Leica SL2 Firmware Update 3.0 — Major Bug Introduced: Cannot Use Fn Button to Toggle information display
I wondered whether Leica might screw me with the Leica SL2 firmware 3.0 update, full of useless (for me) additions catering to niche situations, and failing to fix a single SL2 bug or single SL2 operational headache.
Update 3: I found the problem. Error on my part, not understanding the Leica design. As part of the uwanted erasure of camera settings as part of the firmware update, when I reconfigured the camera I had turned off the Info Profiles 2/3/4, thinking they had been off before.
See . The Info Profiles are each a group of redundant settings, and it is each Info Profile setings group as w a whole that is toggled , NOT the individual settings within a profile. I find this confusing. This design forces you to configure the whole list of 4X redundant settings for each profile, and then make sure all the profiles are on so you can toggle each group with a press of the Fn button. I recognize that this offers flexibility, so I give Leica some credit on that account.
OTOH, there is no other mirrorless cameras with such a design, and the Leica design doesn’t actually offer important customization! A key thing I’d like to configure are those intrusively bright and distracting top and bottom info bars cluttered with useless crapware indicators most of which do not even apply to RAW shooting. Compare to the Sony A1 and the Leica SL2 offers no facility whatsoever for a non-intrusive showing of the most important shooting info (aperture, shutter speed, ISO). If you are going to design a camera for customization, don’t stop at 1/3 of the distance.
BTW, I switched to the Sony A1 on the last 2 days of my trip. I found it so much faster and easier and more responsive... the SL2 feels so tedious and unresponsive by comparison, and making key tasks slower and harder (such as image review, forgetting menu positions, etc), and omitting critical features, like an RGB histogram and stopped-down focusing. With the Sony FE 12-24mm f/2.8 GM and a couple of Voigtlander APO lenses (35mm, 50mm, each about 1/3 the size of Leica SL lenses), the whole experience felt much more fluid and rewarding.
Cannot Use Fn Button to Toggle information display
UPDATE Oct 1: at least two readers say “no such problems”. I will reinstall the firmware and reset the camera and see what happens. The camera shot images just fine, I could just never get the Fn button to ever again toggle the info pages (and yes, I turned several of them on)—it was all on, all the item, and no toggle, unlike firmware 2.0.
Update Oct 2: it is impossible to reinstall the firmare: “Update file is same version as current firmware”. Well, I guess that’s superior to “reinstall Windoze”.
With firmware 2.0, the button could programmed to toggle between the various informational displays as . It would cycle between the various displays. I use this all the time on the SL2 (v2.0) and similar functionality on every digital camera I’ve ever used.
Firmware 3.0 has broken this critical core functionality and no longer toggles—you get one and only one information display in both shooting and Play mode. Pressing the Fn button does nothing.
After half an hour of trying, I am stumped. Either these geniuses think this is a feature, or their software quality control stinks. But this would be no suprise: my Leica M240 was an unstable piece of crap for the first 24 months of its life.
