My heart sank last week in Kamal-tal.
I was taken a few family pics next to this lovely lotus pond in Naukuchiayal, Uttrakhand, when my Nikon-D90 suddenly stopped working. A strange growl inside the camera and then silence. I tried removing the 18-105mm lens, battery, memory card, rebooting time and again on different settings...but nothing would work. On the panel was an adamant "Err" message that just refused to go away.
Back in the hotel, I looked up this problem on the net. There were numerous videos that explained how this error message would turn up even in the more advanced Nikon cameras. The mirror had jammed. It had got stuck at a midway point on a slant, blocking the aperture. Some of these self-help videos has a fix where a screwdriver's nudge would make everything click back in shape. There were also numerous shorts which simply showed the problem without offering any solutions other than 'if this happens, go to the service centre'.
Over the past 15 years a lot of memories had been captured in this sturdy, beautiful camera. I had purchased it from Akihabara, Tokyo, in 2009 along with with a pair of binoculars ahead of my trek to the top of Mt. Fuji. Initially it had been a pain - especially on hiking trails - lugging around 1.5 kg of equipment (body 703g + 18-105mm lens 420g + bag). However the quality of photos made it completely worthwhile. So it stayed with me through innumerable family functions, treks, portraitures (Nikkor 50mm 1:1.8D), school functions and social events.
So back in Noida, I looked up the nearest Nikon service centre and handed my D90 in. A few days back the service engineer called back to say that the problem had been solved - there had been an issue with the gears connected to the actuation motors. The repair cost me over Rs. 4000.
Is it time to let go?
The last time I had a similar problem was in Japan, with my Canon G9. It was a sturdy-looking pocket-sized, flip-screen camera which had died on me within a year a purchase. Luckily it has still within the warranty period and I had taken it to the service centre and got it repaired for free. To be on the safe side, I had sold it at Wonderex-Tsukuba and got a fairly decent price for it.
There is no Wonderex in India and I don't have much hope of getting a good price for the old D90 body. So the question now is - what should be my next digicam?
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REFERENCES
Nikon D90 mirror stuck - https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/74780/nikon-d90-mirror-stuck
Err - https://nikonites.com/forum/threads/error-shutter-release-button-mirror-stuck.13236/
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