D810 goes crazy when MBD-12 battery pack dies

I just got a brand new D810 with the MBD-12 battery pack. I was shooting with it the last three days and it's been great. Today the batteries in the battery pack died. I was using AA batteries because the Nikon battery I ordered hasn't come yet, this is where the fun began. When the batteries in the pack die it suppose to go to the camera battery which I think it did. The camera was still shooting but, all of a sudden I would take a picture and on the back of the camera it said "Image cannot be displayed" I took another on with the same result but the previous image was there for review. The I would get the "ERR" message every so often. the camera stopped and I would hit the shutter release button, the shutter would go off, and then back to normal. Finally the camera would just freeze, so I would turn the button to off but the camera stayed on. I would have to take the battery out to reset the camera. Finally it dawned on me to remove the battery pack, which I did and everything now seems normal.Any ideas of WTF is going on. I'm thinking of returning the camera, I have only had it for five days.
 
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GracieAllen

Senior Member
I VAGUELY recall a discussion sometime last year that spoke of unpredictable performance when the battery grip ran dead... I don't recall the recommendation. A couple thoughts:

Do you have the menu set to use the battery grip power first?
Is it a "genuine" Nikon grip or one of the 3rd party ones?

Unfortunately, I think the "solution" is to pull the battery. Once you do you'll lose the vertical shutter and autofocus I believe. I carry a spare set of Eneloops so I've never run out of juice in a day.
 
I had the battery grip power first.
It's a Nikon MD-12 battery grip I bought from E-bay.
I was using 8 AA batteries in the battery trip.
Do you think it's the battery grip and not the camera?
I just bought it last week and I want to return it if there is something wrong. I think I have fourteen days since the purchase and it's been five days since I got it.
 
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mikew_RIP

Senior Member
I had the battery grip power first.
It's a Nikon MD-12 battery grip I bought from E-bay.
I was using 8 AA batteries in the battery trip.
Do you think it's the battery grip and not the camera?
I just bought it last week and I want to return it if there is something wrong. I think I have fourteen days since the purchase and it's been five days since I got it.

Not long ago there where fake grips for Nikon on ebay,you nearly needed a original in the other hand to tell the difference.
 
It might of been the MBD-12 Battery Pack it might of been the camera. I didn't take any chances and returned both of them to the place I bought them. When I get my refund I'll buy another one and try again.
 

GracieAllen

Senior Member
I'm not sure where you're located, but here in the US if you want to ensure that you're getting "genuine" Nikon stuff thats US and not gray market, your online choices are fairly limited. The number of scumbags out there is astronomically high so online I generally go to B&H or if they're less expensive Adorama. I'm presuming the Nikon battery grip IS a genuine one if it comes in a Nikon box, but as you said, these days it can be hard to tell.

I'm curious - do you typically shoot a LOT of images, to the point where you're likely to have dead batteries in the grip, on a regular basis? If so, are you also exhausting the EN-EL18 during your shooting? 'Cause if so, you may as well pull the dinky EN-EL15 out of the body (which I typically do) and leave it at home, and carry a spare set of batteries. Once my battery grip gets to the point where it's blinking, I take 30 seconds and swap the battery carrier.

That said, I'm not sure I'd figure EITHER the camera or the battery grip were bad. When your new one comes, give it a try, and if you get the same odd behavior, call Nikon directly and talk to technical support. I've found them to be one of the few companies where the support people are still pretty well trained and useful. Certainly compared to some of the other companies I've had to deal with.
 
I posted last night but I guess it didn't go through. I have returned the camera and battery grip and I'm awaiting my refund. When I get it I will buy again this time from B&H.
To answer your question about how much I shot, I took about 150 pictures in three days. The battery grip had eight AA batteries in it since I had not received the EN-EL18 battery yet. I plan on buying a second one as a back-up.
I see your point about pulling the EN-E15 battery out of the camera, this way when the grip battery is near exhaustion you replace it with a fresh battery so there will be no problem. That never occurred to me(Dumb Ass). I can take the EN-EL15 battery and put it in the grip tray that came with it so I will have a back-up.
I've been wondering about the batteries I used, and how fresh they were. I had just bought them two days previous. I went out three times for about a hour and and a half each time I shot and the batteries went totally dead the third time. In fact when I started shooting Sunday the battery indicator on the camera was almost at zero battery strength. I was kind of surprise the batteries had been used up that quick but was not concerned since I had a fully charged battery in the camera. I'm just guessing, but I think somehow the battery grip with dead batteries was somehow screwing up the camera. In my opinion this shouldn't of happen, when the grip is dead,I thought the camera battery was suppose to take over.
In the end it's my fault for not checking on the condition of my batteries before going out on a shoot. But I may have lucked out by finding that I had a faulty camera
I think I did the right thing by sending the camera and grip back instead of trouble shooting it. I just wanted to make sure I didn't have a lemon.
Thanks for you input Gracie


Brian
 
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Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
... I thought the camera battery was suppose to take over.
In my experience that's not how it works; not on my D750 and not on my D7100, either. When the battery has died in any of my Nikon bodies, the camera locks up with (as I recall) an error showing in the top LCD. At this point, I have to remove the dead battery, switch to a good battery, and restart the camera.

My setup is to use the battery in the grip first. When it dies, I pop the tray out of the grip, pocket the battery, lock the tray back in the grip and restart the camera. It's not as convenient as I'd like but it is what it is so I've adapted to it.

From your description it sounds like what was happening was the charge in the batteries in the grip was getting low. As the charge dropped there was too little power in them to do certain things, like display photos on the rear LCD (which is THE biggest draw on your battery/batteries). Dropping the shutter, on the other hand, requires very little battery power.

It's hard to say since I wasn't there but it sure sounds to me like the camera was simply struggling with too little power. You were thinking the second battery would take over when the first battery began to fail but as I pointed out, that's now how it works. You say that once you removed the grip, functioning went back to normal. This pretty much confirms in my mind the problem was with batteries in the grip not having enough power left in them.
 
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Paul, What you say makes total sense. I have not faced these problems before and I was doing to much assuming. I'm sure if I did what you said everything would have been fine. Now I feel like a real Dumb Ass. I have wasted my time sending back a perfectly good camera and battery grip for nothing. I now have to start over because of pure ignorance. Let this be a lesson to everyone to read the manual and don't take what you think you know for granted.

Merry Christams
The Idiot.

P.S. I'm not mad, really.
 

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
Paul, What you say makes total sense. I have not faced these problems before and I was doing to much assuming. I'm sure if I did what you said everything would have been fine. Now I feel like a real Dumb Ass. I have wasted my time sending back a perfectly good camera and battery grip for nothing. I now have to start over because of pure ignorance. Let this be a lesson to everyone to read the manual and don't take what you think you know for granted.

Merry Christams
The Idiot.

P.S. I'm not mad, really.
For what it's worth I don't think you're an idiot and I doubt anyone else does either... I think we can all relate to that sinking feeling you get when something brand new and expensive starts making "funny" noises and the sense of panic it brings with it. You're out a little time and trouble, no big deal.

And happy holidays to you as well.
 

GracieAllen

Senior Member
ABSOLUTELY! I don't recall EVER seeing anything in the D810 manual (and I just did a search through the pdf) that would lead me to believe that if I have batteries in the grip and they get low, that the camera will exhibit undesirable behavior. As I said originally, I VAGUELY remember a discussion in a different forum complaining about the D8xx doing something of that sort, but I suspect it came up because the D8xx goes about 7-800 shots (at least mine does), on an EN-EL18 in the grip... And now that I think about it, I was shooting focus stacks, which use the live view feeding a tablet, so the drain is huge, and when the batteries in the grip got low, mine just locked up. It DID NOT use the battery in the body at all. It got low and the shutter locked. I pulled the EN-EL18 battery carrier out and shoved in one with 8-Eneloops and things were fine.

I've done airshows with the D810, and put 3000 shots through it during a show (usually 3 days), using the review part of the time, which will take me through the EN-EL18 and a set of Eneloops, and into the second. Nikon (if I recall correctly) claims around 2400 shots from an EN-EL15 and 3400? from an EN-EL18, but I've never gotten close to that with either. I've never weight it, but I suspect the Eneloop AAs weigh a couple ounces more than the EN-EL18, but they seem to go at least as long (actually longer), and they're cheaper than Nikon EN-EL18 batteries. And considering I'm shooting handheld with a D810, battery grip, and a Sigma 50-500 OS lens, a combination that weighs just over seven pounds, a couple ounces isn't gonna make ANY difference at the end of the day!

And watch out for the 3rd party EN-EL18s... Some will work fine, some aren't so good.
 
Hi Paul
I got another new Nikon D810 and won''t make the same mistake twice. I took it up to Parker River National Wildlife Refuge this past weekend to try it out. I'm loving life now I have a clue as to what's going on. I'll try and post a couple

Brian
 
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