D700 quirk with AA Batteries vs. D300

<p>Is my D700 broken?</p>

<p>With my D700, if I'm not careful to shutoff the camera before inserting the AA pack into the vertical grip, the camera will show the power level on the batteries in the grip as 0%.</p>

<p>My D300 doesn't care.</p>

<p>This is easy to demonstrate on the D300. Display the battery info screen and pull the AA pack out and put it back in. The display updates the way you would expect - the MB-D10 half of the display appears and disappears showing whether or not batteries are inserted in the MB-D10.</p>

<p>Do the same on the D700 and the display shows 0% on the MB-D10 when the AA batteries are reinserted.</p>

<p>Neither camera cares when I do the same thing with the EN-EL3e holder.</p>

<p>Does anyone else's D700 act like this or is there something wrong with my unit?</p>

<p>And yes, I know the instructions say to shut off the camera before inserting the battery pack, but the instructions don't say what happens if you forget to shut off the camera.</p>

 

<p>why would anyone get hung up over something as trivial as this? if that's the way it works, that's the way it works. if you turn the camera off and then back on, does it display correctly? that should be all that matters.<br>

don't obsess over gear, obsess over photos.</p>

<p>Tom, there is something very wrong with you did: inserting the battery pack without first switching the camera off.</p>

<p>Yah you should never play with power components of a camera while its on. You may accidentally cause damage to your camera.</p>

<p>Shun - It wasn't something I did on purpose. I am in the habit of shutting off the camera when changing batteries as well as when switching lenses and definitely when switching memory cards. But occasionally, if being careless, it can happen that the camera hasn't been switched off when the pack is pulled out.</p>

<p>My guess now is that the D700 is designed to disable the battery pack if any sort of abnormal voltage is detected, as would happen momentarily if the contacts connect with power on.</p>

<p>William - The pack gets disabled if I do this by accident. It's not just a matter of the battery meter being slightly off. Switching the camera on and off does not clear the condition. The pack has to be physically removed and reinserted (power off) to clear the condition.</p>

<p>If someone wants to be familiar with details of how the equipment works, there's nothing wrong with that.</p>

<p>I'd also take issue with calling this "trivial". If there were some sort of trivial electrical malfunction inside the camera, I'd probably want to send it back for service to make sure that more serious malfunctions aren't present.</p>

<p>The D300 does not behave the same as the D700. That's the only reason I wondered if the D700 might have had an "issue".</p>

 

If it is not allowed to change lenses, cards and batteries with the camera switched on, Nikon has to make little switches on the doors and lens mount. Now it sounds more like: 'it's your mistake you didn't switch off" for all kind of things that can happen.