My D3100 is back to Nikon

I have had my D3100 for several months and have thought most of the time that the pictures were soft. It showed up mostly in close ups. Someone here said it was probably just my monitor, so that gave me a good excuse to go out and buy a new 22inch LED monitor with 50,000,000 to 1 contrast. Still soft. It starts to show up when you go to 100% and is really bad at 200%. The real proof came when I bought my wife the CoolPix 120 (great little camera by the way) We had gone to the mountains and shot many of the same pictures. I brought up one of hers and one of mine that were very close to the same shot. Hers blew mine away. It was so much sharper.
Doing much research, I see that Nikon has had problems with this camera before and had to replace some of them. Best Buy is sending it off to Nikon now. We will see what they do about this problem. Wish me luck.

Yes, good luck. Let us know if they repaired it, or gave you a new one. I personally hope you get a new one.

I had a similar problem at first, but found I was the problem (I was getting too close for the lenses I was using, so they could not focus properly).

This is not the problem here. I have 30 years of photography experience and it also happens at all distances.

tracsoft said:

This is not the problem here. I have 30 years of photography experience and it also happens at all distances.

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Keep us posted with thier response, hope they get it back to you soon. All of my years were without auto-focus lenses, even with many years of experience, you can still be a newbie!

While I am impatiently waiting for my D3100 to return from it's trip back to mother I thought I would post one of my wife's pictures she shot with her new Nikon Coolpix L120.

Very impressive looking shot from the little Coolpix!


Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

I have been very impressed with it and my wife loves it.

That is an awesome shot from a P&S camera! Crisp and clear. wow!

It was 10 times sharper than my D3100. That is why I sent it back...
A couple of the things that made me get it for my wife.
4.5-94.5mm (angle of view equivalent to that of 25-525mm lens in 35mm
digital zoom = Up to 4x (angle of view equivalent to that of approx. 2100mm lens in 35mm (I told her to stay away form this.
Macro close-up mode: Approx. 0.4 in. (1 cm.) to infinity(Middle zoom position) This is what she used for the flower shot.
All this in a 14.1 Megapixel camera for under $300.

This would make a pretty nice backup camera for almost anyone.

Though I also love my L110 for macro and the S8100 is a great P&S as well, we shouldn't let this get off topic.

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I have seen several complaints about the D3100. Send it back. I posted elsewhere about shooting at 20 to 30 feet so DOF is not a question. Shoot at mid zoom and mid aperture and a fast enough shutter speed so that cannot be questioned either. Do the same with a different camera also the exact same way. Compare the shots at 100% and at 200% on your computer and see what the difference is. That is what I did and my wife's Coolpix L120 put my D3100 to shame. My camera should be back tomorrow and I saw where it was only in the repair facility for about an hour so I hope they just replaced it. Will post tomorrow hopefully with pics.

Hey

That's a very nice picture from a point and shoot camera. (I'm thinking if I could take that kind of picture with my D3100), and good luck with the repair. I do find the monitor (not that this is your problem, as you stated it's not) doesn't really demonstrate how sharp the picture actually is. I've taken pictures with D3100 and D3000, and on the camera monitor, D3000 shows the picture much better looking than D3100. But when I load it on a computer, both image quality is similar.

Maybe my eye just... have issues?

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Not a happy camper today. D3100 came back with no real explanation of what they had done other than replace part and send back. It is as bad as it was when I sent it out. Not sure what to do now. I do have other things to shoot with. Might try using one of them to help get my D3100 fixed.
AR15, Sig 522, Walther P22, Walther P38, KalTec and a few others. LOL

Dam, was hoping to read a happy ending. Sounds like you need to work your way up the food chain at Nikon.

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Got my D3100 back from service yesterday but was to late and raining to really test it (Also my wife and I were celebrating our 36th anniversary)
Went out this afternoon and place test patterns for the D3100 and the L120 on a brick wall. In open shade but very bright light. DOF not an issue on a flat wall. Shot a wide shot framed the same and at the same distance from both cameras. Took the pictures with no PP and put them into PhotoShop on the same page one on top of the other full frame and printed the page. Zoomed and cropped at 100% and did the same thing and then again at 200%. Not only did they not fix the focus problem they has screwed up the color balance. (Yes I did check all the setting before I shot)
I took the camera and the three prints back to BestBuy where I bought the camera in March and where they had sent it off for service. They took one look at the photos and went to the computer and checked their inventory and went and pulled out a new D3100 and gave it to me. Here are the old D3100 and new D3100 shots.


This is zoomed in via PhotoShop about 300%

Yup...looks better to me, too. The other camera definitely had a problem, it seems. Good deal...at least they didn't argue, and gave you a new camera. Sweet.