3rd party problems.What items are affected?

Pistnbroke

Well I had no third party problems untll I changed from D7000 to D7100 and D800 and yes I know Nikon only have to support there own products but it would be nice to know whats a good buy and what isnt.
Fitted my sigma 18-200 and 18-250 to my D7100 (I have a pair) and all seemed fine until I noticed the LCD was on a long time..in fact it would not go below 60 sec ..battery life down to 1/3...sigma said it was a feature All sigma lenses off to Ebay ..never buying another.
Purchased a 3rd party Neewer grip for each of the D7100...worked fine but whatever battery you set to discharge first the one in the camera was used first while the shot count was on the grip battery..Strange ..never discovered if it would change over .Now I just just use one battery only in the grip.
Now the Neewer grip for the D800 was different ..if you turned it on you lost all LCD functions !!!
Third party batteries that worked fine in the D7000 would not work with D7100...but 3 of the 7Genuine EL 15s I have owned have gone bad.
YN 565 ex worked great with the D7000 but with D800 and D7100 locks the camera at 400 iso even when its off ..ie the auto iso does not work.
The people who I feed sorry for are those who udate firmware "because its the thing to do" and loose functions they once enjoyed with there 3rd party accessories..

donaldejose

I see two issues:

1. Third party equipment which does not provide the full function of the corresponding Nikon equipment due to failure of the third party manufacturer's failure to match all of the Nikon's functions. This is the fault of the third party manufacturer although I can see that they may not be able to know all functioning and Nikon won't tell them.

2. Nikon's attempts to adjust its firmware updates to exclude the use of third party accessories. This is downright mean. Nikon should not make any efforts to sabotage other suppliers in an effort to force us to buy Nikon accessories. We should want to buy Nikon equipment because of its superior quality; not because we are forced to not buy third party accessories by Nikon firmware and its updates.

One real serious issue for me:is the Sigma Art series lenses. Apparently they are very good, in fact better than Nikon produces in its equivalent model. I would like to start investing in them. However, I do worry that they are a significant investment (not a $100 accessory) which may be rendered useless by the firmware in Nikon future bodies (D400, D9300, D800x, D4x, etc) and future firmware updates. I also worry they may not focus accurately with today's bodies. If I were to buy a 50mm f1.4 or an 85mm f1.4 and actually wanted to shoot it at f1.4 that lens absolutely must grab focus on an eyelash at f1.4. Less than great accuracy here will invalidate the main reason to purchase the lens.

sevencrossing

I use third party Nikon lens caps; less than a quarter the price of the genuine ones
no problems at all

TaoTeJared

I know I have said it before, but believing in some conspiracy that Nikon purposefully changes things to make 3rd party items not to work is a joke. You honestly think they are sitting around, reverse engineering all 3rd party lenses and accessories so they fail? I don't think so. They are not even "masters" of their own universe as they have shown with firmware updates to fix their own stuff, leaking shutters, miss-aligned sensors, etc. There is zero need to find a boogeyman to blame. 3rd party is just that, 3rd party. It doesn't matter if it is automobiles, air-conditioners, phones or camera's - the main company is not going to go out of their way to help someone undercut their own products. It is not Nikon's fault some other company who is reverse engineering their products to try to make their own doesn't work. Put the blame on the manufacture, not the company they are trying to undercut. Sigma's woes are their own fault and screw up, not Nikon's.

I'm always leery of 3rd party stuff, especially with the large boom in photo stuff coming from China with little known reputations. Normal case, it won't work or be buggy - worse case something could fry your camera. If you want everything to work, suck it up and buy the OEM stuff. Yes it is more expensive, but it also is guaranteed to work.

If people would add up all the wasted money they spend on trying to be "cheaper" I quite certain they would find out they should have paid for the OEM in the first place.

WestEndBoy

This is well said TTJ. I have a saying, "The poor always pay twice." Once when they buy something that doesn't quite work (or performs poorly) and once when they buy the thing that they should have bought in the first place.

While I do believe that there are some third-party products that are very good - Schneider and Zeiss manual focus lenses come to mind - if I have to spend any time worrying whether an auto-focus lens is going to work after upgrading my body, I want no part of it. If it is from the same manufacturer, I can ship the whole thing off to Nikon and tell them to make it work - focus fine tuning is a common example.

Ade

I know I have said it before, but believing in some conspiracy that Nikon purposefully changes things to make 3rd party items not to work is a joke. You honestly think they are sitting around, reverse engineering all 3rd party lenses and accessories so they fail? I don't think so.

There's strong evidence that Nikon deliberately disabled certain 3rd-party batteries with a firmware update (reported here), perhaps by rotating encryption keys present in batteries to an alternate key, or by changing the battery encryption protocol in some other way.

The reason we "know" what Nikon did is that the folks at NikonHacker.com were able to reverse engineer and patch the firmware to re-enable 3rd party battery support, basically by short-circuiting the encryption routines. (There's a 13-page thread on NikonHacker on how this was done if anyone cares to read through them).

What we don't know is why Nikon decided to disable 3rd-party batteries. My own opinion is they made the encryption change to kill counterfeit Nikon-branded batteries, but some (not all) "legitimate" 3rd-party batteries also got disabled as collateral damage.

donaldejose

Yes, that battery issue relative to firmware update disabling batteries which had worked fine before is one of the things I was thinking about when I wrote my comment. Seems it was a deliberate act by Nikon.

PB_PM

Most likely done on purpose to protect customers from poor Chinese knockoffs that can blow up cameras. Not saying all third party batteries are bad (I use a high quality third party battery), but some of them are kind of sketchy to say the least. Sadly Nikon cannot protect customers from the bad third party products without removing the ability to use good ones.

That said, if it is Nikon just changing codes in firmware, how is it that doing so does not disable their own first party batteries? Unless the firmware Nikon is using looks for a specific CPU/chip in their batteries that none of the others can gain access to (seems to be the most likely cause).

Ade

That said, if it is Nikon just changing codes in firmware, how is it that doing so does not disable their own first party batteries? Unless the firmware Nikon is using looks for a specific CPU/chip in their batteries that none of the others can gain access to (seems to be the most likely cause).

My speculation, as above: perhaps they did it by "rotating encryption keys present in batteries to an alternate key".

Conceptually, suppose Nikon batteries are programmed with several equally valid alternate passwords. In the past, the firmware algorithm only interrogated ("challenged") the battery using the first valid password. This password has been "broken" and present in all counterfeit & third-party batteries. With the new firmware, the algorithm now authenticates using one the alternate passwords. Counterfeit / third-party batteries not having this alternate password will now fail to work. Genuine Nikon batteries (and third-party batteries having the alternate passwords) continue to work just fine.

This is only speculation on my part. The Nikon Hacker team didn't need to fully break the battery encryption algorithm -- they can simply patch the firmware to ignore a failed authentication.

WestEndBoy

This is well said TTJ. I have a saying, "The poor always pay twice." Once when they buy something that doesn't quite work (or performs poorly) and once when they buy the thing that they should have bought in the first place.

While I do believe that there are some third-party products that are very good - Schneider and Zeiss manual focus lenses come to mind - if I have to spend any time worrying whether an auto-focus lens is going to work after upgrading my body, I want no part of it. If it is from the same manufacturer, I can ship the whole thing off to Nikon and tell them to make it work - focus fine tuning is a common example.

Hmmm......I wonder if I have to worry about my Pocketwizards? I have three FlexTT5s and an AC3 zone controller.

Ade

Hmmm......I wonder if I have to worry about my Pocketwizards? I have three FlexTT5s and an AC3 zone controller.

Yes and no. There is no guarantee that your PWs will work with future Nikon cameras. In fact the FlexTT5 & MiniTT1 have known issues with the D7100, and is not officially supported on the Df, D610, or the new D4S. Functions beyond "Basic Trigger Mode" may or may not work.

http://wiki.pocketwizard.com/index.php?title=Nikon_Compatibility

(see the "Non-Compatible Cameras" section)

WestEndBoy

As long as it works with my D800. When I buy a DF, I will probably use my SB-400 if I want a flash.

Pistnbroke

I think the battery problems are well known and have been known for some time ..but the virus has spread to grips lenses and flash....clearly the computers in camera and accessory must talk to one another and if they dont do it right I am sure nikon has disabled some minor irritating function like LCD problems . If equipment works on one older model and does not on the new one then it must be a concious firmware action by Nikon. Same for a firmware upgrade intended to let you use your 800mm but stops your 3 rd party stuff working.

sevencrossing

When Nikon does a firmware upgrade, I don't suppose they spent much, if any, time testing it on third party lenses

TaoTeJared

... My own opinion is they made the encryption change to kill counterfeit Nikon-branded batteries, but some (not all) "legitimate" 3rd-party batteries also got disabled as collateral damage.

Yes, that battery issue relative to firmware update disabling batteries which had worked fine before is one of the things I was thinking about when I wrote my comment. Seems it was a deliberate act by Nikon.

Verifying batteries? And that expands into everything and creates Nikon into a huge boogeyman? Talk about a childish thought process and selective memory. Nikon chooses to save cheapskates butts and you call them out on as some sort of imperialistic overreach? Give me a break. If it was something so huge, why didn't Nikon's own batteries need to be updated? And it obviously didn't happen to all 3rd party makers either.

So Nikon preemptively tried to curb camera failures due to 3rd party batteries melting down, short circuiting and blowing up in cameras. What is wrong with that? Or are all of you just fine in ruining a $1100-$5000 camera because you wanted to save $20. Or is everyone's memory that short that they don't recall all the issues that have cropped up with batteries from china a little over 2 years ago from all over the electronics market. Devices were melting and shorting out everywhere. Consumers were calling on companies to do something about it - sand Nikon was one of the few who did. Multiple companies were doing this. Batteries have nothing to do with lenses, flashes, or the like.

This is ridiculous - it's like arguing with people that believe the world is flat.

It is not Nikon's fault that 3rd party junk doesn't work. Nikon is not obligated to make sure they do. And it is not Nikon's fault if someone is cheap or can't afford something. It is that simple.

Pistnbroke

Its quite clear nikon could stop any 3rd party product working. This lower level interference with 3rd party products is just a marketing ploy to put doubt in peoples minds particularly about forward compatibility and it worked for me ..No more sigmas.
But the purpose of the thread was not to get people ranting but to find out whats not working right. I can add one ...The bananna chip you glue to some manual lenses..you cannot programme it unless your have a D90 and it dont work any more on D7000 + era cameras.
Re Tao quote below ..I got two from singapore via UK e bay ...both programmed ok until the 4th stage and then locked up ..never seen one pre programmed ..how would it know the aperture and focal length ??

TaoTeJared

I can add one ...The bananna chip you glue to some manual lenses..you cannot programme it unless your have a D90 and it dont work any more on D7000 + era cameras.

You actually don't need a camera to program most of them and they work on all of Nikon's bodies. People use them every day and are still sold at many places. They are really not that complex of a device. There could be some out there that are different though, and it is hard to track them all.

Vipmediastar_JZ

I use third party Nikon lens caps; less than a quarter the price of the genuine ones
no problems at all

I picked one one up and I really like the quality and fit on the 70-200 vs the nikon caps that I own.

DF with Sigma 35 has live view focus issue. After upgrading the lens firmware it can now live fiew focus.