SanDisk Memorycard Issues with the M9

Everyone following the latest Leica M9 news, knows that there are some issues with the Leica M9 and certain SD memory cards. Worst-case scenario is that you didn't record a single photo in a whole day shooting.... The (visual) symptom is that the red light on the back of the M9 keeps flashing (and flashing, and flashing), and that the camera locks up eventually.

To resolve this, you need to remove the battery fro the M9, and re-insert it. After that you can see what the last properly recorded photo was, and hopefully, it wasn't a photo you made last month....

Today I noticed a little side-effect from this behavior; It seems that the filenames recording lags behind as well. After the SD card error, I changed to another SD card, and resumed shooting. At home I noticed that a lot of my photos had a '-2' in the filename after the import in Lightroom. So I guess that the M9 forgot to count/remember the earlier filenames that did made it to the disk, and started with a (incorrect) 'last-known-good' filename number on the new card. Might be that this doesn't occur on the original card, since the camera should see that the filename is already taken, and it increases the filename count. It could also be that it just overwrites a properly recorded image before going bad. -> mental note for the future.

This camera still amazes me in images quality etc. (which is good), and in buggy software (which is bad of course).

Leica M9, Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 1.5/50mm ZM @ f/1.5

Chromatic-Aberrations ...

is something even the Carl Zeiss lenses seem to suffer from.

CA With Zeiss C-Sonar T* 1.5/50 ZMGood thing that CA doesn't show up after you convert the image to black and white.

Same image, but in black and white

More photos can be found on my SmugMug page.

Day 11: Another Day in the Field

After the scare of the focus-shift had settled, I 'mastered' the compensation technique for this 'problem'. Turns out that moving myself about 2 inched towards the object AFTER I focussed on it, the object would be in focus (results may vary depending of the distance to the object). The further you're away, the smaller the compensation needs to be.

Both images were shot @ f/1.5 (Carl-Zeiss C-Sonnar 1.5/50mm ZM T*) with a focus distance of 2 to 3 metres with little to no compensation for the focus shift. In the first image there's a bee just left of the flower/weed.

Day 8: Focus-Shift

No matter how extensive your research is, there's always something (bad??) you miss. In this case it's focus-shift with fast lenses. Focus-shift means that the actual focuspoint is not exactly where you might think (also known as front- or backfocus). In the case of the Zeiss C-Sonnar 1.5/50mm it occurs generally @f/1.5 or @f/2.8. My Zeiss 50mm has this 'problem' @ f/1.5, which means that the lens is calibrated for film. Problem is a big word, since it seems to be inherent to the C-Sonnar design. It's also something that occurs a lot with a rangefinder system.

To solve this, I need to focus on the ears instead on the eyes when I shoot a portrait, or just compensate bij moving a bit forward after focussing. I could have Zeiss recalibrate the lens for free (while still in warrenty), but that means shifting the problem to another aperture.

If it turns out to be a real problem, I could always go for a Leica M Summicron 2/50mm (which I have still on backorder along with the Leica M Summicron 2/35).