D700 Gets stuck on playback

[miles_blanco]

Are there any D700 owners out there that are having this issue? I will roll through my pictures on playback and the

frame will freeze. I can not scroll, delete or check the metadata of the photo. The way I have been remedying this is

pressing the play button to get the black screen then play again to get back to normal playback activities. This

happened about 5 times in 2 minutes.

 

Firmware issue??? If so I hope nikon has a solution... I would hate to not have my baby for a few weeks for

something small and annoying that could be solved online.

[famico]

I'm not sure if this is related, but I have what seems to be a similar issue with my D300. Everything on the

camera works fine, except every once and awhile, when I am reviewing images, the multi-selector stops working

properly. Usually it's the 9 o'clock position (no idea why) that will no longer cycle through the pictures.

Sometimes moving forward by pressing the 3 o'clock position will get it working again. Other times that doesn't

work and I have to hit the playback button like you did to get it working OK again. I have tried to recreate it

several times in case I need to send it in for repair, but so far there has been no pattern I can determine.

[miles_blanco]

Fred,

This one is more like total paralysis. The only thing that works without turning the camera off is hitting the playback button. It happened for the first time last night while I was taking pictures RAW @ ISO 1600, 3200 and 6400. The picture count was about 40 when this happened, but when it happened, it happened about 5 times in 2 minutes like I had said. I am not sure what other details I could give to see if you could recall what the circumstances were when your playback gave up on you and if they were similar.

[famico]

Miles - yes, your problem, although possibly related, does sound more severe than mine with the D300. Although

I will say that one time that it did happen, the only thing that made it work again was to press the playback

button. Once I did that, it began to function properly again. For what it's worth, I did see a post over at

Nikonians where someone else reported a similar issue with their D300, but haven't heard anyone but you having it

with the 700, Whatever it might be, I hope neither of us experience it again, or at least find a solution for it.

Good luck.

[wpahnelas]

i have had a similar problem with the display freezing, but i think the circumstances were probably so different from yours that it may not help. i had a problem with moisture getting into the space between the MB-D10 and D700 body, which caused the monitor to blank completely. only when i removed it from the camera did things begin working properly again. after thoroughly drying out the grip, it works okay now, too. you weren't using your camera in wet conditions by any chance?

[josheudowe]

I have the same issue with my D300. In fact, it happened again this evening. Just cycling through my images, I'll get

through about 7-8 of them, then everything freezes. Sometimes pressing the play button has worked, other times I've had

to shut the camera off, then back on.

 

Not sure what is causing the problem. This is my second D300 and never had the issue before.

 

Would love to know if it's a firmware issue though.

[steven_p]

Possibly.... slow reading of the memory card? (# of images/fragmentation or perhaps a 1X card to begin with) Try a different card or format it in the camera and try again. Just a thought.

[miles_blanco]

William, I am not using the verical grip. So it is not the same problem with the battery terminals that you were having. I am glad that all it took was a good drying to resolve.

 

Josh, Hopefully it is a firmware issue, but it is a bit off that we with these issues are seemingly far and few between. I have not had a repeat though since it happened a few nights ago.

 

Steve, most likely it is not the card. It is a SanDisk Extreme IV 8GB. If you know of any issues with the card, I would be more than attentive. Hard/Firm/Software issues are much less heartbreaking when it is not your main workhorse.

 

Thank you gentlemen for your time.

Miles

[tom_luongo1]

Miles,

<p>

Do you regularly re-format your card before every shoot? How many images are on your card when this

happens? Do you delete images while you shoot?

<p>

I use Extreme III cards and I occasionally see this sort of thing with the D300. It seems to happen more

frequently when I have many images on the card. The Extreme IV isn't necessarily going to give you

better performance. The FAT32 directory structure used by the Nikon could still cause performance

issues if the data is fragmented.

<p>

The most extreme instance where I ran into this was when I inadvertently hit the 999 images per folder

limit. When chimping the 1000th shot, the camera noticeably froze while the card access light stayed

lit for a few seconds. Then it gave the appearance that only the last image was visible. (I wasn't

chimping during the prior shots, and I've never seen the camera freeze while shooting - only during

playback.)

<p>

I later figured out the camera was set to display the current folder only and it had automatically created

a new folder for me. The "freeze" during playback I attribute to some sort of data playback or data

recording issue. For example, if the directory info needed had to be written onto a new sector of the

card and the new sector was not contiguous.

<p>

Card read/write performance would be optimal only when the data is on contiguous and you don't really

have any way to control this. The computer/camera needs to read/write from the file allocation table

(FAT) near the beginning of the card while also reading/writing from the image file that is near the end of

the card. Some, if not all, cards automatically remap bad sectors so even if reading/writing from

contiguously addressed data sectors the underlying physical sectors might not be contiguous.

<p>

So if regular re-formats don't address the issue, try a different card.

[miles_blanco]

Tom,

I do regularly format my card, but you lost me after a minute due to my layman vocabulary. If indeed it is a card issue, I would love to know what kind of cards people are using now, successfuly. I have always used sandisk and lexar. This is the first time that I have even considered that there may be an issue with one of my cards other than it is not large enough for a less cluttered day shoot.

[tom_luongo1]

Mike, what about the other two questions?

 

Do you use the card all the way, or at least most of the way, to capacity? If so, that could be an issue based on my experience. As I mentioned before, I've never seen it affect my shooting, only playback.

 

Do you ever delete images? For technical reasons, that could be a factor that slows the card down.

[miles_blanco]

Tom, I try not to fill my cards to capacity when I shoot. It was certainly not the case when this happened. At the time there were about 30-40 pictures on an 8 GB card. Not qite even a nibble in its capacity. I do delete pictures while I am shooting. I was unaware that this posed a problem.....

[tom_luongo1]

Deleting files leads to disk fragmentation. Disk fragmentation leads to reduced performance. I'll skip other details.

 

But I honestly have no idea if that's what causes these freeze ups. I've occasionally seen this same thing. Like you, I just press the play button twice to fix it.

 

I've never see it happen five times in two minutes but I'm usually too busy shooting to do much chimping. It's never caused me to miss a shot, as far as I know.

 

Of the four or five bodies listed above, you seem to have the worse case other than the guy who sometimes has to shut off the camera.

 

As frustrating as it might get, it seems worthwhile to ask Nikon tech support what they think. They'll probably start by asking you to upgrade to the latest firmware, try a different memory card, etc.