Nothing but black

What would cause a camera to take nothing but black photos?

Yes a lens is on …
Yes the lens cover is off …
Yes it happens with any lens attached ….

No its not my camera (thank goodness)
Is this what happens when the shutter goes? My mate says it "is taking pictures but they are black". So I guess the mirror is working but the sensor my be past its "best by" date.

I recently got a camera in from my niece that she said was broken and she was just going to throw it away because it was old anyway. Nikon D50. I told her to ship it to me before she just chunked it in the garbage. I had never seen a D50 before so it did take me about 6 minutes before I found and fixed the problem. She had switched the exposure compensation to -5. I reset it and tweaked the settings to get a little better results for her and shipped it back to her.

Thought i had a couple of black images,jake put them through PP and they where just well under exposed,never did find out why though

I took a couple of all black ones last night when the remote flash did not fire. So, the happy answer is the exposure was set to take a black picture.

My first test, after checking all the settings and/or resetting the camera, would be listen for the mirror to move and shutter to fire.

It's an exposure thing most likely. Shooting in Manual or Shutter Priority with unreasonable shutter speed vs. light ratios and a low ISO. Or as was said, Exposure Compensation could be set to a large '-' value. I suspect it's that and not the sensor. If that failed I suspect you'd get noise and not darkness.

Would it be possible to do something like a two-button reset on the camera in question? This sounds like a settings problem to me as well.

....

If the camera supports live view, just switch it to live view and then see if the image is coming on the screen. If it is the mirror and sensor are working. Next (and for this my thanks to another post), go to movie menu and set up manual on. Now switch to M mode and check the screen while you change the settings. If image follows your change of setting, then most probably the shutter is not firing.

Now again check the scene in Live View and then shoot. If it is still dark, it is the shutter, other wise you should get a non-dark shot.

To check if the shutter is stuck, go to menu and select option for sensor cleaning. That should open the sutter. Take the lense off and see if sensor is visible. If it is, then the shutter firing mechanism needs checking. If sensor is not visible, then the shutter is stuck.