Shouldn't a 50% full battery be enough to power an LCD?

July 29, 2005 12:31 AM

Nikon D70 owners: My LCD stopped working tonight...

I was doing some night photography and suddenly I wasn't getting feedback on the display. It stopped turning on completely, for playback and menu functions. It stayed in this state for at least an hour. Oddly enough, it happened after I used the 'bulb' setting to take a 1m30s exposure... that's not too weird is it?

The battery meter read 50% but out of curiosity, I pulled the battery, recharged it, and when I powered back on the screen works again. Does this seem normal to you guys? Do I have a problem I should get checked out while this thing is still under warranty?

posted by knave to technology (11 comments total)

You could try the bulb exposure again and see if the behaviour is replicated. The fact that it sorted itself out probably implies that it was a glitch in the firmware, but if it's only going to happen in exceptional circumstances, it's probably nothing to worry about.

I've had my D70 more than a year now and have never experienced anything like what you describe.
posted by sagwalla at 1:22 AM on July 29, 2005

Could you have hit the play button and been displaying a black photo?
posted by TedW at 7:41 AM on July 29, 2005

Was it flashing "Job NR" on the top LCD? While it's flashing this the camera will act like it's dead; none of the buttons will work and the rear LCD won't turn on. Don't worry, though, it's just processing and it can take it a very long time (sometiems several minutes) to finish.

I'd recommend just letting it finish
posted by bshort at 8:42 AM on July 29, 2005

Oh, and the reason I'm asking is that I was taking some long exposure macro shots (~25s) and it sometimes took a very very long time to finish the "Job NR" phase.
posted by bshort at 8:43 AM on July 29, 2005

No, I have long exposure noise reduction turned off. Also I was operating in almost pitch darkness, so the LCD coming on, even to display a black image, is very obvious. Note also that the menu button wasn't working to bring up the menu screen. Nothing I could do would wake it back up, until I recharged the battery. Perhaps it wasn't the recharging but it was the removing/replacing of the battery, which might have rebooted something. I'll try to replicate the problem tonight, as sagwalla suggested.
posted by knave at 10:58 AM on July 29, 2005

I should also mention it would still take photos, all the functions of the camera appeared to work fine, just that the LCD wasn't coming on.
posted by knave at 11:02 AM on July 29, 2005

And the top lcd was working just fine?

Was the shutter release working the way it normally does or was there a delay?

Were you using the remote?
posted by bshort at 11:55 AM on July 29, 2005

Top LCD was working fine.

There was some delay in the eyepiece display, that is, I'd do the half-press to wake it up and the display would come on, but the light meter wouldn't appear for a few seconds. When I then pressed the shutter release, it fired normally.

No, I wasn't using the remote.
posted by knave at 1:46 PM on July 29, 2005

Try updating your firmware to the most recent version then try replicating the problem. If you can replicate it then send it back to Nikon. That sounds like a strange problem indeed and something that they should be able to fix.
posted by bshort at 3:12 PM on July 29, 2005

I also agree with sagwalla, try it again. I've taken some some long exposures (>50 secs) with the Noise Reduction feature active, it can take a while to process. If the problem repeats, or you're not happy with the results, definitely log the problem whilst its under warranty. I have noticed that the battery indicator is not linear, the useful capacity from 50% to no function is nowhere near that from full to 50%. You could also try the www.dpreview.com D70 forums.
posted by fullysic at 3:23 AM on July 30, 2005

FollowupFilter: To anyone reading this, the problem never repeated itself. I blame it on the combination of cold weather and a non-full battery charge, maybe it didn't have enough juice to light up the screen.
posted by knave at 4:48 PM on December 12, 2005