MaryO
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 p.4 #2 · D800 impact damage/cracked frame | |
Thank you again, everyone. Still waiting to hear back from Nikon.
RoyC: I appreciate your candor. Re: "Just because someone does not remember or see that something happened to their camera, does not mean it did not happen". You're absolutely right. Because one of the parties (me, Nikon, couriers, sales, repair) either doesn't remember or didn't see. Including Engineering. It's possible they don't remember designing a weak frame.
Also: 2 million D800s/D800Es/D810s out there? I'm surprised by that! I was looking for that information, but couldn't find it. How did you find that?
nwadventurer7: You're so right! I will definitely carry insurance from now on regardless of warranty. And I agree, I would assume a damaged frame would cause misfocusing; mine would misfocus for months intermittently off and on and I assumed it was the regular D800 focus issue. I wasn't an NPS member at that point (I applied just before this happened. Ironically I was told I qualified, but after discovering my D800 frame was cracked, I was told I'm welcome to reapply after I replace it. Ouch.) and did't want to send it to repair and be without it for a couple months, so I had been in contact with Nikon service sending files back and forth trying to determine if it was my camera or maybe my lens needing calibrating, so I'd do micro adjustments. .. It would go away.. but then come back, so I'd adjust again. Wouldn't you think there could be others who did the same? It was probably immature or stupid of me to not accept the focus issue, but I didn't want my camera to be one of "those" D800s, so I convinced myself that it wasn't. I can totally own that. When I finally accepted that it was and sent it in, that's when they discovered the crack.
But again, it was intermittent. Someone had mentioned the expansion and contraction of metal in extreme temperatures. Maybe temperature extremes would exacerbate (or lessen) the noticeable effects that a crack like this would have on a camera? So maybe people who don't use their cameras as often and/or in extreme temperatures wouldn't notice or haven't noticed yet? Just throwing thoughts out there because I'm at a total loss on this.
What I can say is that I have spoken with one person with a cracked frame and he says it isn't effecting the focus at all (yet). I believe nwadventurer7's comment that it would have to cause symptoms, but maybe not right away or in all conditions, like mine. I would expect it to just get increasingly worse, though. I spoke with a few independent repair folks about it and yes, they've seen it - D800s with cracked frames. They said that sometimes they can "repair" it, sometimes they can't. By repair, I don't mean the crack itself; like Nikon says, that's irreparable. They can try to align, but there would be no guarantee and sometimes it works great and others not, but it could buy some time with it. Sad. My point: It is possible that there are cracked frames that aren't showing performance symptoms (yet).
CanadaMark: Thanks again  ... Re: "The consumer doesn't have many options, unfortunately. As for Nikon, they could just accept every single impact damage claim, and repair countless cameras that people drop, abuse, etc. just so that they never screw anyone over. Or, they could what they do now, which is not repair for free anything with impact damage. I'm not sure what the best solution is, but neither seem fair to either party".
How about this? Reasonable doubt. If there is reasonable doubt that a camera was abused (i.e. no external damage that could reasonably explain the inside frame being cracked in half), then repair it (or honor the warranty), but if there is obvious evidence of abuse (cracks, dents, etc), then don't. Would that be fair?
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