The Nikon D50 is a very sensitive camera. Drastic changes in temperature and humidity can have an adverse affect on this piece of precision equipment and prevent the camera from properly functioning. Like all things in life, I learned this little fact the hard way. It was a beautiful morning, the sky was crisp and clear, I was on a flight from New York to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic to start my vacation, I had a brand new 55-200mm DX Nikkor Zoom Lens in my bag that I just couldn’t wait to use, I pulled my camera out of my new bag to snap a few photos of the wing of the plane, the deep blue of the sky and the sunrise, after a few photos the camera stopped working, that was it.
There I was, on a flight to start the first day of a beautiful vacation on the beach in the Dominican Republic with my only camera sitting in my hands inoperable. I could not, for the life of me, figure out what was wrong with it or why it had decided to stop working so abruptly. I take such good care of it. Was it the Bermuda Triangle? It must be. That explanation was my only hope. But when the plane landed in Punta Cana, far outside of the triangle, and my camera still did not work, all hope vanished. I was filled with a deep sadness as I realized that I would not be able to take any photos of this beautiful island. What was I going to do?
As soon as we got to our hotel I asked for a doctor, a camera doctor. The front desk pointed me in the direction of a photo booth. There, in Spanish and very broken English, the photographer explained the problem to me. He has seen this happen many times to cameras that belong to the Nikon family. It happened to him several times and cost him a lot of money to get them fixed. It’s a good thing that I speak Spanish and was able to understand him otherwise I’d probably still be shaking my head. He explained that these cameras are extremely sensitive, that any major change in temperature and/or humidity, even dust in the air, can have a serious affect on this camera, affecting the power circuit. And this is what happened to mine. He said that this issue occurs with all the older Nikons, but that the D70S and the D40, since they are newer versions, have corrected this problem and they are sturdier and more stable than their siblings the D50 and D70. I wish I had known all of this sooner.
My vacation was beautiful and very memorable despite the fact that I have no photographic record of anything. To make up for the lack of photos, I wrote and sketched in my journal instead.
Back in New York, after digging out the paperwork for my D50, I realized that I only had a few days remaining on the warranty. I needed to get this camera in a repair shop and fast. There is only one Nikon independent authorized repair station in Manhattan — PhotoTech. I dropped off my camera on January 8th, my warranty expired on January 9th, and my camera was repaired and ready to pick up on February 6th. The following was performed:
BODY: REPLACE POWER CIRCUIT
CLEAN CCD ONLY
GENERAL CLEANING AND LUBRICATION
CHECK AND ADJUST ALL FUNCTIONS TO SPECIFICATIONS
LENS: CHECK AUTO FOCUS OPERATION
GENERAL CLEANING AND LUBRICATION
CHECK AND ADJUST ALL FUNCTIONS TO SPECIFICATIONS
I learned the following important camera-care lessons from all of this – don’t take photos while in flight, and keep the camera in a sealed ziploc baggie at all times, especially when transporting through extreme changes in temperature and humidity. Hopefully, taking these precautions will prevent something like this from happening again and I can continue my much loved hobby of photography while on vacation.
archival project 