Strange D300s exposure pattern

I've had flawless use with my D300s until I began to notice what I initially felt was a seemingly random series of over and underexposed pictures with most of the images on both my CF and SD cards (I use JPEG and RAW with my CF as my overflow card and I used P mode for most of these pictures). Usually, when I review my images, I usually have the playback in single pic mode so I wasn't aware of any pattern. It was only when I zoomed out to the 72 pic mode that I noticed the patterns that are included below. (The first pic is my CF card and the second one is the SD card). There is a perfect vertical columnar delineation separating the over and under exposed pictures and the "degree" of abnormal exposure appears to occur in a repetitious gradient. Furthermore, the problem exists on both the CF and the SD cards. Although only 8 horizontal rows are depicted below, the dividing vertical column is usually pretty constant for 80 or 90 rows, but if I keep scrolling up or down on either card, the pattern might shift left or right, for example, so that maybe only the 2 or 3 farthest right columns are overexposed, or maybe the three on the left overexposed. At times, it even goes away. It's occurred on a number of different cards. Maybe it's coincidental, but the problem has only occurred with outdoor daytime photos.


The problem has been intermittent and seemed to have cleared somewhat since I've reset the camera, but I've thought this before and only had it recur so I'm not too optimistic. Due to the fact that it has been an intermittent, but persistent, problem, I'm nervous about using this for some upcoming overseas travels.

Has anybody come across this or heard of it happening before?

Problem solved! Somehow or other, I must have had the camera unintentionally set for 9 series bracketing. The exposure pattern for the individual pic info showed me the problem as the camera had already been reset before I could verify this. Thanks to Chris in Yorkshire for his help.

I must admit that,that would have been not easy for us to figure out with that symptom.


Sent from my iPhone.

The perplexing part was that the bracketing was set for 9 shots, and as there are 9 columns in the 72 pic display, it looked like the problem had to do with shaded or overexposed vertical "bars", so I was sure it was a computer or hardware problem. If the bracketing was set up for anything other than "9", the display would have looked more like a bracketing problem. I think I overthought this whole thing. I'll never do it again