D70 is leaving for New York…
… and American Express is promising to pay for the trip! Unfortunately, there will be no site seeing or partying this time. Instead, my good ol’ pal is going for a quick checkup at Nikon clinic and possibly will undergo a minor routine surgery. However, doctors do promise full recovery in no time, and one of the oldest and most trusted credit cards of mine is promising to pick up the bill.
Apparently my D70 seem to be having a bit of a vision problem. To be precise - DOF (Depth Of Field) Preview button is malfunctioning. When I try to DOF Preview - the viewfinder goes completely dark. I tested it with both of my lenses and unfortunately (or may be fortunately?) this seems to be a problem with the body. After searching nikonians.org and reading up on the symptoms I found out that shutter release circuitry is shared with the DOF Preview functionality and there are known cases when malfunctions in the former can cause issues with the latter. A quick call to Nikon customer service resulted in somewhat unavoidable verdict - the patient has be admitted.
Even though at this time the glitch only manifests itself as a DOF preview button failure, and I have never used DOF preview function since I purchased this camera - I decided to go ahead and mail it in, due to a couple of reasons: it’s nice to have 100% functional camera (if DOF is not working, who’s not to say what else has gone or about to go bad) and what’s most important - this coming April will mark two years since I bought this camera, and as it turns out, American Express automatically extends manufacturer’s warranty (which was only 1 year) by another year if you charged your entire purchase (which I did) to the card. I called them up earlier today, just to confirm, and sure enough they’re standing behind their promise. So, hopefully (keeping my fingers crossed), this repair will be on them. Otherwise, I would probably lived without DOF preview, as I did for two years…
The picture above was taken with my new Nikkor 70-200mm VR lens last weekend at Fort DeSoto park.
July 2nd, 2007 at 8:43 am
Niles
November 18th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
I have experienced the same issue with my D70 no longer working with the preview button- however considering I rarely found it useful- I never had lenses fast enough to really worry about the DOF. However now I wish I had done something about it when it was still under warranty- but no matter, my D70 is my backup/bad weather camera.
November 18th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
I must admit, since I had it fixed - I never used it again :) I’m thinking D70 will soon become my backup as well - as soon as I decide whether I want to go for D200 or D300 :)