Has anyone sent their D800/D800E's to Nikon's Mississauga office to have their focusing corrected? I'm not sure my D800 has a focusing problem, but I wanted to have it checked before the warranty runs out (April 2013). But I am worried that if I do, they may not do it correctly or even make it worse. So what has been your experience with Nikon Canada been?

John S
Dundas, Ontario

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John,

Unless you have an issue with focusing I would strongly suggest not to send it in. I have not dealt with Mississauga service location yet, but if Richmond location is of any indication, you may end up with a camera affected more than when it went in.

It is very easy to check for focusing issue, in fact. There are 2 very good articles by both Thom Hogan and Nasim Mansurov that outline the procedure. Presuming you have a tripod and a brightly lit room it would take you about 30-60 minutes to make sure that your camera either has and issue or does not.

I have the issue and it is clearly visible with both 50mm @1.8 and 70-200 @ 70mm-2.8.

Hope this helps.

Alex
http://www.yermakov.net

Thanks Alex. I'll check out Hogan & Mansurov and see what I can come up with. I've been reluctant to send my camera in and your experience of the Richmond service has increased it.

John S
Dundas, Ontario

Visit my Nikonians gallery.

John,

Here are the links: Mansurov and Hogan

Hope these help.

Alex
http://www.yermakov.net

I sent my D800 to Nikon's service department in Mississauga a few weeks ago for what I thought was a lock-up problem but turned out not to be - it was simply normal liveview behaviour when the buffer is full. But that's not what you're enquiring about.
While it was there, Nikon checked and adjusted the focus, updated the "L" firmware from 1.004 to 1.006 and cleaned the camera without being asked.
I have since fine tuned my lenses, a 24-70mm f2.8, a 70-200mm f2.8 VR and a 300mm f4 (using a DSC labs Basic Back Focus chart) and found no noticeable difference between the left, centre and right focus points. The lenses did, however, need some fine tuning but this is to be expected no matter how well balanced the focal points are.

I have met and spoken with Elvis in the service department and found him to be both knowledgeable and helpful. If you have any questions, I feel sure he will be happy to help you. Contact information is available at nikon.ca.

Michael,

Good to hear that you had a positive experience. Mine was anything but Not only I got my camera back with more focusing issues (2 service trips) but the camera was full of dust and sensor cleaning was not mentioned on the work order both times. Anyway, this is not important in this thread.

Just out of curiosity - did your camera experience left focusing issue or not before you sent it in? How long ago did you purchase your camera?

Alex
http://www.yermakov.net

>Good to hear that you had a positive experience. Mine was
>anything but...

Given that Michael's experience has been with the service centre that John was asking about, I'd agree that it's more relevant to this thread than yours

Brian
Welsh Nikonian
Check out the Nikonians Team pages

Alex

No, I had not experienced the left focus problem before I sent it in - I made a focus check shortly after buying the camera (Serial number 50016xx) on June 1, 2012 and found no detectable difference between the left, centre and right focus points.

However, regardless of my positive experience, I concur with our fellow Nikonian's advice - check the camera's focus before sending it to Nikon - if it isn't broke, don't fix it.