A suprising update on my recently dead D700!

Keith

Keith

The best camera is one that still works!
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I posted a few months ago that my beloved D700 had turned it's toes up with some type of terminal shutter issue and was currently residing on the shelf.

My son was interested in getting himself a cheap DSLR so I told him he could have it assuming it might be repairable at a reasonable cost. He took the camera into Anderson's who have a very good reputation here in Brisbane to get it assessed. The guy hooked it up to their test unit and apparently not only is the shutter toast it has a problem with the mirror mechanism as well ... estimated repair $900.00 :eek: Seems like it's now a door stop considering you can buy a used one for six hundred dollars or so! I'm somewhat shocked actually because that camera has had a very easy life and has less than 20k actuations on the shutter ... it looks brand new FFS!

A little bit of my faith in Nikon products has just flown out the window!

Edit ... (my son tells me the shutter count is 12600)
 
That's a surprisingly low shutter count for a terminal problem Keith!

Maybe your son might like to look at a 5D original? :D
(if he does, check whether the mirror has been replaced as these can become unglued. It was a warranty repair at the time).
 
lynnb said:
That's a surprisingly low shutter count for a terminal problem Keith!

Maybe your son might like to look at a 5D original? :D
(if he does, check whether the mirror has been replaced as these can become unglued. It was a warranty repair at the time).
Click to expand...

He was telling me that even dead D700s fetch a couple of hundred dollars on Ebay because there are people looking for them for parts. I told him to sell it and put the money towards whatever he eventually buys. A 5D would be a good choice actually!
 
Wow! Talk about a Lemon. My D700 had over 240K when I sold it. I bought it used of course and it had never seen a repair tech.

The D3 I had was well over 270k when I let it go onto a new owner. It had multiple fractures in the mag body shell... still ticked like new.

My Condolences Keith~!
 
B-9 said:
Wow! Talk about a Lemon. My D700 had over 240K when I sold it. I bought it used of course and it had never seen a repair tech.

The D3 I had was well over 270k when I let it go onto a new owner. It had multiple fractures in the mag body shell... still ticked like new.

My Condolences Keith~!
Click to expand...

Thanks for the condolences! lol I really miss that camera ... I have a D4 but it's not as nice to use as the D700 was.

I've always been a bit of a lemon picker with consumer goods! :p
 
If he can find a buyer, a few hundred surely grabs a 5D!

The first version AF-L lenses are a real bargain these days!

17-40L + 5D Classic would make a really nice kit.

Great suggestion Lynn!
 
It's Just Bad Luck

It's Just Bad Luck

Failure at 126K actuations is just slightly below normal.

The D700's mean shutter life failure spec is 150K actuations (link). This assumes the failures follow a Gaussian distribution (which they do for large a large number of cameras).

Half the shutters will fail before 150K and half will fail above 150K. A small percentage (~1%) will fail at very low shutter counts and equal percentage will last well for very high shutter counts.

Of course, I would be disappointed if my camera failed at 24K actuations below the mean. At the same time, for every camera that fails at 126K, there is a camera that lasted until 174K actuations.

It's like playing roulette without 0 or 00 slots on the wheel.

Nikon can't change the statistics. It's not their fault.
 
I bought my D700 used (so take from that what you will) with about 40K on it. It failed terminally after less than 12 months ownership. I put only ~300 clicks on it. :mad: I did love the handling and the way it played with my Nikon lens collection that contains a lot of AI and AIS lenses.

My wife purchased a D90 a while ago. It failed less spectacularly than my D700, but it failed nonetheless after about 1-2 years ownership.

She currently has a D610. Among our digital Nikons, it has survived the longest (at least 3 years now). She puts about 2-3000 on her camera per year. Fingers crossed this is a good one :)

My film FE, FE2, FM, FM2, F2, and even point-n-shoots are all working great.

So, I too am a little wary of digital Nikon now.

I honestly haven't been compelled to seek out another Nikon DSLR ... I guess I'm hopeful one will find me before too long, but I'm reluctant to invest deeply.
 
Hi Keith,

I have a Canon that I didn’t use very much. It was a backup! It’s the 1D Mark II. Just for grins I brought it out and it took me a while but I managed to get the shutter working again. It was stuck. At any rate, now I use it every once in a while to exercise it. I guess they have mechanical parts that need exercise every so often, just like my film cameras.
 
My son has just messaged me to let me know that the D700 went for $224.00 on Ebay. It seems Anderson's were spot on with their estimate of what it was worth.
 
willie_901 said:
The D700's mean shutter life failure spec is 150K actuations (link). This assumes the failures follow a Gaussian distribution (which they do for large a large number of cameras).
Click to expand...

Failure mode analysis in engineering essentially always uses Gaussian distribution unless adequate data are available (which they almost never are). If you can get enough data for a product, failures, especially combined failures (e.g. all non-repairable failures, as opposed to non-repairable shutter failures, for example) almost never have a Gaussian distribution - the tails of the distribution are almost always feathered. There are models that take this into account.

I have done a lot of failure mode analysis.

Marty
 
Keith said:
....apparently not only is the shutter toast it has a problem with the mirror mechanism as well ... estimated repair $900.00 :eek: ....
Click to expand...


That's a lot to go wrong. I wonder if one fault caused the other. I'm not used to Nikons going wrong.... I'm very fond of my D700, especially with older lenses. The modest pixel count helps. I even use an Imagon with a Leica screw mount to Nikon adapter, and the D700 behaves perfectly.
 
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