The Nikon CHA-CHA

November 20th, 2007 · Comments

Nikon D70 goes 'CHA', taken by my new phone.

This weekend I was taking photos of Dallas outside of the Indy Craft Experience in Southwest Atlanta. Just as I was handing the camera to someone to take a photo of Dallas and myself, I noticed the letters ‘CHA’ on the top LCD. Thinking to myself ‘uh oh’, I re-inserted the CompactFlash card and battery. I had seen this dreaded ‘CHA’ error a few times since the camera had it’s meltdown in the Galapagos, and had always been able to fix it this way. No such luck this time.

When I got home, I tried two other freshly in-camera formatted CompactFlash cards, and two other batteries. Judging by the Google results, this has become an increasingly common problem. My guess is that there is a loose connection somewhere in the camera, which doesn’t surprise me since I had to send the camera back two years ago due to the infamous Blinking Green Light of Death issue. Looking online, I’ve seen $380 quoted for this problem, but I’ve seen others get it fixed by a simple cleaning or pin adjustment. No amount of cleaning seems to do the trick for me, and the pins look fine. All said, I’m surprised my camera has survived me this long. It’s seen 3.5 years of my clutz-filled life, distributed over 50,000 photos. It’s seen five weddings, three continents, and hundreds of species of animals.

So, I’m sending it back tomorrow to Nikon to get an estimate for repair. In the meantime, I’ve put myself on the waiting list at RitzCamera.com for the Nikon D300. Here is what I look forward to about the D300 as compared to the D70:

Better LCD: 3.0″ LCD vs 1.8″, .13MP vs .92MP
Better low-light: ISO1600 appears to be like ISO400 on the D70
Twice as fast: 6fps vs 3fps
GPS Integration (via serial)

BTW: For those of you who say that it’s “It’s Easier To Beg For Forgiveness Than To Ask For Permission”, you haven’t met my wife. She wasn’t terribly pleased that I purchased the D300, even though I used my personal account. I suppose I have to take some flattering photos of her with it before I’ll be forgiven.