z9 Failure

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Here is another idea, where they using any type of race timing system that might have included timing mats or timing antenna located around the course.

The 100-400 Z lens is an interesting idea as well. I have probably shot 5,000 images with mine without an issue but you never know.
 
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MartyD said:
Here is another idea, where they using any type of race timing system that might have included timing mats or timing antenna located around the course.

The 100-400 Z lens is an interesting idea as well. I have probably shot 5,000 images with mine without an issue but you never know.
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Are you thinking the radio waves from the mat or antenna might have affected the cameras? Interesting thought. Certainly they could if they were close enough….those broadcasters don’t use a lot of wattage 🤔
 
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Dennis Gray said:
https://vintageracecar.com/velocity-invitational-photo-gallery/
Link to vintage car images I captured as my z9 was turning into a brick. According to NPS it is in repair.
I know you guys don’t have a heavy interest in Vintage Car photography but give it a look and please leave a comment on the site.
Ciao Dennis
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Beautiful images there Dennis! It takes me back to a previous life when I was in the Navy at Mare Island, California in the late 70s. A great summer of going to SCCA races at Sears Point (now Sonoma), an IMSA GT race a Laguna Seca, and Formula 1 at Long Beach! I was a Cobra guy, but that 250 GTO has to be one of the most gorgeous cars ever produced. And I apologize for straying from wildlife!
 
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Patrick M said:
Are you thinking the radio waves from the mat or antenna might have affected the cameras? Interesting thought. Certainly they could if they were close enough….those broadcasters don’t use a lot of wattage 🤔
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This just seems like a statistical anomaly. Four different Nikon Z9s all purchased at different times, using different lenses and memory cards all failing over the course of a weekend at the same venue. It certainly seems to me that there is a commonality that needs to be identified.

I don't know if they use any timing devices and of what type at these races but I have run a number of marathons over the years and initially the timing systems were active systems where you wore a small battery powered chip on your ankle or shoe that would record your time as you crossed a mat. After the race you returned the timing chip. In more recent years most of the races started using passive systems where you had a small circuit like strip of tape attached to the back of your race bib, the circuit was energized and activated by an external source and you could discard them after the race. I wouldn't think there would be any danger or issues with either system as long as it was calibrated and working correctly, but you never know especially if the Z9s spent a considerable amount of time near the energizing source.

The other commonality might be the 100-400 Z lenses but I am not sure if all of the failed Z9s used that lens. Maybe a firmware/communication issue between the camera and lens.
 
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I like your thinking here. We know that the motors in these zoom lenses can affect pacemakers, so it’s not that hard to imagine a reverse effect …
 
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Patrick M said:
I like your thinking here. We know that the motors in these zoom lenses can affect pacemakers, so it’s not that hard to imagine a reverse effect …
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The lens that you are referring to in which focus motors could have anything to do with pacemakers is the Z 400 f/2.8 TC lens. The 100-400 S does not have that kind of AF motor dirve.

Everyone: You might just need to look at the 100-400 S Firmware page to understand more about the lens. The 1.10 firmware is only about using non-linear focusing when doing manual override or reversing the control ring and AF focus ring in custom settings. See https://downloadcenter.nikonimglib.com/en/download/fw/448.html - it's not the magnetic time bomb that some you might suspect. The lens has nothing to do with Dennis's problem unless there is some kind of crazy unusual short circuit that happened due to mis-aligned contacts. But that's very doubtful.
 
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Strangely my Z9 stalled on me yesterday. It was while I was shooting BIF and firing away. I paused shooting and then when I wanted to start again , everything was frozen. I had to do a soft reboot and it started working. This happened to my Z9 twice yesterday. Concerning.
 
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I am in contact with Nikon now. As soon as I have a hint as to the problem I pass it on to Steve and post here. But that is how my z9 failure started. Then each few exposures something else failed.
 
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Dennis Gray said:
https://vintageracecar.com/velocity-invitational-photo-gallery/
Link to vintage car images I captured as my z9 was turning into a brick. According to NPS it is in repair.
I know you guys don’t have a heavy interest in Vintage Car photography but give it a look and please leave a comment on the site.
Ciao Dennis
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Nice shots! My favourite is the #20 Porsche 911. The combination of a relatively low shutter speed and the action in the background makes it a nice dynamic shot.
 
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i have a new theory based on the new "full format" feature in the 3.0 fw. media card corruption. the one thing that is common among all the cameras is... they were taking more images than they normally do. this uses more of the card increasing the changes they will trip over bad sectors.

the full format likely will reduce the risk because it'll format the entire card, not just the catalog and thus hit any potential bad sectors and take them out of service.

just a thought
 
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StarDust said:
When mine failed I spent quality time searching the net for Z9 failures. Almost all failures were in DPreview. Only one was mentioned in a blog. It was a couple of months after FW 2,1 was released. In Fred Miranda I was the only one as far as I know who posted Z9 failure

I have not come across "dozens of failures". I seen 5 failures including mine. Four where during FW update(Including mine), and one failed outside FW update and during regular use.

Edit : I just checked DPreview and I could not find more than 4 threads and as I said two during FW update, one ran fine for few hours after FW update. Apology in advance if my search key words was not used in some of those threads, The keywords I used " Z9 failed" and "Z9 bricked" . I am also a regular member there for many years in Nikon forums.
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Perform a better search. The fact that you're talking about your own Z9 failure makes your entire post irrelevant and reinforces my original point.

Dennis Gray said:
Thanks. Got a word from Samy’s this morning. Nikon has my z9 in the repair room. Oh joy.
I am about to send an email to NPS asking for a specific update not only on the z9 but also on what they think the problem was or is. I’ll post any response. DG
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I'm very interested to hear what they say.
 
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tickle_my_nikon said:
Perform a better search. The fact that you're talking about your own Z9 failure makes your entire post irrelevant and reinforces my original point.
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When I said it is possible that my search did not capture all threads containing Z9 failures, all what I am doing is trying to be respectful.

But you don't seem to get it.

claiming that there are dozens of Z9 failures in DPreview is a false claim. Dozens mean 24 threads or more.

members here can search and see for themselves.

I will stop here because I respect the OP and prevent derailing from what he is trying to investigate.
 
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Dennis Gray said:
https://vintageracecar.com/velocity-invitational-photo-gallery/
Link to vintage car images I captured as my z9 was turning into a brick. According to NPS it is in repair.
I know you guys don’t have a heavy interest in Vintage Car photography but give it a look and please leave a comment on the site.
Ciao Dennis
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I have nothing to offer with regard to the Z9 problems, just hope it gets sorted quickly and completely for you.

Meanwhile, the 911 shots and the "Jimmy Dean" Porsche were my favorites because of the action going through the turn. I would have loved to be there and get shots of these great cars.
 
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Dennis Gray said:
https://vintageracecar.com/velocity-invitational-photo-gallery/
Link to vintage car images I captured as my z9 was turning into a brick. According to NPS it is in repair.
I know you guys don’t have a heavy interest in Vintage Car photography but give it a look and please leave a comment on the site.
Ciao Dennis
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wow - quite a few images, and all good quality. I felt as though I was taking a step back in time. I was not aware that events like this existed (but then I don't normally follow motor sports). Had to be tough shooting through the fog in the early part of the day.
 
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John Navitsky said:
i have a new theory based on the new "full format" feature in the 3.0 fw. media card corruption. the one thing that is common among all the cameras is... they were taking more images than they normally do. this uses more of the card increasing the changes they will trip over bad sectors.

the full format likely will reduce the risk because it'll format the entire card, not just the catalog and thus hit any potential bad sectors and take them out of service.

just a thought
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I am not sure I understand but fyi:
Each my z9, Bills z9 and Tod’s z9 were all shooting RAW only. No burst shooting. Some Continuous shooting of three or four exposures per shot. As for more exposures than normal ? Well, each time I have had my z9 out this is about what I shoot. These three z9s were all set at FX.
 
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Dennis Gray said:
I am not sure I understand but fyi:
Each my z9, Bills z9 and Tod’s z9 were all shooting RAW only. No burst shooting. Some Continuous shooting of three or four exposures per shot. As for more exposures than normal ? Well, each time I have had my z9 out this is about what I shoot. These three z9s were all set at FX.
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yah, i just meant total number of exposures, thus how full the cards were.

this is based on my assumption that shooting at an event results in more volume than normal.
 
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John Navitsky said:
yah, i just meant total number of exposures, thus how full the cards were.

this is based on my assumption that shooting at an event results in more volume than normal.
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I get the point you’re making, but wouldn’t this throw a card error issue as opposed to causing a camera to malfunction. It makes sense bad sectors could cause issues with writing to the card or potentially verifying successful write completion of image to the card. I could see how this might create an issue for the file numbering experienced here. It would be quite a coincidence if that were the cause of multiple cameras going down at a particular event. I am happy to see the full format option in camera because that will help with card health overall.
 
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I don’t think it is card related because as the day progressed my z9 continued to lose more features.
View finder went black, off button stoped working, the only focus available was 3D + Vehicle, rear focus button died, shutter button died, eventually the z9 turned into a dead brick. With the exception of Friday I do not believe I filled any cards. Then slot one went into overflow and the raw images went into slot two. I couldn’t get that many captures out of the malfunctioning z9. Now of course I wish I had kept notes on what was happening. Instead I kept trying to get the z9 to in some way to function so I could capture images for my article. But who the f knows what is going on. I’ll post as soon as Nikon NPS gets word to me.
 
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abc123brian said:
I get the point you’re making, but wouldn’t this throw a card error issue as opposed to causing a camera to malfunction. It makes sense bad sectors could cause issues with writing to the card or potentially verifying successful write completion of image to the card. I could see how this might create an issue for the file numbering experienced here. It would be quite a coincidence if that were the cause of multiple cameras going down at a particular event. I am happy to see the full format option in camera because that will help with card health overall.
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it depends on the nature of the media problem.

speaking in general computer terms (i don't really know specifics about cfe in the context of cameras) you can get into situations where you are "blocked for i/o". in these cases, you're somewhat hard-blocked. this might result in your camera locking up and you solving the issue by powering down or removing the battery which could result in an unexpected/unhandled state.

alternately, the data could be so unexpected that it could confuse the process that's trying to handle the media (although typically that'd be considered a bug).

i admit that you wouldn't expect a "normal" i/o error to cause this type of problem. it should just issue the i/o request, get an error, then do something sensible like report the error the user.

but otoh, my understanding is these cards are wired into the camera via pci bus lanes in a pretty low level way, so it seems at least possible.

that said, as you say, it may be a bit of a stretch to explain this situation.

that said, i do think we are very intricately linked to the performance and reliability of the media on these cameras.
 
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Dennis Gray said:
Last weekend my z9 and three other z9 Nikons at the Velocity Invitational vintage car races at LaGuna Seca Monterey Ca all failed. 1. View finder went black. 2. Rear screen froze. 2. off button failed. 3. i Button failed. And so on. For awhile Fri and Sat I removed the battery to restart the body. Saturday night I used the two green buttons to reset to Factory settings. Only partially successful. By late Sunday it was a brick. A dead brick. On down loading the images I found a number of images numbered out of sequence. A few had duplicate file numbers with -2 added to the file number. Nikon now has my z9 and Bill Wagenblatt’s z9. Bill took delivery of his the Wednesday before the event my z9 was two months old. Both updated. Comments???
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Wow this is concerning. I have had my Z9 for 2 weeks, also noticed on a download yesterday that some of the images were downloaded out of sequence....
 
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