Nikon d800 focus problem serial numbers

Hey, I just bought you And this is crazy, But here's my test chart So focus, maybe? So in this section I'll try to deal with those. Unfortunately, we're in a Fog of War type situation here with an untrained army.

The fact that there are so many small details that play a part in trying to get reliable test results and the fact that Nikon is completely silent on any information that would help users figure those things out is part of our problem. I've outlined what I think are the best steps to take to try to figure out if your camera has a problem.

I can't say with certainty that those are the right steps, only the best I'm able to come up with based upon what little we do know and the testing I was able to do briefly with an affected body. If I'm wrong in any of my instructions or assumptions I'd like to know how I'm wrong so that I can correct them. If you're getting vague results or ones that are difficult to interpret subjectively, I'd guess that your camera doesn't have the problem I've been investigating or there's something wrong with your testing protocol.

There's just been such a dramatic difference on the bodies that have the problem that I'd tend to recommend that you not over obsess unless you see a highly dramatic and unexpected difference. Finally, a very cogent comment from one reader in response to my comments about what action Nikon should take: "why would Nikon want ANY user to have a defective camera in their hands?

When it works as designed it's exceptional in performance and a great ambassador to what makes Nikon products good. But if Nikon knows they shipped some number with faulty data stored inside, why wouldn't they want all of those back to update? Do they really want a common comment from the user base to be "yeah, it's 36mp but it doesn't focus very well"? More and more it's becoming clear to me that Nikon's immediate response should have been "oh dear, we've made a mistake, let us fix that for you.

A Haiku of Sorts Okay, I've depressed you again. Time for another humor interlude. As I parsed responses to my focus survey I discovered that the software I use has the ability to bring up Word Clouds for questions where I allowed an open-ended text response basically an analysis trying to show the most important words and phrases it thinks it found.

The first time I pulled that up I found a very interesting haiku that made me laugh. As more and more responses came in now over tests cataloged, keep them coming , the haiku changed.

In fact, it's gotten downright specific and to the point. I still laugh when I see it. Here's what I saw this morning when I pulled up the Word Cloud for "Which of the following characterize what you found? Sensor Soft Worse than the Right. No problems on same test done with D, and no problems with Live View.

Luckily I was able to send it in to Nikon located in Mississauga, Ontario and after speaking to the service rep that I dealt with my D they were able to repair it in one service. Now extreme left and right af is the same with pd vs live view.

I did noticed that with incandescent and florescent light throws off the af. So I did my fine tune in natural light. Only 1 lens need af and that was a We dig into the detail The Nikon Z mm F2.

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Submit a News Tip! Reading mode: Light Dark. Login Register. Best cameras and lenses. Started Feb 27, Questions. Feb 27, Nikon D If you believe there are incorrect tags, please send us this post using our feedback form. Reply to thread Reply with quote Complain.

It means that your mirror alignment is off. Sadly, it appears that this is the normal state of affairs these days because no manufacturer bothers to align the mirror for manual focus work since everybody uses AF. Basically: you need to know if you can trust either or both of the VF or AF systems. Have you heard any recent news from Nikon on this?

I guess one should test any new piece thoroughly though? Would a 85 mm f1. Again, thanks for a very informative site, and best regards. Thanks for the compliments. Hello, one question if you do not mind… I have tested my D AF following your example by using 50mm, 1.

All photos ie. However the very same test with an old 60mm, f2. Also, all photos Left, Center, Right are sharp on my 10yrs old D?! Bottom line — Left and Right sensor are out of focus when focusing through viewfinder — all other photos are ok.

Thank you for your suggestion! Photos should always be sharp when using LV because it will focus on the sensor plane. Thank you! This is what my assumptions are as well. Will follow-up with Nikon. Also, the very same 60mm lens on D produces sharp photos too. Firstly, to my surprise the initial few batches have been sold out and they are waiting for the new stock which he said would be here in like two weeks time.

Does this issue have anything to do with some earlier batches and specific serial numbers Or they still sending out faulty units to the market? Maybe nobody here is aware of the issue. For normal faults and issues that could be easily shown and reported, this reply might be acceptable but I wonder how this particular issue can be reported to them and how to convince them to believe.

But there was something positive as well, I asked him that I wanted to check a few units using my own lenses before taking one home and he said okay you can.

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I only have and both f2. What would you suggest? Any other important points to keep in mind? It will be very important to get it exactly right the first time there in their office because if after testing I give go-ahead on one unit and take it home, I will not be able to go back reporting the same issue to them if later on I find out that the camera was indeed faulty.

On another note, congratulations on successfully completing the first photography competition through this site. Thumbs up! Follow this procedure. Hello D fans, from near Boston, USA You might be interested in my experience, since Nikon is obnoxiously quiet and the big NYC camera retailers are pretty tight with information too.

I ordered a D from Adorama on Feb 27, I was very patient and it finally arrived Friday, 13th of July. As soon as I looked through the viewfinder I had trouble focusing the diopter. Maybe my eyes are getting worse? But pretty soon it was clear this camera had very serious trouble focusing.

It worked pretty well on my brand new 28mm f1. After a day I got frustrated and called Adorama. Good for Adorama. So, on July 24, a replacement D arrived. This one seemed OK. I could focus through the viewfinder. I took it out for a walk around the neighborhood. It worked well with the new 28mm, not so well with my big high tech Sigma 50mm 1. Adorama gives me the choice of getting another D fairly soon, or a refund.

So Adorama deserves kudos for handling the D debacle. I hope Nikon reimburses them for the expenses of handling this. I am not so happy with Nikon. They should come clean and issue a statement. I spent two whole days acting as Nikon quality control. If the focus has such serious problems, who knows what else is wrong among the many hundreds of features explained very briefly in the ? Like the focus. These are not exactly useless, but I should have waited.

Would be a shame to lose a year of good images because of this…. I will be calling up the Nikon distributors here to find out what they are up to regarding this thing.

Customs are always a horror here in this country so shipping in and out a couple of times will be a killer for me. Anyways I will confirm from the local guys first and will get back in a few days regarding my decision. Hopefully, I will never get to face this frustrating issue. That would be great if possible.

The only thing to figure out in this is to find out a way to deal with the customs here. One thing is clear. Something has to happen.

The combination of tolerances and technologies used in the D does not appear to yield a reliably reproducible camera. Now the rest of the Nikon D has to catch up. Have a look here. If so it appears Nikon Malaysia are using more advanced calibration technology than Nikon in Europe. It could be entirely manual too. Is there a DE serial number past which Nikon guarantees that the focus calibration is correct?

I will place an order again once we pass this point. That is not the answer I was hoping for. However, I think that Vincent has a better response below. At this point, we are all speculating. I can only advise that you test the camera you are going to buy before you buy it.

Thank You, that is my own conclusion as well. You would think, however, that after a certain date or serial number Nikon would include these tests in their own quality control. This statement, if true, strongly implies that Nikon has found the root cause of the issue. If this is true then you would expect Nikon to have corrected the issue by the next batch.

Due to strong demand Nikon is running with a very lean supply chain for the D I hope it will work out with their second attempt. But trying to ignore the problem? Sounds like they just shifted the AF offset to fix the left problem without trying the other areas. Sorry to hear that. I will keep you updated how the camera and the lenses behave after the second fix. At least your result and a few others are showing that there exists a fix. I drop my d june 22nd at long island nikon center.

No idea. Nikon has analyzed some test images and concluded there is an issue. Your posting make me nervous about timing, but hopefully we both will have better luck going forward. Check with them first whether they can do it on the same day, if not, get them to send it back to you.

I brought it into Melville this morning with my fingers and toes crossed. In chatting up the person processing the drop-offs, I found that there were a number of technicians out of the office around the July 4 holiday here in the US; that could be part of the delay.

Or to the Petaling Jaya location? Or Pulau Pinang? And any sense if they are swamped with these D tune ups or not? I am living in Malaysia on a work assignment, and am considering getting the D here since I have several months to go.

Any idea on the serial numbers that might be new enough to avoid this issue? What is your serial number range? Maybe this is a question I can ask Nikon Service [Decward]? HQ at Petaling Jaya. All of the big repairs will land up back there anyway. All first batch cameras. However, if you get the A1. How do they know the 50 1. If the calibration lens is out will it not affect the ther lenses we use. My 50 1. Hi ming, i have brought my d and all lenses to nikon switzerland.

They confirmed to me that they can fix only the center Point focus issue, not the left issue. Or you shure that the left corner issue had been corrected in malaysia? An other question: looking for a wide monofocal lens and I have asked you thought about the new 28 mm. At that time you had no experience with it. And lastly: highly appreciate your outstanding contributions.

Suppose to af fine tune on some of my lenses today so that I can do some test shots but was held up due to some other last minute commitments that cropped up. Will comment once I have the opportunity to test some time next week. I was told to wait for 2 weeks when I send in.

Tack sharp too! Overall, I guess the issue is fixed. MT, thank you for being meticulous in discovering and highlighting the issue. Great news and thanks a lot for keeping us updated. Waiting for DE, hopefully factory calibrated….

Was reading through DE amazon reviews … just shipping out Feb 7 orders during the first week of July.. Not a typical combination of parameters for your average shooter. I to have the left AF issue and submitted my camera today to the service centre in Dubai.

Sounds similar to what I heard, except for the 3 zones bit vs 51 points. I understood 51 point as well. If that is actually the case, it would be Ok as long as Nikon gives us and local service centers access to fine tune those variables separately. Hi Ming, yesterday I got some additional info. The software to align the AF fields consists of 3 stages: 1 it checks for dust on the AF sensor, 2 it determines the offset per AF-field and stores this in the memory, 3 it re-checks the new values by doing a measurements again.

During this test NO photos are being taken, so only the AF sensor is checked for asymmetric behavior, and no check is done with its relative behavior towards the sensor. This explains why next to this software step, AF-fine tuning may still be required after the repair unless this is compensated by the repair as well! Seems odd that it should actually take several hours to perform, though.

Good to hear that your AF issue is resolved. Previously, they do not accept as they are waiting for instructions from Japan. Seems a little odd for them to refuse to take cameras that might clearly have a problem, though. Hi, I think I have another type of issue with AF. Has anybody encountered similar issue? But this issue only happened when using view finder, it appeared sharp from left to centre to right when using Live View under same set up. I will run more thorough test with different AF fine tune settings and see how it turns out.

Hi, I rerun the test with -5, , , and without AF Fine Tune for each of centre, extreme left and extreme right focus points. Below are the image links.

All the info are intact and if you view with View NX2, you can turn on the focus point. Based on these images, are you able to tell if it is something wrong with the body or the lens or both? Thanks a lot. Not really. Try following these instructions — the results should be self explanatory. It does not mean that there is something wrong with the lens. The viewfinder ground glass location, the accuracy of the pentaprism and the additional lenses in the view finder creates a more complicated and secondary focusing problem.

In what scenario would central focusing out of focus when both left and right edge is in focus? Center: center focus point Left: extreme left focus point Right: extreme right focus point When focus on extreme left and right, the center portion of the image is soft like I mentioned in my previous post.

What might be the cause? If the focused points are sharp, then it may be field curvature, or the target not being perfectly parallel to the sensor plane. Hi Stephen, Since you are showing us actual photographs, shot with AF, the view finder does not enter into the picture. I see decent but imperfect focus across the entire image in your center focus shot. I see sharp focus at the two ends and softness in the center in your left and right focus shots. This suggests the following: The lens has a slight object plane curvature AND your focus fine tuning is slightly off.

If you optimize your focus fine tuning I think you will see left and right images go slightly soft when you center focus. You can not do accurate fine tuning with the setup that you are showing. You need to get a digital interference chart displayed on your PC to fine tune with.

Hi Bengt, Thanks for taking time to go through the images. I have gone through fine tuning but under the same setup. I tested with -5, , , and The result suggested that the best setting is , and is exactly like you suspected, the left and right portion go slightly softer when center focus.

While the center portion become sharper when left and right focus. By the way, the digital interference chart fine tune on pc that you mentioned, is there a link on how to do it exactly? Hi, You probably want to set your focus fine tuning for the focus point that you use the most. It is easy to change if you map and memorize the alternatives. Especially not with a D Hi Bengt, I now understand that this is the characteristic of the lens and I think I know what to do next.

Thank you for your valuable input and I appreciate it. Got back my camera the next day. Very fast service. Same calibration done.

Still have no time to test but it should be fine, I guess. Thanks so much for your help with this! Very much appreciated; your site is the first I know of with proof of a definitive fix for this issue. No problem. I would test the lens at longer subject distances also. Yet I still have this issue. Yes, I have done so — everything still looking great here. I just called Nikon Malaysia today. The technician told me to send in my camera for checking as based on the test result i done before i described verbally through the phone , he said that my camera seen to have back focusing issue.

I will bring it when i will go back next time, anyway glad to hear that your camera was fixed. Looks good, although as you say, it is revealing a lens that is somewhat decentered. And yes, sadly, my lens has slight decentering issues. The new D4 firmware, version a 1.