Or, more properly, how many QC/QA inspectors never saw the problems!
Cheers,
HI Simon - and others.
First of all, I'm not saying that this is okay - certainly not
HOWEVER.
all these criticisms assume that this fault is demonstrable in the sensor when the camera is built - this is not necessarily the case (of course, I can't
prove that they aren't dreadful at QA), but I do
know that it isn't always visible at first.
This is something which can easily crop up at a later date. (like all sensor pixel faults).
Every other camera I'm aware of has some kind of pixel mapping facility to sort this out (Olympus cameras and most others do it automatically). Leica don't (pity that).
The test camera I used definitely did not have the problem at first . . . then, about a month later it did - an obvious line defect with a dead pixel in it. . . . then, after a few weeks in Crete, it had disappeared again. Although, very occasionally, the dead pixel was still visible. This is easily verifiable by going through the shots.
I'm not trying to belittle the problem - far from it. Brad should clearly have a new camera. I'm just trying to put a bit of perspective on the criticisms of Leica QA - i.e. it may be bad, but this issue certainly doesn't prove it! (although my personal opinion is that you shouldn't need to send a camera back to Germany to do a pixel remap).
all the best