Help Dad help a friend with a D7100

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eleitz

New member
Hello, I'm trying to help a friend of my daughters who sent me the following message: Hello, I'm having a problem with my Nikon D7100. I've had issues with back/front focusing since day one, I had wondered if it was a bit of a lemon, but it had been manageable. I chalked it up mainly to operator error since I largely shoot in difficult conditions; low light, handheld telephoto, slow shutter. Did not have nearly as much trouble with the D90 I had before. But regardless the issues have gotten a lot worse, under all shooting conditions. The AF almost never focuses center frame, regardless of subject; it consistently focuses to extreme right edge (where there isn't even an AF point) unless I manually reselect focus point or focus/recompose. I'm also now getting shots, in sequence with ones that are fine, which are completely out of focus (not blurry) and the shutter should never have fired. And now the last three shooting sessions I've had with it it's been locking up completely with a variety of "full buffer" related errors when the buffer isn't full. Camera won't fire again until I pull the battery, do a reset.

I've eliminated some variables trying to figure it out - focus lock lever isn't engaged, I've taken lenses on and off and checked the contacts, did a reset, tried with and without Nikon brand batteries, more than one SD card. At this point I'm fairly confident the issue is with the AF, most likely from the software side since when it fails I'm not getting any grinding etc that I'd associate with the motor. It's with both Sigma and Nikon brand lenses, as well, including a few rentals; so I'm pretty sure it's the body.

I'm not sure if this is a problem you can help with - but, I would certainly accept advice on how I should deal with it. It's an older model now, only worth about $470 to resell (if it was fully functional). Nikon quoted $300 as a base price for repairs; I don't have a local shop of any kind to take it to. I'm probably ready for an upgrade soon, if I can manage to afford it. So I'm not sure if I'd be just throwing good money after bad to try to repair it. If anyone can help this young lady & at the same time make old Dad look good we would be grateful.
 
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480sparky

Senior Member
My guess is the AF settings have been changed from the factory defaults to something you're not familiar with. Try doing a two-button reset.
 
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RocketCowboy

Senior Member
First, howdy and welcome to Nikonites. It might also be good if the young lady with the D7100 were also a member here, to help with the discussion back and forth on this.

From what you've described, it's hard to quickly diagnose without some sample images of the problem that could be looked at. There could potentially be multiple problems either conspiring together, or at least contributing to the confusion.

The buffer being full shouldn't have anything to do with the AF system. The buffer being full sounds related to the extra exposures that she's seeing, when she doesn't recall firing the shutter. It's possible that the drive mode for switched from "S" (single) to "Ch" (continuous high) accidentally, which has happened to me on occasion.

The AF issues sound like she's set for single point focus, and possible the focus point has been moved to the lower right accidentally. That happens as well. Again, it's hard to say without seeing where the camera thought it was focusing. A reset should be resetting the AF mode (but would not change the drive mode from Ch back to S, that's a manual switch). It could well be a problem with the body, but without a little more info I'm just shooting in the dark at possibilities.
 
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