I'm lucky enough to have very little to shoot this month, until the 27th when I have a wedding. I'm UN-lucky enough to be needing to send in practically EVERY piece of digital equipment that I own for service, all at once.
My D300, as is typical for any camera hot off the production line, had a couple of the grip rubbers begin to peel off on me. This is one thing Nikon is notorious for, and it is the trade-off we all have to live with if we want to keep the oh-so-grippy rubber grip design. It also could use a bit of focus calibration, and a resistor in the battery life monitor might be a little out of spec.
Part of the miracle that is the D300 is it's battery life. They REALLY stretched it this time, getting 1000+ shots out of one battery easily, even with heavy LCD chimping and/or flash use. (The D200 got about 250 shots, on the exact same battery...) Since I don't use vertical battery grips on any of my cameras, and since I sometimes find myself miles and miles from an electrical outlet too, I do like to get as much performance out of each battery as possible and I'm ecstatic that Nikon has accomplished what they have. Well apparently in order to squeeze every last drop of battery juice out of the D300, they modified the transistors in the D300's electrical supply pipeline somehow. Some of the transistors must be slightly out of spec, because every now and then they fail to correctly read the battery life and they'll tell you that your battery is dead when it isn't. Since it's too late to make a long story short, I'll just keep going- this apparently has to do either with the transistors associated with the battery juice intake itself, or with the camera-to-lens contact interface. People report that it will happen frequently with certain lenses, and never with others... Lenses have transistors as well you see, since they consume power, (especially 2.8 VR lenses like the 70-200...) and basically, this "brand new, high-tech" D300 is just stretching the battery power a little too far for some of the high-drain lenses out there. And so the high-tech battery life monitoring system is not able to read correctly sometimes. Bummer.
(Newer Nikon DSLR's have a 3-pin battery that allows a 5-level readout for the power remaining, and then in the camera menu a full 0-100% battery life readout, a shots-taken counter, and a 5-level readout for the battery health. (lifespan) Yeah. Like I said, high-tech. I really like having it, though, but sadly it appears this battery monitoring system is what is causing the false readout.
I always find it ironic that the further we advance technology, the more bugs come up. Go figure.
All in all though, I definitely wouldn't trade the gear I have for anything else.
Oh and speaking of the gear "I wouldn't trade for anything else", LOL:
My 17-55mm 2.8 DX got it's focus shifted pretty severely somehow, such that if shot improperly you could be stopped down all the way to f/8 and still not get sharp images. (Luckily I learned how to re-focus and work around it, though, so I managed to survive the overflow of work this spring...)
My Sigma 150mm 2.8 Macro got it's aperture messed up somehow, and all of a sudden performance just wasn't what it used to be at 2.8. It is perfectly fine from f/4 onward, but I like the lens for it's legendary sharpness at 2.8...
My Sigma 50-150 2.8 DC's aperture tab is slightly sticky again; it was actually serviced under warranty over a year ago. Again, I bought one of the first lenses off the production line, which you should never do. But the lens was just so gosh darn sweet, I had to have it. I hope they make an OS (stabilization) version, cause I think I'm getting a shakier hand compared to how rock-steady I used to be. Either that or I'm just becoming a sloppy shooter...
So, I'm down to just my D200 backup body. Ever since I got the D300 I haven't really been putting many miles on the D200. Ironically, I still question it's ability to focus perfectly, but again I might just be getting sloppy. I've got this professional equipment, now I just need to SHOOT like a professional! I'm too rough on my gear, and probably too sloppy in my shooting habits. From a geeky standpoint, at least. I still manage to deliver sharp, high-quality images to my clients, rest assured!
My father was kind enough to drop off the Nikon gear at the Nikon service center in El Segundo last week since he works nearby. And the UPS guy just dropped by, which was convenient because I needed a signature to ship my box of Sigma lenses since it is insured for $1350...
The Nikon work should all be under warranty though, and the Sigma lenses I do believe also have a 5-year warranty. If I come out of this without spending much more than a few bucks on shipping, I think I'll celebrate by getting that new Sigma 50mm f/1.4 that I'm so tempted to buy...
=Matt=
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