Joy, but tempered with a taste of pissed off

[pecunium]

My camera came back from El Segundo today. Looking at it it seems they did a cleaning, so the sensor ought to be free of spots, but they also lost the covoer for the cable release. Not only does this irk me from an aesthetic standpoint, but that means there are 10 exposed pin-slots and a bunch of fine-pitch threads exposed to dust and water.

Now to make phone call demanding a new one.

Sonnovabitch!

Comments

[crisavec.livejournal.com]

Yours too? Mine came back without one when I had to send in the D1x for bayonet mount replacement(I still have no idea what I could have done to damage it that badly) and when I sent it back in because it was still broken they put a new cap on it....that promptly unthreaded itself and fell off.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

They will be hearing from me.

I use the cable release, and at something like $180, I am loathe to leave the contacts able to collect dust.

TK

[crisavec.livejournal.com]

$180? What release do you have?
I've been looking at the MC-30, but its only $54. And I thought the MC-36 was $120 or 130?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

The MC-36 is $179 list.

I have an MC-20, which I didn't check when I wrote the last post; so I confused it with the MC-36, which lists at about $110, but I have seen it listed as high as $400, though I don't know what would justify that premium.

I seem to recall paying (a year and a half ago) about $140 for it.

That said, it's a swell release. Not only does it do exposures from camera minimum (1/8000th on the F5 shutter in the Nikon 2DH), but it will go to a maximum length of 10 hours.

It can also be set to delay the shot for ten hours from when the botton gets pushed, and then use the speed set on the camera.

This allows for some fire and forget time lapse, since one can set the camera to Aperture, or Program and let the camera adjust for variable light, if one wanted to take pictures when one was at work (the D2H will let you program it to fire at given intervals, from 1 second, to several hours, between exposures).

TK

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

What part of the mount was damaged? The usual reason for such damage is impact to the lense, which warps the ring, and so makes lenses impossible to mount.

I had that happen to the F3 once, and the real pain was that it (God knows how) prevented the shutter from cocking.

The other time it happened it was less serious (the camera took a knock while in the bag, didn't notice until I went to Change lenses, which didn't really work so well). The lens body (with a solid Nikon/Nikkor body, I wouldn't do it with a Tamron, or one of the plastic kit lenses) forced the ring flush and so it was still light tight.

TK

[crisavec.livejournal.com]

Hmm...

You've just about got me sold on one now, instead of the MC-30. With that level of control I can think of quite a few things I can do.

[crisavec.livejournal.com]

Thats the odd thing. I couldn't see any damage at all, it just stopped focusing and metering on me, in the middle of shooting Multnomah Falls one afternoon. All the lenses I had would mount with no glitchs or hangs anywhere in the process, they just wouldn't autofocus or meter correctly(or at all).

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Nikon didn't tell you what was wrong?

Did you change lenses at the time the failure occured? Because it sounds as if you had some sort of short.

To combine a comment, the other nice thing about the MC-20 is that it takes either a large watch battery (CR2032) or draws a small charge off the camera battery to run.

The first time I opened the battery compartment was just now to see what it took (which is cast in the plastic).

TK

[crisavec.livejournal.com]

They declared it a Class C Major Damage, and reported the fix as Bayonet Mount Replacement. But thats all they told me.

No lens change at the time, and if I recall I hadn't changed lenses in several days. It was a touch damp, but I'd been in worse conditions and it held up fine...wasn't even raining.

Oh nice. So if you are in the field and discover its got a dead battery you can still use it so long as your camera has power(or conversely, you can use it on a nondigital camera without killing what little battery it has).

Hmm, it looks like the MC-20 is about $110, and the MC-36 is only $20 more.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

If you want to use it on a non-digital camera it has to have a 10 pin mount, and (IIRC) not all cameras will be compatible with the power draining function.

It may be limited to dSLRs and the F6, but the battery it has isn't small, and the amount of juice it needs, is, so I don't see it running out as a real probelem, unless you are spending weeks away from civilization.

TK