D3 battery

Lensflare

Lensflare

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Simon Everett
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Just a word of warning to D3 owners. The battery monitor in the menu said the battery needed calibrating, so I hit the calibrate button on the charger when I went to charge it........it has cooked it. It will now neither charge nor calibrate. It had been charging perfectly well up until I did this. I have never had a problem with the Nikon batteries before,so am surprised. Anyway, I now need a new battery, any ideas other than Fixation, because there are probably plenty of other suppliers now.

Off to have a look at 7 day shop, but other suggestions welcome. (NOT ebay)
 
I know you said not ebay, but I bought a 3rd party on ebay over a year ago now, still going strong.
 
Thanks Barney, but I won't use ebay out of principle. If that costs me money, so be it, it is only money and principles are more valuable!

I think I will just stump up for a proper Nikon one - they are chipped to communicate voltage with the camera, the 3rd party ones are not and so do not run the battery condition meter in the camera properly. Knowing how much I have left in the tank is a useful feature for me - I just won't recalibrate the battery next time it says to and just charge the thing. This is the original battery, and to be fair, it has done a lot of work. I don't how long the D3 has been out, but I got mine within a couple of months of launch. The battery has only been calibrated the once from new, so not done bad.
 
Lensflare said:
Thanks Barney, but I won't use ebay out of principle. If that costs me money, so be it, it is only money and principles are more valuable!

I think I will just stump up for a proper Nikon one - they are chipped to communicate voltage with the camera, the 3rd party ones are not and so do not run the battery condition meter in the camera properly. Knowing how much I have left in the tank is a useful feature for me - I just won't recalibrate the battery next time it says to and just charge the thing. This is the original battery, and to be fair, it has done a lot of work. I don't how long the D3 has been out, but I got mine within a couple of months of launch. The battery has only been calibrated the once from new, so not done bad.
Click to expand...

I think I'd be on the phone to Nikon getting a replacment if the chargers killed a battery.
 
I'm using a Phottix EN-EL4 in my D300 and it work a treat, the only problem is they come from......Ebay :naughty:
 
Got to be off to the Bulldog Bash - supposed to be there for 10. It will be nearer 12 now. I'll get what's needed though, got 2 more days of mud, mayhem and loud music! Motorhead this year.
 
Just an update.

Just used the one and had to live with it. Came back, sorted everything out, and after charging everything else up, just for the sake of trying again, stuck the "duff" battery on charge WITHOUT pressing the calibration button.

The charger came on at 50% and started charging, so I left it to see what would happen. It finished charging, I stuck it in the camera and went to the battery status check section of the menu, all fine and dandy. The life is 1/4 way through (it is 2 and a bit years old) and it charged to within 99% - can't argue with that.

You may also like to know that Nikon said to send both charger and battery back to base and for them to be looked at, they have a 2 year warranty anyway, but it is out of that I am fairly sure, need to find the invoice to confirm. They hadn't heard of the problem arising, so I think I just confused the thing. So, maybe it isn't worth throwing those defunct Li-ion batteries away, they may just charge.

It was also worth noting that the techy folks at Nikon said it was better for the battery to be discharged as fully as possible before re-charging. Just like Ni-Cads, they gain a memory if re-charged from onlypartial status too often. Now that is the exact opposite of what i had been led to believe by a different techy department (mobile phones) who said to keep Li-ion batteries topped up.

Who do you believe? :bang:
 
Like others have said - since it was a Nikon battery and charger I'd have yelled a bit at them, but it seems you've sorted it out now...
2 years isn't that long for the EN-EL-series batts - they last ages on a full charge and I guess I only recharge them once a month, depending on work-load (though I do have 10 batteries split between 4 bodies since gaining the 'extra' D3's last month), so each battery probably only gets recharges about 15 times a year at most...

The calibration/refresh is supposed to run the battery fully down before recharging it, thus restoring its full capacity to recharge...
Try running it fully down in-camera again and then doing a refresh/calibrate and see what happens - maybe the charger itself is faulty...

How long did the refresh-recharge cycle take to complete? When I borrowed some D2x bodies three months ago, I did a refresh on all the supplied batteries and it took about 15 hours for the full cycle to complete each one...talk about a thumb-twiddling experience!
 
Arkangel,

It was a long run just to get the run down completed. At least 16 hours, and then it didn't want to recharge, it sort of got stuck. Cal lamp on and R side light on. Then the R was solid and Cal lamp started to flash....not in the diagnosis list! The other way about would be a carger problem, but it confused everyone.

I took it off charger, turned off. left it for 10 minutes then just whacked it back on the charger to see if it would charge. It didn't the two lights came on, one flashing, and a horrible whining noise emitted from the charger. I didn't like the sound of it. Took it off and left it the weekend. When I came home I stuck back in the charger and it fired up and charged in about 2 hours.

Very odd.
 
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