I am having trouble with my nikon d80

[lolli]

Hi I am having trouble with my nikon d80 with the shutter sticking any ideas what mmay be wrong? Also I have trouble with memory cards not being usable only once or twice any ideas what I am doing wrong thanks Pat

[MBChamberlain]

There are several things that could be causing the shutter to stick. The most likely reasons are that either you've gotten too much dust inside the chassis and the lubricant has gotten gummy or you've cleaned it too severely and it's dried out. Take it to an authorized Nikon dealer (not Best Buy or Wolf, a non-chain camera store) and they should be able to take a look at it and give you some idea of what's going wrong. My local store will usually fix minor stuff for free.

Concerning the cards, there are a couple things that will render a card unusable. First, and most important, if your camera's battery dies when it's connected to the computer, it can mess up the card. I recommend getting a good fast card reader for your computer and only plug your camera into the computer if you're using Control Pro to shoot (and even then, you should probably get an AC adapter). The other thing is how do you empty your cards? Do you delete the pictures manually, or do you actually format the card. If you format it, how do you do it? I've heard of people formating the cards on their computer and accidently applying the wrong file system. They need to be formated in FAT32.

Hope you get it working again.

Cheers,
Michael

[weshoot]

Hi Pat -

The best bet for formatting your cards is to use the camera to format them. Don't do it in a card reader attached to a computer. Another piece of advice - don't use the switch on the card to protect the data. I have owned 2 D80s since they first came out, and the only card failure I had was when I once used the switch to lock the data. It is a moving part. Also, maybe your firmware in the camera is corrupted. Go to the Nikon USA website, and download the newest firmware, and also reset the camera to the default settings, before taking it in for service. It may fix your prpoblems.

Gary Silverstein
We Shoot