p.8 #1 · Leica's Battery Shortage Is Hurting the Brand!
Fred Miranda wrote:
I remember having a third party battery for the M9 what was junk. Never worked as the original, so I'm not surprised by your experience.
My battery issue was with original equipment Leica batteries.
I think the fault was with the camera - the M9 series was seriously half baked.
The SF24D flashes work perfectly with any other camera I have used - film or digital. From Holga to Hasselblad!
p.8 #2 · Leica's Battery Shortage Is Hurting the Brand!
Including Fred's I've seen several reports of people having no issues using the M-10 3rd party batteries, I even bought one myself for my eventual upgrade lol. I hope the M240 is next because I'm sitting on only one battery and the ebay sellers are out of their mind trying to charge $300+
p.8 #5 · Leica's Battery Shortage Is Hurting the Brand!
Just for those interested in batteries for M240, they seem to have a few in Leica Store Vienna, on Westbahnstrasse. I have just bought one a few days ago after being asked "how many do you want to buy?".
p.8 #6 · Leica's Battery Shortage Is Hurting the Brand!
catacore wrote:
Just for those interested in batteries for M240, they seem to have a few in Leica Store Vienna, on Westbahnstrasse. I have just bought one a few days ago after being asked "how many do you want to buy?".
I wish there were third party batteries for the M240 as they are available for the M10 series. I can't find one new in the US for a reasonable (dealer, not reseller) price.
p.8 #7 · Leica's Battery Shortage Is Hurting the Brand!
Fred Miranda wrote:
I wish there were third party batteries for the M240 as they are available for the M10 series. I can't find one new in the US for a reasonable (dealer, not reseller) price.
+1. I checked a few years ago before the shortage occurred and also was surprised to see that no third party batteries exist for the M 240 series. Normally Chinese brands are not shining away to reverse engineer all kind of batteries with more or less decent quality. It didn't occur here - not sure why either.
p.8 #8 · Leica's Battery Shortage Is Hurting the Brand!
Fred Miranda wrote:
I wish there were third party batteries for the M240 as they are available for the M10 series. I can't find one new in the US for a reasonable (dealer, not reseller) price.
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retrofocus wrote:
+1. I checked a few years ago before the shortage occurred and also was surprised to see that no third party batteries exist for the M 240 series. Normally Chinese brands are not shining away to reverse engineer all kind of batteries with more or less decent quality. It didn't occur here - not sure why either.
Given how long the Typ 240/262/246 were made, I find this pretty surprising as well. I did a quick search on the number of bodies made, and this was not available... yet, given the extensive production run and the "lower" price of the camera at the time, you'd think that a 3rd party manufacturer would have made batteries for the camera.
Just thinking out loud, I'm wondering if the super battery performance for the M served as a barrier. One can easily travel a week with two batteries.. this is in direct contrast to the M8/M9/M10 when one can easily drain a battery after just one day of shooting.
I currently have two batteries for my M240 and the battery holds charge when unused and drains very slowly, even when it is my primary camera for an outing. As a nature photographer, it is hard to shift away to another M, given the both the battery and tendency to "over-saturate" the raw file... while I definitely miss the dynamic range of the M10 when shooting in cities, this has been less of an issue when doing natural landscapes.
p.8 #9 · Leica's Battery Shortage Is Hurting the Brand!
I put myself on the waiting list for an M240 battery at Leica store LA maybe 3 weeks ago, and they called me Friday afternoon to say that they got one ready to ship, so maybe it's not too bad after all. The price ($180 before tax, shipping included) is kind of ridiculous for someone who's new to Leica, but doesn't seem too outrageous compared to what I found online.
p.8 #11 · Leica's Battery Shortage Is Hurting the Brand!
If you're Leica you probably see the battery shortage as a good thing. Just yet more scarcity for their brand which is built on high prices and scarce supply, of at least lenses.
The most shameful thing Leica does is post purchase support or lack thereof. If I buy an M-A / 6 / P for over $5k, I should expect to have it serviced and back in my hands in reasonable time should it need fixing. But no, you're looking at months upon months of waiting. Why would I bother honestly? Especially after the QC problems.
When anyone asks me what Leica they should buy I always say an M4 or M4-P. It's the last best Leica made with the fewest opportunities to fail on you. That crappy little meter in the 6 is not worth the cost of the ink they use to print the little reflective dot on the shutter. If I wanted a metered RF I'd get an Ikon, Bessa, or Hexar.
If you want to shoot digital I understand you're sort of stuck with Leica but I still implore people to be reasonable and start rejecting the idea of a nearly $10k 135 format digital camera. When Leicas are more expensive than Hasselblads, you're over your skis.
p.8 #12 · Leica's Battery Shortage Is Hurting the Brand!
speedgraphic wrote:
When anyone asks me what Leica they should buy I always say an M4 or M4-P. It's the last best Leica made with the fewest opportunities to fail on you. That crappy little meter in the 6 is not worth the cost of the ink they use to print the little reflective dot on the shutter.
I shot a M4 to the point where it failed mechanically. Great camera but I also shot M6 and M7. They worked fine and the meter was nice, never failed.
speedgraphic wrote:
When Leicas are more expensive than Hasselblads, you're over your skis.
Why? A Blad nowadays is a modern camera and we know they can be built for a more reasonable price than a rangefinder with very tight tolerances to support 60 mpix and keep its calibration over time.
I buy a camera that allow me to shoot my favourites subjects and that I like using. Not a brand, a price, a brand/price comparison.
p.8 #13 · Leica's Battery Shortage Is Hurting the Brand!
Remember when the Nikon F100 used 4 AA batteries? The idea was, no matter where in the world you are, you can get what you need to run. I've never understood why camera manufacturers don't do some 21-st century equivalent of that. There's NO need for all these custom batteries, which all have nearly the same specs. I was in the wilds of Newfoundland and left 2 Sony batteries and one of my chargers in the hotel, didn't know until I was 500 miles away, and there was no way I was going to go back for it, and thus had to run 2 bodies with one battery for the remaining week of the trip. (I think I had brought a second charger by accident, or I really would have been sunk.) For any camera serious about being a travel camera, there oughta be standard batteries, chargeable through USB if need be (old man rants at the clouds)...
p.8 #14 · Leica's Battery Shortage Is Hurting the Brand!
Third party manufacturers already stepped in with non OEM batteries for the M8, M9, and M10 series. Hopefully it's only a matter of time before they recognize the opportunity with the M240 series as well. Once that happens, Leica's disregard for customers still shooting older M bodies won't feel quite as egregious. I try to be fair to Leica, but I will also call it out when criticism is deserved.
For those shooting the current model, don't assume you are immune to this either. If you plan to keep using your M11 and this pattern continues, there is no guarantee its battery will still be readily available once the M12, M13, and whatever comes next are released.
p.8 #15 · Leica's Battery Shortage Is Hurting the Brand!
pmeheut wrote:
I shot a M4 to the point where it failed mechanically. Great camera but I also shot M6 and M7. They worked fine and the meter was nice, never failed.
Why? A Blad nowadays is a modern camera and we know they can be built for a more reasonable price than a rangefinder with very tight tolerances to support 60 mpix and keep its calibration over time.
I buy a camera that allow me to shoot my favourites subjects and that I like using. Not a brand, a price, a brand/price comparison.
Of course M4s can fail but they can also almost always be repaired and sometimes quite inexpensively. For a long time parts were not available for the M6s electronics and the M7 is notorious, anecdotal evidence aside. When the M7s electronics go bad, it doesn’t even turn into an M4P like the M6 does, it’s basically a brick with 2 working shutter speeds.
The persistent myth that having a rangefinder mechanism justifies all cost increases died with the M EV1 which has no rangefinder yet is still somehow more expensive than a medium format Hasselblad. There is so little about the M EV1 to justify its cost, it’s honestly astonishing. 9 grand! Thats $3k more than all the other make’s ‘actual’ professional cameras and still significantly more than the. X2D2 which has a larger version of the same sensor, premium construction, and a similar legacy brand identity.
Look I shoot with an M4P and I completely understand buying even an ultra expensive M11P Safari if someone wants one, but I wish there was more consumer pushback against Leica’s greed and poor support infrastructure. Right now they basically have an abuser/abused relationship with their customers.
p.8 #16 · Leica's Battery Shortage Is Hurting the Brand!
speedgraphic wrote:
The persistent myth that having a rangefinder mechanism justifies all cost increases died with the M EV1 which has no rangefinder yet is still somehow more expensive than a medium format Hasselblad.
You will have no argument from me about the fact that the M EV1 is overpriced. Says nothing about the cost of producing a rangefinder though and I do not see why it would be a myth.
I'm not saying that Leica is not selling product at very high prices and that I do find them justified. If not, I would not buy Voigt lenses instead.
I'm just saying that comparing the M11 price to the Blad without more informations about the cost, the production countries, etc is not convincing.
p.8 #17 · Leica's Battery Shortage Is Hurting the Brand!
photonoclast wrote:
Remember when the Nikon F100 used 4 AA batteries? The idea was, no matter where in the world you are, you can get what you need to run. I've never understood why camera manufacturers don't do some 21-st century equivalent of that. There's NO need for all these custom batteries, which all have nearly the same specs.
On top of that, Leica has reinvented the wheel--I mean battery--each time they've released an M-body. There's no reason why the M9, M240, M10, M11 couldn't have shared the same battery if Leica had engineered things correctly from the beginning.
E.g. Ricoh's DB-65 spanned multiple Ricoh GR generations. Fuji has the NP-W126 that works across multiple models.
And I agree, there are plenty of "standard" li-ion battery sizes out there like the 21700, or 18650. No reason why manufacturers can't just go with one of those.
p.8 #18 · Leica's Battery Shortage Is Hurting the Brand!
Stefan Daniel mentions it here and says Leica is committed to maintaining production of the the legacy batteries [even mentions M240 directly]. He just says the suppliers went out of business so they are in the process of procuring new ones.
I did get one off BH recently, but going to test all my SCL2 batteries for IR. They are my favorite batteries though.
p.8 #19 · Leica's Battery Shortage Is Hurting the Brand!
weatherproof wrote:
There's no reason why the M9, M240, M10, M11 couldn't have shared the same battery if Leica had engineered things correctly from the beginning.
There are plenty of reasons and this is not an issue of correct engineering but more a matter of choice: battery technology changes, camera consumption too, they made the digital M smaller, etc.
So it may makes sense from an engineering point of view to change the battery because the benefit outweighs the cost the for the user.
Unless you can predict technology evolution for 20 years. I cannot, Leica seems unable to do so too but if you can, I'm sure you can make a lot of money out of it.
p.8 #20 · Leica's Battery Shortage Is Hurting the Brand!
speedgraphic wrote:
Of course M4s can fail but they can also almost always be repaired and sometimes quite inexpensively. For a long time parts were not available for the M6s electronics and the M7 is notorious, anecdotal evidence aside. When the M7s electronics go bad, it doesn’t even turn into an M4P like the M6 does, it’s basically a brick with 2 working shutter speeds.
The persistent myth that having a rangefinder mechanism justifies all cost increases died with the M EV1 which has no rangefinder yet is still somehow more expensive than a medium format Hasselblad. There is so little about the M EV1 to justify its cost, it’s honestly astonishing. 9 grand! Thats $3k more than all the other make’s ‘actual’ professional cameras and still significantly more than the. X2D2 which has a larger version of the same sensor, premium construction, and a similar legacy brand identity.
Look I shoot with an M4P and I completely understand buying even an ultra expensive M11P Safari if someone wants one, but I wish there was more consumer pushback against Leica’s greed and poor support infrastructure. Right now they basically have an abuser/abused relationship with their customers....Show more →
Yes the MEV1 is overpriced just by comparing it to other EVF cameras out there. But the actual Leica optical rangefinder is a very expensive unit and no other mfgs matched it when they made rfs. The much bally-hooed Zeiss Ikon ZM’s rf that many claimed was far superior to Leica was anything but that.
I owned a ZM and the only thing it had going for it was the vf was bigger. The rf patch would easily flare out if you did not have your eye perfectly centered (exposure leds could not be read in bright light but we are talking about the rf) but for me the most glaring thing was the rf patch was not synchronized with the parallax adjusting frame lines.
So as you focused and the frame lines moved, the rf spot did not thus becoming off center. Leica RFs do not do that, they perfectly sync w the parallax adjustments.
Obviously Leica’s way of building them must be much more complicated (and expensive) otherwise ‘Zeiss’ (Cosina) would have made them the same way.
And don’t get me started w the miserable fuzzy blobs Nikon and others used in their RF cameras! Even the rf patch in my Xpan2 does not match up to Leica Ms, and the Xpan series were very expensive.
