New, old gear failure

A few days ago I wrote a post about buying a used Nikon D850 to use as my main workhorse camera. It conked out on me on it’s 3rd outing.

I was shooting a simple, 3 bed house nearby, and after doing a couple of rooms, it stopped working due to an “err” flashing message on the top LCD. I’ve had error messages in the past on various cameras, but it usually displays as “card error”, meaning that the memory card has become faulty for some reason. In that instance, it’s easy to replace the card and keep shooting. I’ve never had any camera fail on me…..until now.

This camera was sold as “excellent” with about 32000 shutter clicks for £1500. The unit was unusable for some time. When I got home I switched it back on and made a short video of the problem. After some time, the error message stopped showing, but I can’t afford to have a ticking time bomb in my camera case that can fail at any time. MPB have a 6-month warranty on all stuff sold and a 14-day return period for anything, so I decided to return the camera for a full refund and manage with the kit I’ve got until it dies. My trusty Nikon D4 has just over 470K actuations, with an expected shutter life of 400K, so it could theoretically fail at any point. I’m going to keep an ancient, charged D3 in the boot of the car just in case that happens. It’s vital to keep backups of backups so you’re not dropped in the dirt whilst on a job. The company haven’t replied to my Email as yet, and if it goes over the 14-day return period, things start to get a bit more complicated with warranties getting involved. It’s a shame, as the 11-megapixel raw files coming out of the camera were ultra-sharp and had lovely tones.

In the meantime, it’s back to the old faithful.