D300 Exhausted Battery Syndrome.

another 70-200mm for the list.....

Sure looks like the weight of that large lens, lightly oxidized D300 contacts and maybe even a maginally designed D300 lens mount contributing to the problem. Next time that this happens raise the front of the lens upward sightly while holding the D300 stationary as to place some force on the D300 to lens contacts and see if the battery problem goes away.

I don't think that I have ever read on this site where a low weight lens gave the depleted battery warning.

"both equitable for Nikon and their customers" YOU have got to be kidding me,eqitable to them?,they need to stand up to the plate here IMO,even if it means a huge loss. People paid big bucks for this cameras and they are worried about what they have to endure? Give me a break,if I treated my customers this way I would be laughed right outta the business I work in.

I'd have to bet that Nikon designed the spring contacts on the 70-200 to have enough travel in them to continue exerting enough pressure on the corresponding contact pads in the body even in cases where a user failed to support the lens --- besides, if you want to talk about big lenses exerting enough pressure in what you call a poorly designed mount to cause the problem would a Sigma Bigma qualify? I own the 70 - 200 as well, but the Bigma is a true monster and I have the HSM version that relies on all those contacts and I have no problem - not even when it is fully extended AND unsupported. I've observed the mount area to see if the Bigma when fully extended and unsupported caused any drooping --- I was only able to see that there was a very slight amount of drooping --- just about imperceptible actually.

So, IMO if there is some sort of correlation to this problem where the 70 - 200 is part of the problem, I do not believe that it has anything at all to do with the fact that it happens to be a moderately large and heavy lens that is somehow causing a problem because the lens mount might be improperly designed. This phenomenon has a different cause -- possibly related to the 70 - 200 but not due to it's being large and heavy.

by the AF-ON button being pushed when the camera is around someones neck or over a shoulder?
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Well, I just looked at the body contacts of my D70s, D80 and D300. The body contacts indicate the rub area from the lens contacts if you look for it at the right angle with a light. The D70s and D80 show the lens contacts make contact with the body contacts right in the center of the body contacts. With my D300 the contact is at the extreme top outer edge of the body contacts. If the 70-200mm lens contacts are shifted a hair by design and if there is some weight flex then I would say that on my D300 there would be a possiblity of an intermittent or poor conductivity contact issue. It would be interesting if all the readers with the battery issue look where the rub wear area is on the D300 body contacts.

Add my name to the list of D300 + 70-200 VR that have seen this problem. I thought it must have been me, but I saw the same symptoms shooting on a fairly nice day outdoors. The battery meter would go to zero, and after a quick power off and power on, it would go back to full.

..my D300 + 200-400 was going crazy with these false low battery alerts (I was getting them it seemed every 30 sec). Next, I opted to do the DeoxIT cleaning (contacts and entire bayonet mount) and have had no false low battery alerts same setup. So far so good, still crossing my fingers of course

I am wondering, are there any folks who've actually sent their D300 to Nikon for this exact false low battery issue, only to get it back completely fixed (I've read far too many negatives about this, but maybe I skipped over some positive posts where Nikon 'appeared' to resolve this issue?).
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D300 :: D70
Nikkor 200-400 f/4 AF-S VR ED
Nikkor 300 f/2.8 AF-S VR ED N
Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 AF-S VR ED
Nikkor 14-24 f/2.8 AF-S ED N

Interesting information about the cleaning process although I don't understand why such a new camera would need this level of TLC so soon.

I've had my D300 since early January and when I've used it casually taking family pictures and occasional landscape pictures I've had no problems. My real interest is aviation photography and on the third day of shooting at the Sacramento airshow in mid-March I started getting this false low battery warning. The camera was still new and I thought that I must not have properly charged the batteries. Well, this weekend I was shooting the March ARB airshow and the problem started again after taking about 120 pictures on the first day.

I was shooting with the 200-400 lens and a battery pack. Over the course of two days, I experienced this problem very regularly and had many oportunities to diagnose the problem. I tried 5 different batteries (including AA's in the battery pack), reset the battery pack multiple times to check lose connections, mounted and remounted the lens, completely removed the battery pack, etc. The only constant that I found was that I needed to turn the camera off and then back on and it started working fine for 5 - 50 more pictures. After two days I got pretty good at cycling the camera on and off without moving the camera. I could find no symptoms that pointed to the batteries or loose connections with the lens.

You can imagine my frustration when a jet would make a fly-by and as soon as I got ready to press the shutter button I would get the low battery signal!!!

Hopefully I'll have time to contact Nikon tomorrow and will let you know what I hear.

Shot some scenes then travelled in a car for 5/6 hours still with camera switched on, got out to use it, the battery indicator was flashing, swore but pressed shutter, and every thing came back to life - only 4 days old). Got another D300 yesterday will see how this one is.

Trevor

Thinking about when my problem first occured, I had just activated the AF-ON button before the problem started. Why would you suspect this?

Also, talked to Nikon today, wanted me to try various combinations of bodies / lenses / with-without the grip. They did acknowledge that there appears to be more of a contact issue with the VR lenses. Since this is a random problem, may be difficult to resolve. I also tested my batteries, and they all registered between 7.9 and 8.1 volts, so that does not appear to be the problem.

Any other suggestions???

Thanks...

..good info, I also did many of the things you described trying to diagnose my false low battery alerts. I can imagine your frustration at March airshow. I almost went to that airshow. The D300 + 200-400 is an awesome airshow combination, well for that matter, awesome for many other types of shots too.
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D300 :: D70
Nikkor 200-400 f/4 AF-S VR ED
Nikkor 300 f/2.8 AF-S VR ED N
Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 AF-S VR ED
Nikkor 14-24 f/2.8 AF-S ED N

NorCal Cliff wrote:
.

NorCal Cliff said:

I've had my D300 since early January and when I've used it casually
taking family pictures and occasional landscape pictures I've had no
problems. My real interest is aviation photography and on the third
day of shooting at the Sacramento airshow in mid-March I started
getting this false low battery warning. The camera was still new and
I thought that I must not have properly charged the batteries. Well,
this weekend I was shooting the March ARB airshow and the problem
started again after taking about 120 pictures on the first day.

You can imagine my frustration when a jet would make a fly-by and as
soon as I got ready to press the shutter button I would get the low
battery signal!!!

Click to expand...

Can understand the frustration as I am also an airshow fan. My experience has been similar to yours. Got mine early February. No problems when ambient temps were cool and only on for a couple or three hours. Had its first real workout last weekend and was on for 7 to 8 hours but temps were only about 60 F. Next day temps were mid 80s and after being outside for a couple of hours in 70 to 80 F heat I turned it on and after about 3 hours and only 65 shots all of a sudden dead battery. Hit the play button and last photo came up and everything seemed to be back in working order and battery indicator was showing what it previously had instead of empty. I was about through for the day anyway so turned it off and it seems to be ok now.

Under live view in the manual it does say live view is limited to one hour to prevent camera from overheating and damaging circuits. I wonder if this is what is going on in that the camera is overheating and kicking out. Seems like more problems with the bigger lenses which would probably create more heat during operation. Might have to shut it off during inactive periods to keep it from heating up and kicking out if that is what it is. If that is the reason then Nikon is going to have to come up with something as they say it can be used up to 120 or so?? It's not going to be much use if I can't use it for long periods over 70 F. Here in the Midwest 90 to 100 and even higher are normal in July and August and that's when most of the airshows take place because of more stable weather.

If it is a heat problem then Nikon will probably start getting a flood of complaints as the summer temps get here. Up til now the camera has only seen cool temps in this hemisphere since it was made available in November. Might not be a problem for those that only use it for a couple of hours at a time.

Lots of folks will be interested to here what you found out from Nikon. They don't seem to be saying much yet about it with others having the problem.

--
Don

I had thought, after 2 days of shooting for hours in the heat that it may have been an issue. Somewhat confirmed by a note in the manual. I did pose that to Nikon and this was their reponse...

"Thank you for the detailed information. While heat will certainly influence the performance of most electronic equipment, if you can shut off the camera and switch on again to temporarily correct the issue, it's probably not heat related."

John

with the 70-200, I often lay the lens on my left forearm and hold the camera with my left hand. Sort of reversed, my thumb is now on the front of the grip and my fingers wrap around it.

Once, in a quiet place, I heard the VR chatter as I moved around. Looked down and there was my finger on the af-on and I hadn't noticed.
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When I called Nikon yesterday and explained my EBS problem, the first question by tech service was about the MB-D10 grip. He suggested that I run some tests with and without the grip. Later that day I got an email from Nikon suggesting I send the body, lens, batteries, and grip back for service.

Today I was talking to some folks at Roberts, and they indicated that they had heard about problems with the D300 / 70-200 / grip combination. Any of you experiencing EBS - was it with or without the MB-D10 grip?

I don't have MB-D10 grip, so I did not use at all with my camera.

Add 200-400 w/ TC 1.7 to the list
--
Michael Goldring
[email protected]
http://www.yosemitelight.com

I experienced this problem with and without the grip. IMHO the grip was not a factor.

I called the Nikon technical folks this morning about my camera and right off the bat I was very impressed that I got to a person very quickly and they were really engaged in helping me with the camera. The technician did not openly say that the D300 had a "known" problem but did indicate that I wasn't the first person to call and the problem may be related to VR lenses.

Has anyone experienced this issue with a non-VR lens or when VR was turned off?

At the end of my conversation with the tech, he took down the serial # of my camera and suggested that I send it into their El Segundo facility for servicing.

Like I said previously it occured with 24-70, howeer I switched lenses from 70-200 2 hrs earlier.

NorCal Cliff said:

...
Has anyone experienced this issue with a non-VR lens or when VR was
turned off?

Click to expand...

I recently had problems whilst in Texas with the 1.7x.

I was shooting at high humidity at over 40C in the day and in air conditioned rooms at night - a combination where condensation is likely to be an issue.
After several contact cleans I got the 1.7x going.

The D300 instructions advise not more than 40C, not more than 85% humidity, and no condensation.

In fairness to the D300 (the main camera being used) the problem also occurred on the D3 and F100.

Going from say an air conditioned car to outside hot and humid can cause near instant condensation - which is why my cameras travel in the vehicle boot rather than an air conditioned car interior whenever possible.

It is always possible to "induce" a "fashionable" perceived problem - as in photographing a naked lit light bulb with a D200.

It has always been possible to induce cameras to fail in high humidity, high internal static, or high risk condensation situations.

What perhaps some should consider is how to handle complex electronic equipment in such a way as to avoid what has suddenly become a "fashionable fault" of poor electric contacts. This has been a potential cause of temporary camera failure for more than a decade.

Put another way if you take steps to avoid electric current issues you get them far less frequently.
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Leonard Shepherd

Practicing and thinking can do more for good photography than buying or consuming.