My second hand Aptus 75 did not work in cold weather, so I made the big repair, replaced the complete e-box which costed a fortune. The result however is an as-new back so I was pleased. Until now that is, when I see that it still fails. The repair did make it more reliable, before repair it failed already in +5C, it can handle that temperature now, but it still fails in a little bit lower temperatures. If there's something I hate more than unreliable camera equipment it is expensive unreliable camera equipment.
Today I was out in a beautiful winter day -5 C (23 F) (i e not any extreme temperatures), it worked quite nice to start with, but then it started to miss images, instead of beeping that it got the image and is ready for a new one, it is silent, the green lamp blinks and nothing happens until I turn it off and on again, then it often works again. Other strange things happening is that instead of a beep I once got a white noise from the speaker (some other noise an other time), and then nothing happened. Reboot. I have a new standard battery, and a large battery which is a bit older. The battery indicator can show full power even when these failures occur. At low battery the back is extremely unreliable, but I guess that's normal in medium-format-land.
So there is one of these scenarios:
1) The Leaf Aptus 75 product sucks, it does not work in cold weather and never has, period.
2) The Leaf Aptus 75 product sucks, but not so much, it can actually work in cold weather by using external batteries so batteries are kept warm.
3) The repair did not succeed, despite replacing the e-box, so I should send it back and complain.
4) My batteries, even the new one, sucks.
Any suggestions/ideas/comments?