Purple Line

[Scheelings]

So it seems that I have a dead pixel / line on my M9 which shows up as a purple line on all my photos.

So the question is - do I send the camera for repair, and if so, what are the options? Reprogramming the sensor / replacement? It is obviously not under warranty. Does anyone know the cost of reprogramming and the approximate time to repair?

Also is there a fix which I can apply consistently in lightroom?

[nightfly]

Had that, twice on my M9. They replaced my sensor both times for free, most recently last summer 2018 after I think they officially stopped doing this.

Unfortunately, the remedy was to send the camera to Leica and pray. They will let you know they got your camera and they might let you know that it's ready. But the communication in between is almost nothing. The first time took literally a few months. The second time only a few weeks.

Good luck.

[Phil_F_NM]

The way I took care of this problem was to get rid of the digital Leicas and never look back. I had it come up twice on an M8 and three times on an M9 as well as a dead shutter. Thank goodness the M9 was in warranty. That camera spent half the time I owned it out for repair. As soon as I got it back, I sold it.
Good luck.
Phil Forrest

[nightfly]

What did you replace them with?

Anytime this happens with my M9, I think about getting rid of it. Then I look around the market, read some reviews (Sony's too fidgety, Fuji not full frame etc) shoot with my Ricoh GR till it comes back and ultimately keep shooting with it.

Originally Posted by Phil_F_NM

The way I took care of this problem was to get rid of the digital Leicas and never look back. I had it come up twice on an M8 and three times on an M9 as well as a dead shutter. Thank goodness the M9 was in warranty. That camera spent half the time I owned it out for repair. As soon as I got it back, I sold it.
Good luck.
Phil Forrest

[Phil_F_NM]

A Nikon SP and S2. I went with a D2x and D2Hs on the digital side.
Phil Forrest

Originally Posted by nightfly

What did you replace them with?

Anytime this happens with my M9, I think about getting rid of it. Then I look around the market, read some reviews (Sony's too fidgety, Fuji not full frame etc) shoot with my Ricoh GR till it comes back and ultimately keep shooting with it.

[Scheelings]

Is there a solution in post-processing? I'm in Turkey at the moment and there isn't a Leica store here.

[willie_901]

Originally Posted by Scheelings

Is there a solution in post-processing? I'm in Turkey at the moment and there isn't a Leica store here.

A quick fix in LR may be possible. I never tried syncing cloning adjustments simultaneously to a group of images. But it may work.

If you hold the Shift key down while dragging the mouse, LR will paint a perfectly straight horizontal or vertical line. You may need to zoom in to select an extremely narrow clone region to average with the row or purple pixels.

I would think a Photoshop Action would be more efficient.

[nightfly]

Both times I found the dreaded purple line, it was after returning from trips to places I probably won't be again for awhile.

I fixed the issue on the photos I wanted to print by going into Photoshop and using the healing brush set to just about the width of the line and holding down the shift key to keep it straight and then saving it back to Lightroom. I have an old version of lightroom but it didn't have any tools that worked as well as Photoshop, maybe it does now.

Somewhat tedious but I only did it for selects that I was going to do something else with like print or export to instagram etc. One in awhile I come across a photo from these two time periods that I want to use and i go and perform this action again.

[Phil_F_NM]

I found that the dead pixel line was usually minimized or eliminated by using the lowest native ISO on the camera. It is a function of gain and that particular pixel. You may try reloading the current firmware which may kind of knock the sensor map around. Leica told me on the phone to do that once when I got the camera back from sensor remapping and three days later the line came up somewhere different.
There are a few programs out there for removing the line but I am a Linux user and they are all open source. I don't know if any have been ported to Windoze or Mac. You could try Darktable at first. It has a rudimentary dead pixel removal tool in there, or did when I was involved in the project. UFRaw can map hot pixels out and normalize them based upon the surrounding pixels. You can dial in strength of the reduction that way. I haven't had a digital Leica since 2012 so I have forgotten the specifics of how I dealt with the problem in the short term.

Phil Forrest

[Scheelings]

Thanks for your advice

Originally Posted by Phil_F_NM

I found that the dead pixel line was usually minimized or eliminated by using the lowest native ISO on the camera. It is a function of gain and that particular pixel. You may try reloading the current firmware which may kind of knock the sensor map around. Leica told me on the phone to do that once when I got the camera back from sensor remapping and three days later the line came up somewhere different.
There are a few programs out there for removing the line but I am a Linux user and they are all open source. I don't know if any have been ported to Windoze or Mac. You could try Darktable at first. It has a rudimentary dead pixel removal tool in there, or did when I was involved in the project. UFRaw can map hot pixels out and normalize them based upon the surrounding pixels. You can dial in strength of the reduction that way. I haven't had a digital Leica since 2012 so I have forgotten the specifics of how I dealt with the problem in the short term.

Phil Forrest

[Scheelings]

Originally Posted by Phil_F_NM

I found that the dead pixel line was usually minimized or eliminated by using the lowest native ISO on the camera. It is a function of gain and that particular pixel. You may try reloading the current firmware which may kind of knock the sensor map around. Leica told me on the phone to do that once when I got the camera back from sensor remapping and three days later the line came up somewhere different.

Phil Forrest

I just took the camera to the Leica store, but I could not replicate the problem even using ISO 1250. I wonder if the problem can intermittently be caused by battery or SD card?

Anyway I've not done any extensive testing, but this may be good news.

[Phil_F_NM]

The problem won't spontaneously go away. You dont have enough resolution on the M9 screen to see a single pixel line so that is why so many shots are found ruined after the fact in post when looking on a bigger screen.

Phil Forrest