Nikon D800 left AF issue as May 2013: good news?
The pictures of this post have been sent to Nikon service. They reply me to send my D800 back for service: it would last max 5 working days. I already went through one service. I read online horror stories about 3 or more consecutive services ending tragically, with not a single AF bank at last calibrated.
 
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As I could find a compromise with my D800 and the lenses I own, I do not want to risk. Unless you know of novel (after April 2013) Nikon guidelines for technical services on this D800 AF issue. Any news?
Click on each picture to magnify
Legend
L: left AF; M: middle AF; R: right AF; Lv: Live View; nAF: fine AF tuning value
red star: chosen setup
green point: as good as live view
orange point: acceptable but worse than live view
All picture open at maximum aperture, where the issue is mostly visible.
Pictures shot in different lights but also with  (16-35mm) / without (50mm, 70-200mm) the last D800 firmware update (A 1.01, B 1.02): some yellow tint removed from jpeg format?
Thank you for keeping us updated with the Nikon D800 left AF issue.
It’s not easy to find detailed information on this issue on the web.
And you provide photos that prove that the issue does exist.
I hope that they can really fix this HUGE problem with your camera.
I’d like to read an official statement from Nikon about this D800 issue that states that they solved this problem on ALL new cameras.
If this doesn’t happen I won’t buy this camera.
By the way, when you use the 70-200 mm zoom at 200mm with VR off, I suggest you to use an exposure time shorter than 1/200 s.
VR-II off on the 70-200 mm is still considered as bad as boycotting. If it happens, it is by very special shooting requirements 😀
Hi i got my Nikon d800 Jan 2013 but didn’t realize it had left AF and overall AF issues(with all of my gear – 24-70 14-24 was minus 20 and 50 1.8 ) and i just got it back from Nikon repair service here in Macedonia and the problem was wrong software input numbers for each focus point they now set it to the proper default numbers and its working great and they told me in 99,9 % of faulty d800 AF cases the issue is wrong factory numbers for each AF point , hope this helps .
Thanks for sharing. For what I read and based on my experience sometimes the Nikon service can solve the problem, sometimes not, sometimes the camera comes back even worse. I tried the service once, I will try it again when I have no pictures to shoot 😉