Thanks for the shutter sound hint, but that isn’t an issue as during silent set, I would actually work on cam-ops, so shooting with a future M9 would rather be during the endless breaks and changes… which is when the candid events we all love to remember after wrap do occur.

I would definitely be interested in a gallery showing your red edge issues, and I think many other people would, too. But it’s a lot of work to put this together, so I would never ask you to do this. However, if you were to, please feel free to notify me. That would be very kind.

Best wishes,
-Michael

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply with such an extent. Despite my late reply (due to work), I would like to say how much I appreciate your efforts to describe and analyse a problem that is quite something for a product with that brand name and price tag.

As discussed, I spent some time with my preferred ” purveyor of photographic tools” (ah, England ). The M9 is a very nice camera, the view/rangefinder is comparable to solid designs from the 1960s, nothing to shout about but compared to the grotesque on-screen-menus on today’s digicams, I can see why so many young people who grew up with this crap dream of owning a digital rangefinder. I wonder why no other company capitalises on this with a less price-intensive product? After all, rangefinder designs were never really stallwarts of high-end upmarket products since SLRs came along.

I had quite a frank discussion re. the red-edging and other issues (particularly power). The phenomenon is known, I was told, but it’s not 100% clear that the next firmware update is going to fix it, if indeed it can be fixed. Apparantly, the conditions upon which it occurs are pretty all over the place. This is very much in line with what you have all posted here based on your varied experiences. It seems this is making it complicated to write a software patch that does not cause other processing issues in the wake of an attempt to fix it. For my demands of a professional tool, this is not really acceptable. If the Leica were a prosumer-marketed and priced product, okay, but not as it stands.

I thought I would order a M9 body and the upcoming 35 summilux (thanks, xtoph, for the hint that high ISO is better in the field than in the pixelpeeper reviews!!). I had a presentation of the all-new entry-level Cooke Panchro cine-lenses recently that come in at around $7k, and I must say I would wish the Leica lenses would reflect their $3-5k tag a little bit better in terms of haptics.

With no firm firmware news (pun intended), and a new 35 summilux design t.b.a., I decided that I am in no hurry to spend my money. I can easily wait until Leica is fixing its technology which it is – after all – still learning to master after the technology transfer from Panasonic… BTW, why is everyone only talking about Panasonic gaining optical expertise from Leica – despite the fact that Panasonic has already decades of expertice in optical designs for videography – but no one talks about the massive electronics transfer from Panasonic into Solms, which now makes the X1 and M9 possible in the first place… weird bias?!

So I will wait how the M9 and the new 35 ‘lux shapes up. In light of the asking price and post-M8, I think this is a healthy decision. I totally agree with Max in that respect.

Many thanks again for helping me make up my decision, guys.

As for the red edges, it seems worse when photographing grey subjects. I tried it with a Voigtlander 21 and it was terrible. Completely unusable. I now have an uncoded Elmarit asph 21 and that still shows slightly red but only against grey subjects.

I would also like to add that I find these discussions most amusing. Do people really care if a camera takes a whole 20 seconds to format a card? Are they really bothered that they can only buffer 7 shots at once? I never shot at that speed with my M3.

Sometimes I feel sorry for Leica with the customers it has. I think the camera is totally awesome and I expect to enjoy many happy years using it. Now stop writing and go out and take some pictures!

the red edge: you can find some discussion of it with various samples on the lfi forums. one example: i understand why you’d want to get the executive summary version. my own experience is mostly with the 28 summicron (the issue doesn’t seem to affect lenses 50mm and longer; also, the very newest wide lenses, ie 24/1.4, don’t appear as significantly affected.) what happens is that the left edge and especially corners of the frame show a magenta tint, as if the camera is over-correcting for cyan drift just on that side. the tint appears to always be there, but is not always particularly noticeable. it is much worse against an even, neutral bg such as sky, cloud, snow, white wall, or even pavement. the effect is exacerbated by any kind of processing, including the vignetting reduction carried out in camera, especially at high iso. (contrary to what you may have heard, i’ve found the higher iso’s in the camera to be otherwise eminently usable in most cases–only about a stop behind my 5d2.) it can also be exacerbated by certain unusual lighting–highly diffuse light, or nasty discontinuous spectrum lighting (streetlights, etc). when i emailed a leica customer service representative in germany, he replied that they were aware of the problem and expecting to release a firmware update in the next ~4 weeks with improved lens profiles to correct the it. if you think this is the sort of issue that would really bug the heck out of you, and if you want to use wide lenses at all, then the safest course would be to wait a few weeks and see what the firmware delivers. but… for myself, i don’t regret the purchase. this is a camera that basically exceeds the film m cameras in most ways, which is exactly what i wanted. (btw, make sure you test the shutter sound, if you’re using it on set it isn’t as quiet as the cloth shutters used to be.) i will certainly be very happy if the new firmware makes this particular issue a moot point.

maybe i will get around to throwing up a page with a half dozen samples of the red edge issue, if there’s any interest.

As Steve noted, the issues is probably a minor one that can easily be corrected and obviously not one that affects everyone. I have the WATE and 28/35 Summicrons and never had a problem with my M9. I hate to see someone else having issues because, as I have said above, this is an expensive camera and the wides are very expensive as well. This certainly should not deter you from making the purchase, as the M9, in my book, is one of the very best digitals one can buy and there is just nothing else like it in terms of quality, simplicity and usability I would say that before you plunk down a few extra thousands on a WATE or 21, 24, 28 35, try them first to make sure they work fine.

Thanks for the comments. My two cents on the red edge issue is that it only happens on wide angle lenses, and in particular, those that are not coded. Now, other say they have the issues with a few Leica lenses, coded or not. The only wide angle i have used on my M9 has been the 24 Summilux and the WATE (which is pretty wide). I also tested the Zeiss 25. The Zeiss had the issue but was not coded so the M9 did not correct for it. When set up as a 28 Elmarit in the M9 menu it went away.

The WATE and 24 Lux…I saw no visible to the naked eye red edge in any of my images.

Some say the problem is there with the Leica 18, but I can not comment because I never tried the lens. I think some mentioned the 21 Elmarit as well.

Basically, the only time I have seen this issue was with the Zeiss uncoded 25. Never say it with the 35 Lux, 35 cron, 35 summarit, etc. Anyway, the new firmware should be out soon.