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

Posted on September 19, 2011 and filed under Leica M9, Photography.