Kluso
Veteran Member
Picked up a new D80 earlier this week and purchased a new spare battery.
Really nice camera, fantastic viewfinder and awsome auto focus compared to the D70.
I found no hot pixels or dead pixels, no amp glow, high ISO performance is great, long exposures revealed no issues reuslting images cleaner than D70.
The new larger LCD is fantastic compared to the D70 zooming in to an equivalent of viewing the image on screen at 200% you can really judge focus eevne spot CA if present.
HOWEVER I did more than once strike the false Low Battery warning which locks you out from shooting any photos.
I found that if I wait about 8 seconds, the camera takes another battery reading decides the battery isn't really flat and continues to operate normally.
I have read that Nikon said to someone at Nikonians that it may be a battery issue, some batteries better than other etc baloney me thinks.
I have 3 batteries an old one that came as the D70 battery recall replacement battery and 2 brand new ones all have very different serial numbers and they ALL do it, so I am not searching for a "better battery".
I am convinced this is a D80 and it seems D200 firmware bug, nothing to do with any lens or battery fault etc.
The firmware must only take one reading of the battery, if that coincides with heavy current drain from the battery such as while the pop-up flash is charging from a full discharge, VR or OS running and AF running, it sees ONE low voltage reading and panics for no good reason.
I suggest Nikon only PANIC after a series [average] of succesive battery readings ALL come up low.
Searching for an elusive better newer battery or cleaning lens contacts is NOT going to help in this case. I am convinced it is a simple firmware issue, I am surprised Nikon haven't fixed it already
The AE=L/AF-L button.
It is shorter than the one on the D70 you must press it hard to make sure it closes, it ends up pressed in past the case, It feels mushy.
It has to be pushed just right and hard.
Left side works better than right side, yet your thumb is normally pushing on the right side which is the worse side to push on with this switch.
Never had this problem on the D70, a better switch and a longer button to push, why couldn't they leave it alone :-(
I got a sore thumb trying to use it as AF-ON
AND it comes with firmware issues;
There is a long delay about 1 second from the time you press it for AF-ON and the time the AF starts working [half press shutter AF starts immediately]
I eventually found that if AF ASSIST LAMP s turned OFF, the delay is much shorter but there is still a delay.
Using a Sigma 80-400 OS, the half press shutter does NOT start OS, the AF-ON button starts OS and if you release AF-ON the OS will soon stop even if you are still pressing the shutter button halfway.
You can easily miss the fact that OS is not working if you are used to the way it works normally on a D70.
Nikon 80-400 VR works same way as it did on D70, confirmed by a friend who has a D80 and Nikon 80-400 VR.
having read some posts on Nikonians from Nikon VR users who report fewer keepers with VR lenses on the D80 I suspect that some other Nikon VR lenses may also be affected by the AE-L/AF-L button AF-ON firmware bug.
Some of the functions that can be assigned to the AE-L/AF-L button do NOT work as described in the manual which confirms the code isn't right.
Conclusions;
1./ Nikon needs to do a firmware upgrade to both D80 and D200 to fix the false Low battery warning/lock out.
2./ Nikon needs to sort out the bad code assigned to the AE-L/AF-L button and release a firmware upgrade.
3./ Nikon needs to fix physical AE-L/AF-L button to make it longer just like the one in the D70 else we will all have very sore thumbs
I am tempted to glue something to the button to make it useable.
--
Inspector Kluso
Really nice camera, fantastic viewfinder and awsome auto focus compared to the D70.
I found no hot pixels or dead pixels, no amp glow, high ISO performance is great, long exposures revealed no issues reuslting images cleaner than D70.
The new larger LCD is fantastic compared to the D70 zooming in to an equivalent of viewing the image on screen at 200% you can really judge focus eevne spot CA if present.
HOWEVER I did more than once strike the false Low Battery warning which locks you out from shooting any photos.
I found that if I wait about 8 seconds, the camera takes another battery reading decides the battery isn't really flat and continues to operate normally.
I have read that Nikon said to someone at Nikonians that it may be a battery issue, some batteries better than other etc baloney me thinks.
I have 3 batteries an old one that came as the D70 battery recall replacement battery and 2 brand new ones all have very different serial numbers and they ALL do it, so I am not searching for a "better battery".
I am convinced this is a D80 and it seems D200 firmware bug, nothing to do with any lens or battery fault etc.
The firmware must only take one reading of the battery, if that coincides with heavy current drain from the battery such as while the pop-up flash is charging from a full discharge, VR or OS running and AF running, it sees ONE low voltage reading and panics for no good reason.
I suggest Nikon only PANIC after a series [average] of succesive battery readings ALL come up low.
Searching for an elusive better newer battery or cleaning lens contacts is NOT going to help in this case. I am convinced it is a simple firmware issue, I am surprised Nikon haven't fixed it already
The AE=L/AF-L button.
It is shorter than the one on the D70 you must press it hard to make sure it closes, it ends up pressed in past the case, It feels mushy.
It has to be pushed just right and hard.
Left side works better than right side, yet your thumb is normally pushing on the right side which is the worse side to push on with this switch.
Never had this problem on the D70, a better switch and a longer button to push, why couldn't they leave it alone :-(
I got a sore thumb trying to use it as AF-ON
AND it comes with firmware issues;
There is a long delay about 1 second from the time you press it for AF-ON and the time the AF starts working [half press shutter AF starts immediately]
I eventually found that if AF ASSIST LAMP s turned OFF, the delay is much shorter but there is still a delay.
Using a Sigma 80-400 OS, the half press shutter does NOT start OS, the AF-ON button starts OS and if you release AF-ON the OS will soon stop even if you are still pressing the shutter button halfway.
You can easily miss the fact that OS is not working if you are used to the way it works normally on a D70.
Nikon 80-400 VR works same way as it did on D70, confirmed by a friend who has a D80 and Nikon 80-400 VR.
having read some posts on Nikonians from Nikon VR users who report fewer keepers with VR lenses on the D80 I suspect that some other Nikon VR lenses may also be affected by the AE-L/AF-L button AF-ON firmware bug.
Some of the functions that can be assigned to the AE-L/AF-L button do NOT work as described in the manual which confirms the code isn't right.
Conclusions;
1./ Nikon needs to do a firmware upgrade to both D80 and D200 to fix the false Low battery warning/lock out.
2./ Nikon needs to sort out the bad code assigned to the AE-L/AF-L button and release a firmware upgrade.
3./ Nikon needs to fix physical AE-L/AF-L button to make it longer just like the one in the D70 else we will all have very sore thumbs
I am tempted to glue something to the button to make it useable. --
Inspector Kluso
