Nikon D50 "OFF" and "f---" Error Messages

I have owned my D50 for about 6 months and occasionaly I get an "f---" or

a "OFF" error message. I see from the manual that "f---" means it can't see the

lens aperture but I have only ever removed the lens from the body once since

the camera was new, a power-off seems to fix it (until the next time).

The "OFF" message also occurs and this is not in the manual so any ideas?

Both of these are really annoying as they always seem to happen just when I am

about to get a never-to-be-repeated shot (how does the camera know that?!).

Thanks

Alasdair

Hello, have you checked if the lens has the aperture switch blocked?, reset it. If it is a G lens, clean contacs, battery contacs too, reset all, even the camera and try. Let us know your progress.

Regards.

<a href="http://www.juanparmenides.com/">www.juanparmenides.com</a>

Hi Juan,

Thanks - I have checked the lens and it is all OK, the annoying thing about this problem is that it is intermittent, however the battery was not fully chanrged (it was just starting to indicate not a full charge) so I suppose it might have had something to do with that.

I would still like to know from Nikon (or anyone really) what the "off" error message means as it is not in the book.

Alasdair, have you found the solution on this problem?

I have the problem with my own D50.

When tried to convince my shop to take it in to service, it was of course working perfect...

F-- means the CPU in your AF camera body cannot communicate with the CPU inside your lens. That means either your lens is an older manual-focus one and has no CPU or there is some electronic communication problems.

If you have an AF lens on your camera and still get F--, I would first clean the electronic contacts in the lens mount area, on both the body and the lens.

I posted this up on another thread.

I have the same problem. Nikon D50 with Tamron 18-250. I brought my camera to my authorized dealer and they couldn't figure it out as well. We ended up searching online for an answer and found this web site.

We suspect it may be the aperture ring of the lens not connecting firmly to the body or something. Of course, when I brought the camera in, the OFF error didn't want to come on. Everything worked fine at the camera store. The next time it happens, I'll play around with the lens/body ring attachment to see if this is where the problem lies.

I experienced the OFF error msg on my NIKON D80, when the camera was turned on the OFF error msg would flash and the camera would not function at all: no menu availability, no aperture or focusing operation, no photo could be taken. Sometimes the shutter would actually release as if taking a photo, but none was taken. I replaced the original lense with my second lense (zoom vs. wide angle) and tried starting the camera. It worked with the wide angle lense. When I replaced the wide angle with the zoom, my problem no longer occured. I am not confident the problem has been resolved, but I want it to occur again, and occur more consistently before I take my camera back to the dealer. I fear the "Murphy's Law" of broken machinery: once you bring it back to the pro, the machinery works perfectly; walk out the door, and it fails again.

Good luck with your error/problem resolution.

Szpinner