From: oldrockygn (jimbetz@jimbetz.com)
Date: Tue May 06 2003 - 13:20:42 EDT
This is a follow-up to the "I dropped my 950" posts.
To refresh your memory I dropped my Coolpix - in its
supplied softcase - from waist high to a wood floor.
It landed flat on the floor on one of the large faces
with a sickening thump ...
After that drop there was no external damage whatsoever
(OK, the battery and CF card doors were popped open but
they weren't damaged and all I had to do was simple close
them). But when I turned the camera on I heard a 'continuous
ratcheting/grinding sound' followed by the dreaded "System
Error" in red on the LCD - and the camera wouldn't power
off without popping the battery door open.
Folks - take EXTRA care with your Coolpix cameras! If
you drop it or even whack it hard during normal handling
it is highly likely that it will be damaged. The internals
of the lens/viewfinder part of the camera are rather
poorly designed in terms of 'sensitivity to shock'. Having
opened one up and gone thru it I can tell you that there
are several ways you can get the dreaded "System Error" if
you drop your Coolpix.
I'm really disappointed that the problem even happened. To
my way of thinking if a camera doesn't sustain any exterior
damage whatsoever then nothing inside it should be thrown
off either. In doing the research for this repair what I
learned (I had an idea before but didn't really comprehend
the fact fully) is that the Coolpix line is seriously flawed
in this manner. When I went thru the repair it became even
more obvious that the guts of the camera are HIGHLY prone
to failure from any kind of hard bump. There are lots of
little design flaws in how the Coolpix lens assemblies are
built and implemented that will produce similar failures.
Failures which, in my opinion, will make lots of the cameras
go to the junk heap far before they should.
In addition - the repairs for this kind of failure are
being highly over-charged for by NikonUSA. If I can repair
my 950 in two hours - without any special tools or training -
and the first time I've ever opened one up ... then it is
hard to understand why it costs something in the range of
$200 to have it done by Nikon's 'trained technicians'. OK,
so their guarantee of the fix and the availability of parts
on the shelf if they need them is worth something ... it
still seems a bit exorbitant that we pay well over $100/hr
for repairs that can be done with nothing more than common
sense and a small Phillips screw driver!
From my point of view - it was well worth it for me to
attempt the repairs myself. I'm not sure I could have
packaged and gotten the camera shipped to Nikon for less
than an hour of my time (don't forget the trip to the
shipping facility and the cost of the shipping). When
you balance that two hours I spent against sending the
camera to Nikon and having it unusable for a couple of
weeks or so - and the cost of shipping and repairs - well
it seems obvious to me that I made the right choice when
I decided to "open it up and see what I find".
Yes, I have some 'related experience' in dissembling
and working with miniaturized equipment - but I am
certainly not a camera repair technician (although this
experience makes me think seriously about 'hanging out my
shingle' ... *G*).
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Tue May 06 2003 - 13:21:08 EDT