z9 Failure

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tickle_my_nikon said:
Yeah, it's a very popular zoom lens on the Z system. I've just noted that I see the Z9 "locking up" and "failure" posts always disproportionately discussing this lens on the Z9. Just as this thread is discussing the 100-400 at the same time they had multiple failures. Not blaming the lens. Just noting the coincidence.




I personally think it's a firmware issue causing the camera to overheat. Thermal failure. That's what progressive failure looks like. That particular mode could be more difficult for the camera to track, or process (larger subject in the frame vs looking for an eye or head).



If they had the cameras right next to the cars, someone was inside revving them up, because they were doing photograph sessions of the cars with the driver I might ignore the absurdity of the comments.

However, these are moving vehicles on a track and you want to say "spark plugs did it" and not a critical defect from Nikon either thermally or in their firmware? The cellular phone in their pocket is a higher source of radio waves, and electromagnetic interference than anything possibly coming off the cars from whatever short distance they're positioned relative to the cars.

I particularly don't like the tone of the responses on here trying to lay it off on @Dennis Gray as if it's his fault, and his comrades fault, and not obviously a Nikon issue.

This isn't specific to Nikon. Sony A1 users have all kind of failures from thermal issues, crashes, and the like. That's why the R3 is only 24mp.
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I shoot the Z9 with the 100-400mm S a lot, in very warm temperatures, probably much warmer then it was at the track that day and never experienced any heat related issues. This would be in dry conditions as well as very humid conditions. I‘m also shooting a lot of 4K 120p video in those conditions for extended times as well as stills doing more than 1 shot at a time as these guys are stating. If it were thermal issues, I should have experienced something by now. I’d be shocked to hear this overheated a camera.

Also, not one of us is claiming it was a spark plug, that is your incorrectly claiming we did. I threw it out as an example of an external factor. It is highly unlikely that 4 flagship cameras died the same way, at the same time, doing what would be called very light shooting because of a Nikon defect. Some strange external factor is far more likely.
 
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Old slow XQD cards jams up the camera...... jammed up cameras leads to battery being pulled..... battery being pulled while the camera is jammed up leads to brickage.
Thats where Id put my money if I had too.

None of that should lead up to a bricked $5500 camera tho. If its due to the cards, an error should pop up and be clearable.
 
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Wes Peterson said:
Old slow XQD cards jams up the camera...... jammed up cameras leads to battery being pulled..... battery being pulled while the camera is jammed up leads to brickage.
Thats where Id put my money if I had too.

None of that should lead up to a bricked $5500 camera tho. If its due to the cards, an error should pop up and be clearable.
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I would think there are enough people using slow cards though and I haven’t seen people posting about it. Even Nikon says it’s ok to use XQD. It’s a possibility but I’d expect it to be much more widespread if that was the cause. I swapped all XQD for cfe prior to the Z9 so I cannot test it out.
 
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I am going to keep throwing out a few ideas simply because I still think there is some environmental factor involved here. I would like to think that Nikon would certainly consider and investigate this but I know that sometimes issues don't always get to the right level in a company for follow up to occur.

It appears from the images that you had access to areas of the track that most observers might not have, is that correct? Did you imbed GPS location in your images and is it possible that the other photographers did as well? Using this data and the time stamp it might be interesting to see the locations of all 4 photographers when the problems started to occur and where all 4 photographers spent time during the event.
 
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abc123brian said:
I would think there are enough people using slow cards though and I haven’t seen people posting about it. Even Nikon says it’s ok to use XQD. It’s a possibility but I’d expect it to be much more widespread if that was the cause. I swapped all XQD for cfe prior to the Z9 so I cannot test it out.
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Yes but they have an "approved list" of XQD cards and some of the ones they used arent on the list, maybe they didnt make the list due to sustained write speed being too low. Im betting they have been used in multiple cameras over the years. there is a good bit of history with nikons and "bad cards" leading to cameras being locked up. Ive had D500s and D810s lock up due to sketchy cards and the only way to clear them was pulling the battery. Yanking the battery worked fine on a DSLR but the Z9 is more computer than camera in some respects and computers dont really like to have their power shutoff.
 
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Bill, Todd and I were covering the event for various publications. We may have been at the same corner but not the same camera hole for a couple groups each day. But with Bill and I our z9s started to freeze Friday by mid day. Bill was up behind the turn six mountain and I was down in the lake bed at turn two and or turn five. Todd was someplace else around the track. My first impression is that whatever happened to the z9s they were not infected by close proximity to each other. I am just beginning to have a feeling that the latest update to the z9, previous to today’s 3.0 and the 1.1 update to the 100/400 lens may be the problem. z9 and 100/400 may be the one constant in the equation. That said the two z9 that had no problem were also updated and using an updated 100/400.
So???
 
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Dennis Gray said:
Bill, Todd and I were covering the event for various publications. We may have been at the same corner but not the same camera hole for a couple groups each day. But with Bill and I our z9s started to freeze Friday by mid day. Bill was up behind the turn six mountain and I was down in the lake bed at turn two and or turn five. Todd was someplace else around the track. My first impression is that whatever happened to the z9s they were not infected by close proximity to each other. I am just beginning to have a feeling that the latest update to the z9, previous to today’s 3.0 and the 1.1 update to the 100/400 lens may be the problem. z9 and 100/400 may be the one constant in the equation. That said the two z9 that had no problem were also updated and using an updated 100/400.
So???
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Any idea what cards were in the Z9s that survived?
 
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Yes. SanDisk Extreme PRO
Read 1500MB/s
Write 800 MB/s
I do not know the size.
Of the twelve cards I had in my envelope for use two were brand new and four were less than two months old. I had a couple SONY XQD 64GB cards in the envelope but did not use them.
But the two SONY cards were used a month ago in the same z9 + 100/400mm with no problems.
 
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Dennis Gray said:
Yes. SanDisk Extreme PRO
Read 1500MB/s
Write 800 MB/s
I do not know the size.
Of the twelve cards I had in my envelope for use two were brand new and four were less than two months old. I had a couple SONY XQD 64GB cards in the envelope but did not use them.
But the two SONY cards were used a month ago in the same z9 + 100/400mm with no problems.
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The sonys are good to go the sandisk not so much same with the delkin prime.... at least according to Nikon
 
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Well according to Samy’s San Francisco Nikon USA approved the SanDisk Extreme Pro for any use in the z9.
Listed the SanDisk Extreme Pro as the primary card i used when the z9 went south. No response from NPS, Nikon USA or Nikons West Coast rep that they were suspect in any way. I would think if there was any suspicion of a problem Nikon would have jumped at the opportunity to point them as the culprit. DG
 
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Dennis Gray said:
Well according to Samy’s San Francisco Nikon USA approved the SanDisk Extreme Pro for any use in the z9.
Listed the SanDisk Extreme Pro as the primary card i used when the z9 went south. No response from NPS, Nikon USA or Nikons West Coast rep that they were suspect in any way. I would think if there was any suspicion of a problem Nikon would have jumped at the opportunity to point them as the culprit. DG
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The sandisk CFexpress type B cards are on the approved list but not the XQD
cards.JPG
You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.
 
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abc123brian said:
I would think there are enough people using slow cards though and I haven’t seen people posting about it. Even Nikon says it’s ok to use XQD. It’s a possibility but I’d expect it to be much more widespread if that was the cause. I swapped all XQD for cfe prior to the Z9 so I cannot test it out.
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I did not have the chance to buy another card but I am using XQD of my Nikon d 500 since I bought the Z9 with short high burst . Never had an issue because of that slow card.
 
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abc123brian said:
I would think there are enough people using slow cards though and I haven’t seen people posting about it. Even Nikon says it’s ok to use XQD. It’s a possibility but I’d expect it to be much more widespread if that was the cause. I swapped all XQD for cfe prior to the Z9 so I cannot test it out.
Click to expand...
The XQD card was used in the z9 couple weeks before the Laguna event resulting in no problems. Only the newer ScanDisc cards were used at Laguna Seca. That’s my z9 …Dennis
 
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pnbarne said:
What if none of this had anything to do with Nikon or Laguna Seca? The Navy Postgraduate School is close to LS and they play with secret, expensive and exotic toys. Just a thought.
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I know a group of people who were waiting for a connection flight at an airport. While waiting, everyone’s phone became inoperable. No one knew what the deal was. Some time later Air Force One landed. Not until the plane took off again did their phones start working.
 
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DRM said:
I know a group of people who were waiting for a connection flight at an airport. While waiting, everyone’s phone became inoperable. No one knew what the deal was. Some time later Air Force One landed. Not until the plane took off again did their phones start working.
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You're talking about everyone not having service. That's common. In Las Vegas during New Years, no one has phone service on the strip. It's restricted to EMS and Police.

This isn't the camera crashing, and having to be reset more often. These are cameras essentially burning up a PCB, or processor, and then completely failing. Permanently.
 
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abc123brian said:
I shoot the Z9 with the 100-400mm S a lot, in very warm temperatures, probably much warmer then it was at the track that day and never experienced any heat related issues. This would be in dry conditions as well as very humid conditions. I‘m also shooting a lot of 4K 120p video in those conditions for extended times as well as stills doing more than 1 shot at a time as these guys are stating. If it were thermal issues, I should have experienced something by now. I’d be shocked to hear this overheated a camera.

Also, not one of us is claiming it was a spark plug, that is your incorrectly claiming we did. I threw it out as an example of an external factor. It is highly unlikely that 4 flagship cameras died the same way, at the same time, doing what would be called very light shooting because of a Nikon defect. Some strange external factor is far more likely.
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You're claiming it's an ignition system in a car dozens of feet from the camera rather than an issue with the camera itself.

This is so prevalent that even the Z9 I sold to my friend failed and was sent in to Nikon. He didn't specifically say what happened, just that it died.

If I had to wager an actual guess it would be something along the lines of this: that the autofocus system when specifically tracking cars is using far more processor power to track the object, and to acquire the focus. It's a larger object using far more sensor points for the camera to keep up. Maybe the 100-400 is a slow pig that's also making the camera work harder. This results in a thermal failure internally in the camera which starts with file write errors to the disks, and intermittent crashes. A cascade effect.

It's not wireless signals transmitted from aliens observing the track day.
It's not from the ignition systems on the cars.
It's not from using a particular card, unless one individual card was defective.

Has anyone else here using the Z9 done a three or four day stint at a track?
 
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tickle_my_nikon said:
You're claiming it's an ignition system in a car dozens of feet from the camera rather than an issue with the camera itself.

This is so prevalent that even the Z9 I sold to my friend failed and was sent in to Nikon. He didn't specifically say what happened, just that it died.

If I had to wager an actual guess it would be something along the lines of this: that the autofocus system when specifically tracking cars is using far more processor power to track the object, and to acquire the focus. It's a larger object using far more sensor points for the camera to keep up. Maybe the 100-400 is a slow pig that's also making the camera work harder. This results in a thermal failure internally in the camera which starts with file write errors to the disks, and intermittent crashes. A cascade effect.

It's not wireless signals transmitted from aliens observing the track day.
It's not from the ignition systems on the cars.
It's not from using a particular card, unless one individual card was defective.

Has anyone else here using the Z9 done a three or four day stint at a track?
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I cant see your theory being correct without an obvious loss in AF functionality first. Besides I cant see how tracking a car would be more difficult than tracking a gymnast flipping through the air. Hell a D5 in auto area AF will track a car. I dont think you could point to any camera that locked up due to taxxing the AF system. We can definitely point to cameras locking up due to bad cards tho. The OP stated he was getting duplicate files at times on his cards. Maybe the camera was the culprit maybe the cards were. Im sure Nikon tested the hell out of the Z9 on auto racing. How much did they test them on cards they dont recommend? Why dont they recommend using those cards?
 
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There can be and are many theories on what happened in THIS particular case. And they are just that at this point. Personal theories with little to NO factual data as related to this case.

SO.....PLEASE ........ don't become fixated on arguing your idea(s) over someone else's. Be respectful of other opinions.
 
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Just curious...were the z9s the only cameras that failed? I'm sure Sony, Canon and others would have been affected if this was an external problem or alien invasion.
 
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I used a card reader each night to transfer to a MacPro. Bill used a cable from his z9 to his MacBook.
As far as other cameras failing I have no idea. If there was wide spread failure I would have heard something. DG
 
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