The D90 has gone back to the nest to get repaired….

I tried taking a photo with my D90 and 35 1.8 on Sunday. I put the lens on, and everything was normal. Then I took a photo, and I could barley see through the view finder once the mirror popped back down. I thought it was weird, so I looked at the front of the lens, and the lens was stuck at f22. The aperture blades were jammed. Put on my 80-200 2.8, took a photo, and no problem, so I figured it must be the lens. I tried the 35 again. It was fine when I put the lens on, then after a frame, it jammed. Ugh.

I took the lens and camera to Henry’s and they checked out it. There was definitely a problem. Put the 35 on another D90, and it was working fine. Then I put a 10-24 3.5-4.5 on the camera, no problem. Weird. Then I tried a constant aperture Nikon wide angle, and it jammed the aperture again. It’s the camera. Ugh.

I took the lens and camera to Nikon Canada’s head office. Luckily its 5 minutes away from me. The nice Nikon Tech girl there took it to the back room and after a few minutes came back. The lens was fine, it was the camera. The aperture control tab that sits inside the flange and interacts with the aperture control tab on the lens was broken. Thats annoying. Luckily the camera was under warranty (2 years on cameras) and the camera is less then a year old.

Part of me is kind of hoping its unrepairable (I doubt it) so I can to weasel my way into convincing Nikon to letting me upgrade to a D300 and just pay the difference. We shall see. I’ll keep you posted.

Something just hit me. I know why it worked fine with my 80-200 2.8. It’s a G lens. It’s got an aperture dial on the lens which allows you to set what aperture your using. When you use it on all -10/15 year old camera bodies, you have to set it to the max aperture so the camera can meter properly.