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I was preparing to clean the CCD of my camera tonight, as I noticed a few prominent dust spots from last night's shoot. Got out the pec pad and eclipse, set up everything just right - well, mirror lock up locked the mirror up alright, but why wasn't the shutter curtain raised as well? Tried it a few times, puzzled me for a while.
Stuck the camera in manual, bulb shutter speed, hit the release: "Err" and an eerie silence. Hit it again and the mirror lifts, but the shutter curtain doesn't. Looks like the shutter's dead...

Great timing! Tomorrow I'm flying off to NYC as my sister's getting married.

RIP my D70 - 14 months out from date of purchase, "only" about 15,000 shutter actuations. This is quite concerning how potentially short lived the D70 can be before shutter failure. MattK got his to 22k, I only got mine to 15.

<Sigh> Life's curve balls...

Chi, very, very sorry to hear that. I have a Nikon 601 SLR or a Canon digital P&S (2mp) if either are any help. PM or call me and we can organise to get either to you.

Hope we don't start seeing more posts like this

Chi - How long are you going to NYC for? I have two D70 bodies remember!?

Onyx wrote:RIP my D70 - 14 months out from date of purchase, "only" about 15,000 shutter actuations. This is quite concerning how potentially short lived the D70 can be before shutter failure. MattK got his to 22k, I only got mine to 15.

<Sigh> Life's curve balls...

Onyx, this is really bad luck, I hope you manage somehow to still get some shots at your sister's wedding. I have a nikon pronea s APS camera that you can borrow it that's any help to you, I can throw in some film as well since I'll probably never use it.

I did some calculating and 15k in 14 months equates to around 400 rolls of 36exp. or around 8 rolls/week.
I don't think I would have ever managed that as an amateur in the film days, consequently the film bodies seem to last longer. I think that the nature of digital has changed the way we use the camera.

Glen, Geoff (edit: and Phillip) - thanks for the offers. I've decided it's one less thing to pack - I'm pleasantly surprised how many additional accessories are now no longer needed: battery charger, power cords/adapters, CF cards and reader, etc. I have the good ol' FM1 I'm taking - fully manual. I finally get to use that roll of ISO100 Velvia, plus a 50mm prime now acts like a 50mm should!

I'm looking forward to experiencing New York and living it up and leave the photographing as secondary. A refreshing change of mindset IMHO - as I've adopted this different outlook since having the D70 (and travelling with it everywhere).

It'll cost a sh^+load I'm sure to fix the shutter, but I'll deal with that when I get back... and I did peek at B&H for the cost of the D70s body, $US899 (plus 8.625% sales tax) not in my range of affordability at this stage.


Keep an eye on those shutter actuations guys... or try to snap as many as you can within the 12 mth warranty period!

Bad luck Onyx.

I'd still try to get warranty - 15K shutter actuations is not what I'd expect from a camera - maybe fair trading?

I'd be pushing 14k shutter actuations (Opanda won't open RAW and my converted JPGs don't have that EXIF info), not too promising.

Matt was two weeks out of warranty If I remember correctly.

Damn dude.

And right after the Sydney night shoot, too...

15,000 is really not an impressive number, and I'd be getting on Maxwell's bad side right about now if that was me.

just echoing how frightening this is. . .


I'm at over 7k shots and I've only had mine since January. . .

this scares me with the amount of happy snapping i do. how much would it cost to get repaired. 15k is quite frightening

Thommo wrote:this scares me with the amount of happy snapping i do. how much would it cost to get repaired. 15k is quite frightening

Yeah exactly. . I snapped over 300 shots at my kids last soccer game and kept 2/3rds of them. I didn't NEED to take that many, but I was having a good time. This makes me wonder if I need to start mentally attaching a price tag to each time I press the shutter and throttle back a bit . . .

Could this be a little of the old "planned obsolescence game" creeping into our beloved cameras? The companies need to make an great camera with marvelous features to get us to buy in the first place, but if they build it too well, we may never have to buy a new one unless they keep coming up with incredibly better features. Which may be hard to do after a while. So the alternative... make it break after a certain amount of time and the warranty has run out and we are force to buy a new Whizflex 2005. Sneaky Bastards.

Word of advice, purchase your products on VISA, MASTERCARD or amex...reason being...anything purchased on the card, the card company will match the warranty period up to a year.
ie - Nikon D70 comes with a 1year warranty, you get a 2nd year with VISA/MASTERCARD/AMEX...all you do is, take it for repair, then send them the bill and they'll reimburse you.
I used to work at $hi* Buy...errr Best Buy...and told this to all the customers who were buying big ticket items like LCD TV's or plasmas, or any big home theater/theatre(if you're Canadian) item.
Purchasing warranties from the store = rip off...so i whispered this option to the customers if they were nice =)

besides i remember a post from matt k...
"Look at it this way guys...
My shutter died at about 23000 shots which is equal to about 638 rolls of 36 exposure colour film. Cost of that film is around $3800 and cost of getting it printed at around $12 per roll conservarively is $7680. So total value of pics is around $11480. Who's complaining now?"
not too bad

Try the following. Put a new battery in the camera and activate the shutter on the B setting. Take the lens off the camera before you do this. Now give the camera a solid jolt by tapping it onto a table. Place a towel on the table first. You would not believe how often this will correct a shutter problem.

how many people have had their d70 last well beyond 20k shutter actuations? We only hear of breakages ... i wonder if there is a vast majority whos cameras are going well past 20k , or whether 15 - 20k is appearing to be the average death rate?

Personally i insure the camera under home and contents with "accidental breakage" policy. It covers really stupid things like dropping your camera in the ocean (away from home also.) or dropping it in the pool etc.

Matt. K wrote:Try the following. Put a new battery in the camera and activate the shutter on the B setting. Take the lens off the camera before you do this. Now give the camera a solid jolt by tapping it onto a table. Place a towel on the table first. You would not believe how often this will correct a shutter problem.

I used to use this method on Pentax cameras back in the UK. Customers would come in with a jammed lens. Told them they could have it back the next day, and after they left - BANG - problem solved

No percussive maintanence required here. The day after I reported the "Err", the camera resumed working again. It reinforces my belief of needing a backup cam at this stage nearing the end of its life, but I'm taking pictures again.

Greetings from NYC.

Phew...

Onyx,
This problems is the ones you had before in the last trip to the States, it wasn't critical, but I remembered something was shutter release related and you didn't pay notice for it, if not, 100% there are something not right with your D70 since it produced error in many few times in the past. I'm sure you'll disapoint with it in the near future.

With your time in HKG, you may be able to get the second body or something better but you didn't.

Or perhaps it gets a cold& flu after the cold night shooting last Sunday, treat it with couple tablets of Zyrtek

pippin88,

His D70 was born from Malaysia so local the Fair Trading Corp can't help, MattK got around 22K and two weeks out of warranty, it's difference with few months out of warranty.

For other:
As I mentioned and advised many times at the mini meets about the warranty and service of D70 by the time it reaches the end of its warranty, how many members take up my advise?
Perhaps negative! It's worth to listen and do the way I said.
If you want to know what I said, come to the mini meet

aww birddog i cant come to the mini meet, what did you say ?

darb wrote:aww birddog i cant come to the mini meet, what did you say ?

darb - you have mail

got it, thanks

I want mail, I want mail!

Chi, glad it has started working for you, enjoy the next month in NY. Maybe try and meet Rachel Bilson

Birddog114 wrote:Onyx,
This problems is the ones you had before in the last trip to the States, it wasn't critical, but I remembered something was shutter release related and you didn't pay notice for it, if not, 100% there are something not right with your D70 since it produced error in many few times in the past. I'm sure you'll disapoint with it in the near future.

With your time in HKG, you may be able to get the second body or something better but you didn't.

Yes, it happened ONCE before (not a few times) - 7 months ago. I largely ignored it as it's gone on to provid me good service until now. If this shutter issue reccurs in 7 month intervals, it's certainly something I can live with.

With your time in HKG, you may be able to get the second body or something better but you didn't.

Yes, I never got paid in HK, so it's kinda hard to buy stuff with money I don't have...

Im interested in what you have to say birddog at those mini meet . If its not to0 personnal in anyway , could someone forward it to my email please.

Onyx wrote:Yes, I never got paid in HK, so it's kinda hard to buy stuff with money I don't have...

Gee that must be hard seeing so much stuff in HK not being able to buy , And well living on a real tight budget. Guess the experience makes up for most of it

He won't get paid in real Aussie dollar cos Honker uses US$$$$$ or HKG dollar
And he enjoyed his stay in HKG is the main story.

Glad to hear your D70 came back to life... I'd be very afraid if the camera was to stop working for several hours! Do you have any guess concerning what might have prompted the camera to resume working?

Link.

Link wrote:Glad to hear your D70 came back to life... I'd be very afraid if the camera was to stop working for several hours! Do you have any guess concerning what might have prompted the camera to resume working?

Link.

I bet he threatened to force-mount a canon lens

Link wrote:Glad to hear your D70 came back to life... I'd be very afraid if the camera was to stop working for several hours! Do you have any guess concerning what might have prompted the camera to resume working?

Link.

Apply CPR to it

Glen
Who the hell's Rachel Bilson

Matt, I just recently learnt she was the girl on Onyx's avatar. She seems to have morphed into a tall asian guy

Well, my camera's failed again, for good this time. However the last captured frame (with incorrect EXIF info) was truly a great image - and a decisive moment, so I'm happy to let my D70 die. At this stage, I could either get the shutter repaired at great cost, or get a new camera and strip the old one to learn from its innards.

As for the celebrity issues - I didn't get Rachel Bilson but I did capture John Lithgow close up. He even looked my way and gave me the thumbs up after seeing my SB800 fire off at him a dozen times.

Catcha - my time in HK wasn't like that. I was treated like royalty (for which I'm truly greatful), and I possibly could have walked away with a new body but my conscience won't let me do that. I got to experience many wonderful things I never thought I would nor wanted to in this lifetime, and it truly was a life changing trip.

Sorry to hear that your D70 has finally taken its last pic Chi.

A truly decisive moment

I have a similar problem.
Around +6K shots and 2nd month of warranty, and the shutters already sticking at about every 10 shots .
And its getting worse ! Especially on longer exposures.
(Birddog wont be happy when i have to see him about the warranty... Im also wondering what he had to say about the warranty at the meets now. )

The ERR displays after the shutter sticks, and then requires a second pressing of the shutter to release it.
This error also affects/changes the orientation of the image which makes me think it may well be a electronic problem.

Dont despair yet Onyx !

The image is still taken, as the electronic shutter appears to do its job irrespective of the mechanical shutter problem.

So then i ask, why two shutters then ?
Its just asking for trouble.
Ide prefer to be able to switch the mechanincal shutter off - like when trying to do candid or nature pics , the sound of the shutter really stuffs things up.

*puts his head to Chi's D70*

Breathe! Breathe, damnit!

Someone get me those little heart paddles they use in ER...

CLEAR!

Be interesting to see the number of shutter releases these guys do that do time lapse photography.

You think about it, 5fps for 60seconds, say for 15-20 minutes is about 5500 to 6000 shots. Then you have to taken into consideration for that 15minute film that not all the shots will make, plus you might take a section of time lapse and not all of the shots at the start and the end of the segment make it.

I reckon you could easily be looking at 10,000+ shots for a 15minute time lapse film.

So you make two films, and your camera dies. I'd be gutted.

Kipper, the maths is fairly simple. You need a minimum of 24 frames per second to fool the human eye into believing it is seeing fluid motion, therefore a 15 minute film would require:

24 x 60 x 15 = 21,600 frames. In other words a lot

John, yeah but most of the cameras used are 4-5fps cameras. Guess they shoot at 5FPS but play that at 30FPS so 1 second of movie is actual 6 seconds of actual shots. Dunno. So yeah if that's the case then it might be.

I guess the other option is to do frame morphing to increase the FPS from 5 to 30FPS.