Some of you have noted I've been quiet about the D800 as of late. That's not because I haven't been continuing to investigate the situation, it's because Nikon is making this all a lot harder on everyone (including themselves) than it has to be. I do have a bit of new information, but before we get to that, let's deal with what appears to be new information out of Photokina, but really isn't.
Falk Lumo reported on his site during Photokina about a talk he had with Nikon Europe customer and technical support people. I'll let you just read what he wrote on his Web site. Do that first, then come back here.
Falk's information isn't really new. Indeed, it's been the Nikon party line for almost two months now. When you do get someone from Nikon to talk about the problem--usually only off the record--you get the answers that Falk reports.
I believe the truth lies slightly elsewhere; my information comes from off-the-record and other sources, at least one deep within Nikon. So let's deal with some of the points being made:
- Problem. Individual autofocus sensors aren't at the actual position stored in internal tables in the camera. In particular, the left side of the focus system may have incorrect positions reported. Thus, when the AF system tries to position a lens based upon that bad information, you get incorrect focus. Call it an alignment issue if you'd like, but it's a bit more subtle than that. In theory, Nikon had a procedure during manufacturing for dealing with individual part variation and positioning. In practice, that procedure didn't work on a large number of D800 cameras, and even a few D4s.
- Fix. There has been a repair procedure in place worldwide since early July. It has been recently updated with a newer repair procedure. That's partly because the reference bodies sent to program the calibration had issues in themselves, I believe. Most cameras coming out of Melville repair early on seemed to get a +10 bias in AF Fine Tune along the way, for example. That should be fixed with a new version of the procedure that was deployed. I'm told the full procedure takes at least an hour a camera. It also doesn't seem to be as difficult to convince Nikon to take a camera back and check/recalibrate it now. They're a little more accepting of "it doesn't focus right" complaints and less demanding of specific test results. So the good news is that if you do get a camera with a problem, it can be fixed. Incovenient, sure, but still gets you where you want to be.
- Extent. Nikon continues to claim that they don't know how many, or which serial numbers were affected. I strongly doubt this claim, partly because of information I've gotten directly out of Nikon personnel who would only talk off the record. I believe that Nikon knows that there was a considerable number of problem cameras. Based upon three different sets of data I would put my confidence level at greater than 10% with problems, but less than 40%. I believe Nikon also knows the serial number cutoff at which the problem should no longer be found.
- Continuation. New cameras out of the factory really shouldn't have the problem. I get this from three different sources within Nikon. However, that didn't stop the number of reports I got in August about a new camera just acquired having the problem. Now, it very well may be that we're in the hypochondriac mode here, that Nikon's silence and the public's fear has everyone testing their new gear in ways they never have before and finding all sorts of things that were probably always there but they didn't notice. I know that to be true in one case, where someone thought they had the D800 left focus problem but my analysis of their images told me that it was more likely their lens had the problem (something we verified with another camera body). Nevertheless I worry about returned cameras just re-entering the market from some providers.
A number of people thought I was nuts reporting this issue. They thought I was hallucinating, or something worse. As you can now infer from Falk's post and others, I actually reported a real problem and pretty accurately, I believe. I wasn't the first to note a problem (I think Ming Thein was), but I was the first to note how widespread it was and give any details about it.
The real issue here is Nikon's customer antagonistic response. Denial, followed by requiring a lot of hoop jumping, followed by quiet. Nikon seems to think that if they just ignore the elephant in the room, there isn't an elephant in the room. Nikon has been lucky that this elephant remained relatively calm and didn't cause collateral damage. Next time the results may be different.
So where does this leave my recommendation? I wish I could say that I could change it back to what it was (Recommended). But until the noise quiets down and I see more information about new shipments being clearly devoid of the problem, I don't think it fair to do so. I am instead going to tentatively remove the Not Recommended rating, but in doing so I'm also trusting some sources within Nikon itself.
If you buy a new D800, look for any evidence the box has been opened and the camera been used in any way (i.e. might be a returned unit). If you don't get the prompt for setting the date and time, for example, there's a chance that the camera has been returned and you need to ask some tough questions of your source.