Welcome aboard paulspring, enjoy the ride. We look forward to seeing more posts and samples of your work.
Thanks, but I already saw this. It seems to only really apply to the D70 and/or D90, as the D5300 doesn't have this spring-loaded "lightbulb" slot on the power switch. I did contact Nikon technical support and the person at the other end seemed to know less about the camera than me, and after 5 minutes of giving me useless advice said that he'd have to talk to his colleagues, it would take more time, and that he'd have to email me. Needless to say the email hasn't been forthcoming. I'm pretty annoyed, really, as it wasn't long ago that I sent the whole camera in to Nikon for repair for a few hundred quid.
Not sure if this is relevant to this make/model, but on Canon body, I was able to reset things by doing the following: 1. Switch off, 2. remove battery and card 3. switch on 4. Hold down the shutter for at least 15 seconds 5. switch off 6. re-instal battery and card 7. switch on and keep your fingers crossed.
It worked for me and cleared unusual issues I was having with it.
This was apparently a suggestion from a technician in one of their factories and was not widely known in the public domain. It makes you wonder if this is what they do when people send their cameras in for a repair costing a fortune
Thanks, but tried that also. No dice. The light just comes straight back on again as soon as I insert the battery.
Peter posted this a while back. It seems to be more of an electrical reset rather than the type of reset Nikon offers to reset the camera's shooting menu back to default. I used this myself when the shutter button on my first D7200 stopped autofocusing (it got wet during a snowstorm). This resolved my problem although there's no way to know ahead of time if it will help you.