it's more my comparing the Nikon lenses that I use daily for work vs this one Leica lens that I use mainly for personal work, and that I expect it to be at least as reliable. All my other Leica lenses are great (21/2.8 Elmarit, 50/2 Summicron, 75/2.5 Summarit), and even my wonderful 35/1.7 Voigtlander Ultron, but it's just this one lens that's been giving me pause. The irony is that it is the most expensive lens I own, and two trips to Leica within a relatively short amount of time is two trips too many for me.

Cheap to repair expensive equipment you say? Cheap if it's under warranty - I don't know what this latest repair would have cost if I had to pay for it. Something tells me it would not have been inexpensive -- particularly since I don't see the words 'Leica' and 'cheap' connecting very often, if ever.

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

Sometimes you're that unlucky guy, just saying...

This is so true. Once had a brand new car that illustrates this. First two of the doors wouldn't close properly, then there was a problem with the electrics, then the brakes went odd and finally, and I'm not exagerating here, the engine blew up! There was a foot wide hole in the side where the number four piston had exited, before burying itself in the radiator (front wheel drive. side mounted engine).

The good news is that the dealer and the manufacturer got together and agreed to replace the car with a more expensive model, at no extra charge, while the manufacturer wrote me a very nice apology.

Things go wrong, no matter how expensive they are, that's just the way life is.