D600 Dust/Oil/Lubricant Issue discussion/Discontinuation and price reductions

donaldejose

Sure would be: but tell me, how are we to know if we cannot see any difference? The "perfect crime" you know is the one that is never even detected to have occurred. What if they did this work free under warranty and said they cleaned/replaced the shutter when all they really did was a free cleaning. How can they defraud you of money you paid for something you didn't get when, in fact, you paid no money at all? Basically, they wouldn't be caught and if they were it wouldn't be worth anyone's effort to sue them or the authorities time to pursue it. Not that I want to give Nikon any more ideas of how to mistreat customers more than they already do!

PB_PM

You do realize that part of the purchase price of any product is warranty support, so it is still fraud.

spraynpray

I think our paranoia is getting out of hand. I am sure the shutter fitted to the D610 has addressed the issues of the D600 shutter by redesign - end of problem. I am also sure that if Nikon say they changed the shutter during a repair that they have indeed changed the shutter.

Sure Nikon made a mistake in releasing a camera to market that had a problem - nobody is perfect.
They really screwed up though by handling the repair of the problem as an interim new model launch - just like Canon did recently (perhaps that is where they got the idea from). Customers opinions of such a screw up has to be communicated to Nikon to hopefully dissuade them from doing it again - I'm sure they know by now what a mistake such action was, whether they do it again remains to be seen, but hopefully they will not.

I do not - and in the absence of absolute proof will never - believe that Nikon or any of its repair centres act in any way fraudulently and I take offence at any assertion to that effect - it is unfounded and unfair.

BogdanR

I am at my fifth servicing with my D600 and at this point I am not willing to pick it up from Nikon Service unless I am 100% sure that I don't get new spots after 50-100 shots. I see a lot of posts saying that a shutter replace will surely resolve this, well I had it replaced during the first servicing and I am not at the 5th one and it still gets the spots. So, a question for those strong Nikon defenders, what am I supposed to do except going for a lawyer (which is what I am doing right now). How is this a compliant product? I know, I could clean it up myself but since wet cleaning may void warranty I am not willing to do so and definitely I am not willing to clean it up every 100 frames or so. Why would you defend a company that is selling well known defective products under the claim that they are tested and compliant ? Buyers are the only ones responsible for Nikon attitude, clients are always responsible for the way a company handles customer services.

spraynpray

Sorry to hear you are at the end of your tether with your D600 BogdanR. I am sure Nikon will settle your claim before you have to go to court, please let us know how things proceed. Have you asked them to replace it with a D610?

I agree that it is important we make our disgust at being handled without respect known to at least have a chance to change things in the future.

Msmoto

Yes, Nikon may have demonstrated what I see as poor judgement in the overall handling of the shutter issue, but if the repair order states "replacement" this was most likely completed.

I would guess Nikon also was doing this on several bodies, then monitoring the customer interaction to see if the issue was resolved. Once they found a shutter design which solved the problem, they began the D610 production with the new shutter mechanism.

sevencrossing

. So, a question for those strong Nikon defenders, what am I supposed to do except going for a lawyer (which is what I am doing right now). .

In the UK I would not bother with a lawyer, I would just take the retailer to the small claims court

I appreciate, consumer law may be different were you live

THRaleigh

I have been follow this discussion for a while and would like to make some comments.

I am a long time Nikon user since the 70's. I am aware of the D600 oil/dust issue before I ordered one from B&H in August. B&H people told me that Nikon tech people replaced the shutter mechanism on all of their D600 inventory. I probably will not bought the D600 if I had read this discussion. During that time I ordered a D800 first and then thought D800 is too much a camera for me so I canceled the D800 order and replaced with a D600 instead.

After following this discussion I became so obsessed with this oil/dust issue, I spend more time checking my sensor than taking pictures. Even I just saw one or two spots on the sensor, I immediately cleaned the sensor. The shutter count is a little over 2000 when I read Thom Hogan's suggestion to get at least to over 5000 counts. Last week I set my D600 under time exposure for additional 4000 shots. The sensor is not clean but only had about 8 spots on the upper left corner and two more spots in the middle of the sensor. I think I do not have excess oil/dust issue on my D600. Needless to say, I cleaned the sensor again.

I am not happy with Nikon's unwilling to tell their customers the true issues and my D600 just lost about $300 value due to the new D610 coming out.

I believe the majority of the D600 ordered in the last few months is OK. I also understand why customers got the D600 with dirty sensor were so furious and angry with Nikon, even if the rest of the D600 have no issues. Nikon should really improve their customer services. I think MSMOTO is probably right, Nikon is using their customers as guinea pigs to test different shutters.

sevencrossing

THRaleigh I canceled the D800

if it make you any happier my d800 also has a few dust spots it also has dropped in value, and will drop again if a D810 /D900 comes out
Am I bothered ?
Not in the least, it still the best camera I have ever owned

THRaleigh

SEVENCROSSING:

Don't get me wrong. I love my D600 and it is the best Nikon I have ever owned. The IQ is much better than my D90 or even my 40 year old Nikon F. I was tired of waiting for the D300s replacement. I surely can manage 10 spots (or even 20 spots) for every 4000 shots.

PB_PM

I'm not sure why people are saying Nikon has said nothing about this dust/oil issue, they did issue a service advisery earlier this year. While they did not outright say the part was defective, they said what they needed to say, bring the camera in if you are having a problem.

Now where the problem may be is that there could still be defective shutters floating around in the repair channels.

Msmoto

New member from another thread, MoreLight:

Hello. This is my first post. I've been going to Nikon Rumors for information for a while now. I tried to clean my sensor today and had fairly good results, thought I'd share my results so people can avoid what I do or modify/improve it.

Disclaimer: Below is what I did with my camera. If you chose to do it, you do it of your own free will knowing full well that your camera might cease to function completely or you may die from it etc. To keep this disclaimer short I'll just say - Do NOT do what I did below. I explicitly forbid you do so

Info:
Camera: D600.
Total number of shots taken (since I got camera including these pictures): 3594
Iso: 100
Aperture: F22
Speed: As required to produce correct exposure (2-10seconds)
Background: Various parts of a white wall, slightly textured lit by a very warm light source.

Easiest to just look at the pictures. Naming convention is Date_Order_Description_Location eg. 131016_1_Uncleaned_Loc1. Pictures are in my skydrive and it likes to order them based on time of upload completion. Easiest is to change "Sort by" to "Name", that way, you can just click on the first picture and use the screen arrows to navigate. If you don't and you end up viewing the pictures in a random order, then you won't see any progression. http://sdrv.ms/1apGtLl

1. First picture, no cleaning done at all, location. 131016_1_Uncleaned_Loc1
2. Second picture, no cleaning done at all, second location. 131016_2_Uncleaned_Loc-2
3. Locked mirror up and used a hand puffer repeatedly with camera facing down. 131016_3_Puffer_Loc-1
4. Mirror up, used a dry q-tip to *gently* sweep across the sensor. Wasn't really sure of orientation, thought the top left corner of the image (where most of the spots appear to be) should be in the lower right corner when looking at the sensor. Strokes ended in the middle, not all the way to the other end. 131016_4_Qtip1_Loc-1
5. Mirror up, used another q-tip to sweep completely across from right to left and then after entire sensor covered, did a sweep from bottom left to top left to put everything that can't be cleaned towards a corner. 131016_5_Qtip2_Loc-1
6 - 8. Mirror up, used a third q-tip to repeat the procedure. There are 3 pictures because there are imperfections in my wall and with the 3 pictures, you can see where any remaining spots are. 131016_6_Qtip3_Loc-1, 131016_7_Qtip3_Loc-2, 131016_8_Qtip3_Loc-3

Based on the sensor images, I would say the cleaning worked fairly well. The Q-tip I'm pretty sure is not recommended anywhere, however, it appears to work. It is annoying to try and sweep over the sensor systematically with the rounded tip, being gentle while trying to keep the tip on steadily. After the first two pictures, I could see that there were clearly spots on my image. I tried to illuminate the sensor and tilt it at all angles to see the actual spots but could not see any. I also looked at the q-tips after I had cleaned the sensor and could not see any specks of any color on the tip. Even though from the images, the q-tips were clearly doing something to the spots. Images are jpg conversions from RAW with automatic levels and white balance set to middle of the image. Pictures are uploaded at full res so you can download and zoom as desired

glenwells

MsMoto
Thank you for taking the time to test and report.
Was you camera set to clean when switched on and off?
Seems the method is pretty ineffective if that is the case.
Had a few dust spots on mine when it arrived but built in sensor clean removed zip all!
Three puffs of the Giotto and all gone.

MoreLight

@MsMoto - Thanks for moving it to the right section.

@glenwells: I'm the one who posted the sensor cleaning, MsMoto helped me move it to the right thread.

Regarding your question - No, I don't think my camera was set to self-clean every single time on On/Off. I did try to do that before I went for the more demanding techniques (puffer, q-tip etc.). Even the puffer I found to be not too effective as shown in Pic 2 vs Pic 3 - I looked, I think there is only one spot removed by the puffer.

tsnow1959

Everything is True about the splatter issue, don't let anyone fool you. I've had my D600 for over a year now and have cleaned the sensor several times and still have the splatter. Many hours in photoshop taking out spots. Simpley ridiculous that nothing is still addressed about this.

HipShot

Question about cleaning the D600 sensor: Is the AC adapter recommended, or is one safe enough with a well-charged battery? Haven't had to clean mine yet, but want to be ready.

jimo

A fully charged battery will do just fine. At bear minimum you have to have at least a 60% charge left on the battery.

HipShot

Thanks, jimo.

donaldejose

Just cleaned my D600 once again before a wedding and I found 4 gray oil spots. After I gave it a good blowing out (which didn't remove the oil spots) two black dust spots appeared1 After I cleaned it with lens tissue one fabric thread appeared! I think there is dust in the body which will continue to appear as air moves it around. None of the spots appeared in photos taken at f5.6 or f8 so they really didn't need to be spotted out in post processing but once you start looking closely and find things on your sensor you just want to remove them! Finally, after about 6 wet cleanings all oil (it is difficult to remove those gray oil spots), dust and lens tissue strands were gone. I am now at 9,631 exposures on my D600.

amhalpern

I am starting to keep track of all my hours spent cleaning and retouching my images and will be starting a class action suit against Nikon and also sending in a complaint to the NYS and federal attorney generals offices. I am tired of either sending my camera back or having to wet clean it every week so that the camera becomes usable. I can prove loss of wages and profit due to the defective nature of the D600. Anyone interested in pursuing this matter please message me privately with your email address so we can discuss the possibilities. I personally have sent my camera back 3 times and read about many others that have sent it back 5 times all for the oil spot issue. Nikon refuses to offer any kind of deal to those of us that want to upgrade or replace our defective D600's with a new D610 which was released to resolve the issues with the D600. Of course they will never admit this but those of us that have this problem know better. I am tired of letting the big guys get away with screwing us. I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more. So everyone please start keeping track of your time spend dealing with this issue and how much money you fell you are losing due to the problems.

MikeGunter

I would think there will have to be a $300 plus price difference before people will buy a new D600:

I would think it would have to be free. :-)

My best,

Mike

MikeGunter

I would think there will have to be a $300 plus price difference before people will buy a new D600:

I would think it would have to be free. :-)

No, not even then.

My point is that the D600 is a toxic POS. Not worth anything. Nada.

The D610 - yes - it seems, finally.

After all the bitching, Nikon got off the can, and as Msmoto said, NR can take credit for some of that.

My best,

Mike

PB_PM

@MikeGunter Totally agree. Then again If Nikon gave me one for free and offered same day, on site sensor cleaning, I might accept it.

[Deleted User]

About prices.

The prices in The Netherlands does not get much lower for the D600. A reason for that I think, we are always at the end of the line and the big shops watch there stock. At the moment I can buy the D600 everywhere.

I always bought my camera's when prices were stabilized (no factory prices), so here are prices I payed and watched through time, everything is in euro's.

Nikon D70 (mid 2004) was 1120.- 10 month later 1070.- after 4 years 250.-
Nikon D300 (jan 2009) was 1190.- 10 months later 1060.- after 4 years 350.-
Nikon D600 (jan 2013) was 1590.- 10 months later (today) 1460.- after 4 years ..? (350.- I think).

The price for the D610 is 1900.- at the moment. My D600 is stable now and for me a great FF camera, I keep my D300 as reserve, so will the D600 after 4 years, when I have 2000.- ready for the next body.

I don't think we get an enormous price drop for the D600 within a couple of months in The Netherlands, only when the D610 becomes 1500.- of course and that will happen, but not before the D600 stock is gone.

I never understood that pro photographers buy a D600, because the problem was well known, Lensrentals showed it instantaneous. I bought it after Nikon published the statement about the D600 and because the price difference with the D800 is 700.- and still is.

MikeGunter

Hi all,

@PB_PM And I don't want to sound mean. I think NR really can take some credit for pushing Nikon to do some good,

But my real point is that any camera with a systemic problem is a camera with a systemic problem. Who would ask for that at any price?

I do theatrical work, and I'm sure their property department would like a camera for some play dressing, but I don't think that was the point.

I plan to get the D610 (assuming it passes shake down. :-)

My best,

Mike