Help, seems my shutter is broken?

So I'm shooting last night and my camera is set to bracket 3 shots. It only took 2. Eventually it took 3, but I couldn't figure out what happened. I didn't change any settings to make it do that. Fast forward to today. Shooting in bright light. The camera shutter seems to take about 1 second to complete its cycle. I set it to 1/20th and all the way up 1/4000th and the shutter doesn't seem to be getting any faster. However, when going lower in speed the pictures do get darker indicating that it is working somehow. Anyone know what's going on? It's totally throwing my shooting off..

If you are auto bracketing with time realease ther will be a delay between each shot. If you are manually holding the release button, it should only take as long as the three shots, remembering the final overexposure will be the longest. In my last outing the cycle took several seconds. as a test you could just put in continuos mode with bracketing off, in a bright setting it should just rip off a group of shots quickly. I would think the delay is the bracketing mode changing the shutter speeds.

No time release used. Also happens when shooting single shots. I should mention that this happen regardless of lens choice. I'm not talking about the shutter delay from shot to shot while braketing, that's completely normal. It's the seemingly long shutter speed even when set to higher speeds that is troubling me. I'll make a video of it happening. Maybe that will give a clearer picture of what I'm on about..

Strange.., could it be in a focus mode which is hunting?

Oddly no, exposure can be completely locked and it will do the same. So perplexing and annoying

Along with the vid, can you post some exif data on some shots? I can't replicate the problem on mine, come on over and I'll take a look at it

Sounds like you have a sticky shutter. If you have, the only cure is a new one.
I seem to remember a member on here having the same problem. He took it in and had it fixed.
They fitted a new shutter assembly. His waranty was up so he had to pay. I cant remember how much,
but I remember it wasnt that expensive and he was very happy with it.
You could try firing off a load of fast frames to try and free it up. Ive known them to get dirt between the blades.
If your lucky, its possable it could dislodge the dirt. It didnt work with the other guy but it maybe worth a try.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ymdYXWdhKY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Here is a short clip I hope you can hear the actuations

Mine will do that if shooting in live view.

Mine absolutely does this in live view. Still don't know why but I know its normal. When shooting normally, this doesn't seem like normal behaviour. It hasn't done this before but I had noticed the shutter kind of blurring more than normal recently.. maybe going on about my lens not having vr was wrong, perhaps it was the body itself that I should have been blaming!

All I can suggest is pulling the battery for a while, Firmware update, reset to default, flip it in and out of LV a few times. From there I'd contact Nikon

Sounds like the mirror is moving as it would in LV

Yea, it seems like its "stuck" in LV mode even when its not. Or something. How do I do a master reset on the camera, I didn't see this anywhere in the manual.

Reset is in the reference manual (disc or online at nikonusa.com) p 58, 152, 157. This effects different modes. Does not appear to be a single master reset. Good Luck!

When I got home after a very frustrating day of shooting, I removed the battery for several hours. I then proceeded to reset the shooting menue and the custom settings menus. I don't know what fixed it but now everything seems to be working fine.

What a freak problem, has anyone ever experienced this? I don't know if this is indicative of shutter failure in the future or not but it kind of scares me. Or perhaps, I've found some kind of software bug where after 10,000 shots the camera goes bonkers and malfunctions.
I know I wasn't being stupid. I know how my camera works. I've been using it for a bit now and I'm pretty confident with it. It was NOT user error. At least, I think not. Even when I looked at my camera in a perplexed fashion, my girlfriend was eyeballing me as if to say, "why are you having problems taking this photograph right now? My feet hurt and I want to move on" HAHA! It definitely ruined my shooting and I can't even say I learned a lesson, or know what or why caused the problem. All I know is at the moment, all seems well. But I'll be keeping a close eye on it...

And, thank you Rick. I usually take my own advice, but this time it required me to take someone else's for a change. Such a simple thing and I don't even know WHY that worked but it did. Hats off to you, cheers!

Thats good news if it was car I would have said it was a bad earth lol

Your Welcome Euro! Hopefully it was some odd setting.

It was apparently. I don't know what, but I'm guessing it was.
I tested it with the awful 70-300 today and my pictures.. Well, they weren't half bad at all! No blur, nice and crisp. I still want to get an 18-200 asap, but for the time being, all is well. I'll just hold off until I go FX and splurge on an FX lens at the end of the summer or early fall..