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I had that happen once, a couple of weeks after I got it. I just removed it, got confused, put it back in and it was fine.
It's been fine since and certainly hasn't occurred since I got a double-battery grip.
Posted 25 months ago.
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Len Scaps [deleted] says:
Just out of curiosity, what lens is on the affected cameras? Did you suffer this whilst the 18-200 VR was fitted, Bob? Mine has only started doing this since I fitted the 70-300 VR to it.
To test this theory (first mentioned in the Nikonians thread) I waited until ther error reappeared and then unlocked and relocked the lens giving it a firm click into place and low and behold the battery error disappeared
I wonder if the extra juice drawn by the VR ,coupled with the extra weight (in the case of the 70-300 on my camera) putting more of a strain on the lens mount might be the culprit?
Posted 25 months ago.
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I don't know about this particular issue but I do know about another. A friend of mine has a D200. When he was shotting long exposure/bulb one night his battery (fully charged to start with) went dead during the shot. The shot was only about 1 hour long. He thought his battery should last longer (me too). Another friend has the D2XS and he said doing a similar shot his battery was fine for much longer. I haven't followed up with him to see if this was an isolated incident. However the friend that has the D2XS told him/us that we should calibrate our batteries. Niether of us thought that our cameras had that function. Any ideas?
Posted 25 months ago.
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Bob,
My camera battery has behaved many times precisley as you described. I use the same remedy as you , take the battery out and put it back in.
Would Nikon fix the probelm?
Posted 25 months ago.
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Nikon will only fix the problem if they can recreate it. The trouble here is that the problem is not only rare, but intermittent as well.
Posted 25 months ago.
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@Molindar - No, as a matter of fact I had the 50mm f/1.8 mounted at the time. In any event, bear in mind that VR only draws current when it's active (i.e., the shutter released is half-pressed), so that would not be the culprit. In your instance simply removing and remounting such a heavy lens may have jostled the camera just enough to restore a sound connection between the battery terminals and the contacts inside the battery well.
@Maureen - Rich is right, Nikon can only fix it if they are able to duplicate the problem, and so far they have been unable to do so. A couple of D200 owners over at the Nikon Cafe have seen their cameras in for service. Nikon swapped out a couple of unspecified parts and returned them with the same intermittent problem occurring.
Posted 25 months ago.
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Len Scaps [deleted] says:
I'm not so sure, Bob. This fault has only manifested itself since I got the 70-300 VR, although this may be a coincidence.
My initial thoughts were that it was related to the cheap non-oem batteries(see my previous post about those) that I have been using, which have now powered over 6000 clicks. I then began to wonder if the MB-D80 itself was the culprit as it only seems to affect the right-hand battery chamber in that.
If I have a near empty battery in the left chamber but a full one in the right it can start misbehaving and removing the near-dead battery can leave the rear display indicating that the camera has NO battery at all, although when this happens the top display shows a full charge and the camera operates fine! It also can bring up a message when you try to check the battery levels that says the operation is not possible at this time.
Reinserting the battery and rebooting the camera usually cures it, so it is no real biggy at the moment. However, if it gets worse then I will remove the MB and try using the camera with just the one battery (and use the oem one),as an experiment, although it will feel really weird to not have the extra heft the MB gives the D80!
Failing that it will be going back to the shop :(
Maybe this solves the mystery of where all these "refurbished" D80s come from..... ;-)
Another thought occured to me - are there any reports of this happening to the D50? I assume it shares the same basic electronics in the battery area....
Originally posted 25 months ago.
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Len Scaps edited this topic 25 months ago.
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I do not have the 50mm or any VR lens. I have the 18-135 mm kit lens. I had this problem two weeks after owning the camera. I just turned it off, turned it back on, freaked out because I was missing the parade I was shooting, turned off the camera, popped out the battery, blew on the end of the battery, said a prayer, popped the battery back in and it came on with a full battery symbol.
I think we should all use this simple nine step process anytime we change our batteries.
Originally posted 25 months ago.
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mistert2 edited this topic 25 months ago.
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@Molendinar - No reports of this problem have surfaced with the D50, but it does not share the same basic electronics in the battery area. The D50 battery receptable has only two contacts instead of three, and it doesn't provide the detailed information on battery usage that the D200s and D80s do. Compounding your possible problem, reports of difficulties with loose connections between the MB-D80 and the camera body are also quite common. In any case, I don't think the batteries you're using have anything to do with the problems your experiencing.
@mistert2 - Yes, it seems to occur with any lens and the "fix" you and I both used usually seems to work. Based on all the anecdotal information I've read, the problem appears to most likely be caused by an intermittent incomplete electrical connection between the battery terminals and the contacts in the bottom of the battery chamber. This would be consistent with the intermittent nature of the problem and the fact that Nikon has not been able to duplicate it.
Perhaps it would be helpful to periodically use a cotton swab moistened with rubbing alcohol (not drenched) to clean both the battery terminals and the contacts in the bottom of the battery chamber. Just an idea ....
Originally posted 25 months ago.
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SoCalBob edited this topic 25 months ago.
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This is Sanjin, CA, US.
Nice to meet you guys.
Posted 25 months ago.
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I don't think it's the battery or the terminals. It's just like most complex electronic devices, sometimes it just "hangs" or some minor glitch that can easily be remedied by a restart... in this case, remove the battery and reinsert. Just like what we do with our PCs, we either press RESET or we reboot. :)
Posted 25 months ago.
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Len Scaps [deleted] says:
Good point Peter - I've never considered sending my pc back just because it needs rebooted, I'm just concerned that it is a symptom of impending failure rather than just a "characteristic" of the camera
Posted 25 months ago.
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This similar thing happened to mine i simply removed the battery recharged it put it back with a little tug and it worked. Hope it doesn't get any worse : (
Posted 25 months ago.
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Len Scaps [deleted] says:
My D80 got stuck in DBS mode yesterday, so I tried all the old favourites, wiggling the lens (which worked. but it DBS's again a minute later), rebooting and giving the batteries in the MB a we push to see if the weren't seated properly.
This time nothing worked and it just sat there, blinking at me. I was resigned to a trip back to the shop with it when I decided to fully remove and reinsert the batteries to make sure they were really seated correctly.
I removed one battery and voila the camera sprang back into life. I checked the output for the remaining battery and it was 97%. I then put the other battery back in (which I assume was empty after a couple of days' shooting) and the camera immediately DBS'd again.
I was under the assumption that with the two-battery set up in the MB that once one battery went flat it simply changed over to the fresh one, but this seems as if it is trying to draw power from both at once, with the dead battery being the main source. Is one of the batteries a master and the other a slave in the MB setup, does anyone know?
Posted 25 months ago.
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J.Su. [deleted] says:
Molendinar, did you try swapping the batteries around?
Posted 25 months ago.
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I thought I was safe from this, but today, every dozen or so shots, I get DBS'ed (Moledinar, nice one haha) and at the most inopportune times, I get it once every shot. I've never had this before, and I figure it has something to do with moisture build up in the MBD80 or something, as I was shooting really early in the morning, around 5am ish so it's pretty cold in our parts.
Posted 25 months ago.
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Len Scaps [deleted] says:
@ J.Su, funny you should say that. I put all my batteries on charge on Friday and all but one of them took a charge in the normal time, the other one had to be left over night and, surprise, surprise, it was the one that I initially suspected of being duff. I shot just under a thousand pics over the weekend using a pair of new batteries without a hint of a problem.
It will be interesting to see if the fault returns this week. Maybe I'll try the suspect unit in my new D50 and see what happens with it in that.
Posted 25 months ago.
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I got DBSed while attempting to shoot the mermaid parade in Coney Island.. As a result I missed most of the shots I had hoped to get. It's really annoying!!! I'm finding that it's happening more and more frequently. I was really hoping that it was something that Nikon could do about it. I hope they figure it out soon!!!
Posted 25 months ago.
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I had this very problem about 15 or so times over the past 2 months, although turning the camera off and on again always solves the problem - I never have to take the battery out.
Oh, and I should add, this problem doesn't seem quite so rare now!
Originally posted 25 months ago.
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Jim Moran edited this topic 25 months ago.
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My D80 is at Nikon right now for this problem. It has happened quite a few times to me. One time it happened repeatedly over and over again. I missed shooting July 4th and the Washington Zoo because of this. I could have lived with the problem, but that doesn't seem right to me.
Maybe it's rare for the number of D80s out there, but it's not rare for mine.
This is the second time it's been at Nikon since I got it in January. The first time I was getting the ERR message and the camera wouldn't function.
Posted 25 months ago.
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Gringo Man [deleted] says:
I have experience this problem. Very stressful when this happens the first day you have your new camera body. Everytime I would take a picture the dead battery indicator would blink. I would have to turn off the camera then back on. I was not a happy camper. I think I pissed a few people off in this forum with my over-reacting. I apologize.
After a lot of research and frustration someone suggested to reset the lens on the body. Believe it or not this fixed the problem. Something to do with the contacts making a good connection.
TRY RESEATING YOU LENS
Posted 25 months ago.
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it seems to be an old unsolved issue, I already had such problems with F801. Suddenly you could click but nothing would happen, or the curtain would stay open. Generally removing the batteries and putting them in again would solve the problem.
Posted 25 months ago.
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my friend has a problem with her new d80 and battery as well. when she tries to shoot, the display indicate that the battery is full (with full battery bars/blocks indicators) but it labels itself as 'OFF'. After a few times of toggling between on and off, the display then changes to 'ERR'. Any clue whether it can be fixed or not?
Posted 24 months ago.
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Hi all,
There is a very long thread about this on the Nikonians. According to it, this seems to be in fact due to an issue between the lens contacts and the body contacts. The link below leads to one of the summary they did and I think it will be of interest to you if you are concerned with this issue :)
www.nikonians.org/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=show_thr...
Some people there mention that removing the battery stopped working as a fix at some point.
One advice is to remove the lens and put it back. I have read in one of the posts that a false contact could lead to a powersurge then triggering the low battery signal...
I had this issue a few days after I got my D80+18-200VR. As I also had hot pixel issues I have just exchange the body and never had this issue again.
I thank the web for the knowledge sharing, I would never have thought that a battery symptom could have come from a lens mount issue!
One important point is that they also pinpoint in that thread that this is really a very rare issue. But an annoying one if you don't know how to fix it and you are on an assigment or in vacation without an internet access to help you!
My 2 cents.
Posted 24 months ago.
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I vaguely remember having a problem with the DBS, but it's been so long (when I first got my camera & had the 18-135mm; using the 18-200mm VR now) and no recurrences that I'd forgotten about it. Glad to see that what I attributed to me having an attack of the stupids wasn't actually due to fault in my own head.
Posted 24 months ago.
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Len Scaps [deleted] says:
Update on my DBSing D80: I tried the (fully charged) suspect battery in my D50 and the fault appeared in that too. I have also noticed that my other (non-oem) batteries can also cause a misreading with the battery meter, but as to whether this is due to the MB D-80 or the batteries I have yet to ascertain, as the reading can vary depending on which slot the battery is in!
Don't you just love modern electronics?
Posted 24 months ago.
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@ Len Scaps - it's most probably the non OEM batteries. I have 3 original Nikon batteries, and I havent had any problem with them. Have my D80 for almost a year now. And I shoot alot.
Posted 24 months ago.
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My dead battery syndrome was serious!
Went to Venice and after the first day was having to switch the D80 off and back on every 2 or 3 shots (I was worried that I'd wear the power button out)!
I took the advice from Gringo Man and reseated the lens and so far the issue is gone away.
I hope Nikon will say something!
Posted 24 months ago.
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Len Scaps [deleted] says:
@ peterjaena: I have no doubt in my case it is the non-oem batteries, or to be more specific one particular battery since I have had it DBS in my D50 as well.
Just bad luck I guess
Posted 24 months ago.
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I've had the same problem with my D80 as you've described, Bob.....it hashappened to me several times on different occasions.
Frustrating, to say the least.
Originally posted 24 months ago.
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Jeff Clow edited this topic 24 months ago.
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I bought D80 a month ago. I have the SAME PROBLEM!!
The problem happen randomly. It happens with full battery, half battery, in cold condition, warm condition etc.
It happens often to me. With one battery, it happened at least 4 times!
It seems D80 lose connect to battery temperately.
I tried to repeat the problem by shake hardly and it DO have problem again. When I tried the second time, I cannot repeat again!
I think it's a general problem and NIKON MUST CALL BACK.
Posted 22 months ago.
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@Olivier I've already reconnect the lens (18-200VR). I hope the problem will disappear.
Posted 22 months ago.
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@Len Scaps ,
So this happens with the MB-D80 as well?
Posted 22 months ago.
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My problem actually got worse. It seems to cease functioning every couple of shots now. I find myself turning the camera on and off every couple of minutes to get it to work. Not cool!
Posted 19 months ago.
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I had this happen with my Canon G9. Maybe it's been getting too near my D80.
Posted 19 months ago.
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Turning the camera off and then on again solves the problem for me, for about the next 30 shots. It happens with both my batteries (both of which are Nikon original), regardless of their charge state.
I only have the 18-200VR and it hasn't been off the D80 since I got them both a couple of months ago.
I'll try the lens re-seating fix.
UPDATE: My dead battery syndrome stopped after I re-seated the 18-200VR. A month after that I moved to a 50mm f1.8 and there's been no repeat of the problem.
Originally posted 19 months ago.
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victorf edited this topic 16 months ago.
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This happened to me very frequently. After taking a couple of pictures, I had to turn off the camera and turn it back on. I then sent to Nikon for service. It did something on the camera body and the camera was good for me for a month or so and then everything went back to the same condition. Eventually, it went so bad that I had to turn off the camera and turned it back on after every shot. This time, Nikon asked me to ship everything to them: camera body, lens (18-200 VR), batteries, and battery charger. I got it back about a month ago but have not got the time to try it out yet. This time Nikon changed more things on the lens rather than the camera body. I am not so sure that Nikon can fix it.
By the way, if you send your camera for service to Nikon. Please do not send the original box of the camera or lens because Nikon does not return them. When I sent in my camera for service the first time, Nikon did not return the camera cap, batteries and the original box. I had to go back to them again to get a camera cap and battery from them, but never the original box. Honestly, I think that Nikon should recall this product. Mine is a D80. I honestly view it as a piece of junk. I had a D100, which I purchasd right after it was released. After so many years of use, it is still perfect. The D80 had more bad days than good days in my hands.
Posted 16 months ago.
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Why should they recall the product because your copy doesnt work?
You might have been one of the few unlucky ones.
And with the D100 you might have been lucky and many other people had problems.
Honestly, how can you judge based on one sample you own(ed)?
Originally posted 16 months ago.
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skypecaptain edited this topic 16 months ago.
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I had someone just send me the same info 2 nights ago that Olivier talked about. He told me he started having problems when using his new 18-200VR lens and he missed pics of his grandson's b'day party. :( He said he found to take the lens off the camera just far enough to break the electrical connection, then put it back on.
Most folks on the Nikonians blog site, at first, thought it was a D80 problem until some D200 and D300 users started responding with the same problem. Ironically most of them are using the 18-200 lens. Come to find out that if one lens is left on for an extended period of time it can, not always, cause the problem. Since the 18-200VR has become the lens of choice by many, it just happens to stay on the camera the most. Several reports were involving other lens, including the 18-135 kit lens and the 70-200, but it all came back around to the same thing...one lens being left on the camera for extended periods.
Posted 16 months ago.
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It happened to me once and all I did was detached and reattached my 18-200VR and it hasn't happen again so far.
Posted 16 months ago.
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It happened to me in Amsterdam and I thought I had run out of power so didn't use it for the full day trip!
When I got back I realized it was just a loose connection.
The battery grip seemed to have caused it. I always have it attached and on very tight, but this time it wasn't on tight as much as usual. I loosened it up again and it did the same problem.
Its pretty lame it has to be super tight to work properly though..
Originally posted 16 months ago.
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Dr Gonzo Photography edited this topic 16 months ago.
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This has happened to me on many occassions - kind of frustrating. Like the others - I pop out the battery and reinsert it.
It usually happens at the exact moment that you do NOT want it to happen. :-(
Posted 16 months ago.
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It's happened to me on two D80's and two different lens combinations.
I was at my wits' end last year having to turn the camera off after nearly every shot, ready to see what Mr Warranty would do for me when I returned from overseas, when the problem was solved by a thief!
Now my new (3 months) old D80 is doing the same, this time with an 18-200 lens which hasn't been taken off!
Perhaps I'm imagining it!
P
Posted 16 months ago.
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The D80 had more bad days than good days in my hands.
Emm ,,,,, in your hands ?
I have gotten into the habit of a quick wipe of the contacts with a lens cloth when I change lenses (no, not long enough to in-jest dust into sensor cover ),,,it been dustydrydrought here ,,,never had this problem !
Originally posted 16 months ago.
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scoti49 edited this topic 16 months ago.
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This has happened to me a half dozen times or more, mostly with 18-200VR, I was even able to correct it by only pushing up on battery door, without removal of battery. It makes me wonder if weight of lens causes some flex on the body, my two...
Posted 16 months ago.
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Mine only seems to do this while I have the MB-d80 on the camera. It did start @ KY Derby last year when I had a VR 18-200 lens on.
Posted 16 months ago.
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Happened to me once, after i changed my lense. Battery indicator sudenly blinking and shows empty.
Switched off, pull out / in battery, then reinstall lens. Problem solved !
I am sure the problem is due to lens improperly clicked.
Posted 16 months ago.
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I've had my D80 since christmas, no problems until last week. The 'dead battery problem' has happened 2 or 3 times. Am using Nikkor 18-200 DX, it's my only lens. Will try and remove and reattach. thanks.
Posted 14 months ago.
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Aaaaggghh....another case of the dead battery syndrome here. I've had my d80 for almost a year too. The problem came up for the first time 3 months ago...which I was able to fix until now. This time I've tried every fix that has been suggested here and on many other boards and NOTHING is working...I can't do ANYTHING with it! I'm so frustrated. I'm not using the VR 18-200 lens either. Just a 50mm. Time to send it in...(sigh).
With as much research as I've done on this issue, and seeing how many cases have shown up not only with d80's but with d200's and d300's... i'm starting to think I'll switch to Canon. Why Nikon, why! :(
Posted 13 months ago.
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PBourgeois1960 [deleted] says:
Yeah. I got the same thing when I changed batteries with my 70-200 VR attatched. I just turned it off and back on and it was fine.
Posted 13 months ago.
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Just unlock and relock the lens. It seems to be a common problem. I found the answer on a Nikon site, but cannot remember where. it happens regularly to me. The time it takes to go through the process is so little and i have got so used to doing it, that i just live with it. To me it just a little quirk of a otherwise wonderful camera.
Posted 13 months ago.
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I so love my D80 except for this problem. It surfaced for me two weeks ago, 2 months after purchase. Removing the battery has always solved the problem, but jjust tonight I missed a shot because of it.
Nikonians did some research on this and it seems that it happens to people who rarely change the lens. Apparently, removing and reattaching the lens solves this for a while at least.
Posted 13 months ago.
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www.dpreview.com reports a firmware update for this issue has been released by Nikon.
Posted 10 months ago.
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yes, the update is there. but until now, the problem still doesnt occur on me. maybe update is not necessary for me
Posted 10 months ago.
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For all that have DBS, you have to update your firmware to the lastest version, 1.11,
support.nikontech.com/cgi-bin/nikonusa.cfg/php/enduser/st...
Posted 10 months ago.
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