The Day the Music Died
Picture: Sunset light through clouds over Lake MacDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana
Well… not really the Music, but rather the day my D800 died… again.
I’m finally getting a chance to dig into some of the images I shot this summer while on my extended family vacation. Included among those photos was this panorama I shot at Lake MacDonald in Glacier National Park. While my kids were busy throwing rocks into the lake, I was busy taking photos of some clearing storm clouds at sunset. Not more than a dozen frames after shooting this panorama, my Nikon D800 rolled up its eyes and started flashing the dreaded ERR message. That’s the Nikon equivalent of a PC Blue-Screen-of-Death. Never again during the course of that trip would my D800 capture a frame. It was dead, dead, dead.
But I suppose in retrospect, if you were gonna check out, stop working, or for that matter, simply and suddenly drop dead for no apparent reason whatsoever, be you a camera with an ERR, or a mortal human shedding your mortal coils, ya gotta’ admit… if you had to choose a time, place, and scene to go out on, this sure wouldn’t be a bad one. However, unlike most mortals who’ve escaped the earthly bonds, I can report that my D800 has been successfully resurrected (again) by Nikon Professional Services. Unfortunately they were unable to provide any information about what specifically caused the dreaded ERR. I think the technical term was “…just one of those things.”
(Technical Details: 7-vertical frames, stitched together using PShop CS6; file 24″x60″ at 300 dpi)
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Image ID#: 130718a_MT-0382
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September 23rd, 2013 at 12:35 pm
That sucks Gary. Hopefully you had a backup camera on you!
September 24th, 2013 at 8:09 am
My 800E died in the middle of the first inning of my first pro baseball game. Gotta hand it to the Nikon service people for getting it back to me in a week, though. Had something to do with the aperture bayonet they said. Glad to hear you got it resolved.
September 25th, 2013 at 9:04 am
Agreed, Gary…camera or no camera, your vacation sounds like a pretty good one. We don’t always *need* the camera for a successful vacation!
September 25th, 2013 at 12:29 pm
drat. electronics and software can just fail. some time ago there was an error code on the Macintosh — it’s entry in the lookup table was “sunspots” — meaning the developers had no idea.
😛