Home    Search    Gallery    How-To    Books    Links    Workshops    About    Contact

< < Back to F100 Index || < < Back to ERR Messages || Back to F100 Index > >

Nikon's Great Factory Service in Torrance, California!
© 2004 Ken Rockwell

Please help KenRockwell..com

Nikon F100

Nikon F100 and Nikon 24mm f/1.4. I'd get it here, and check here, too.

In August 2000 I sent my F100 in for a few minor adjustments while it was still under warranty.

The main reason I sent it in was that the Standard TTL flash exposure was uniformly underexposing one stop on Velvia. I could work around this issue by setting +1 exposure compensation on the camera, however this is cumbersome.

The F100 is in Standard TTL mode in manual exposure mode. This mode is used when the flash is the only source of illumination. The matrix balanced mode, used most of the time, was fine.

The flash still requires compensation in Standard TTL mode, so I'll presume it to be the way the camera is designed.

I also had the common problem with the viewfinder LCD turning off even though the camera was on. This is a design flaw in the F100 that many people have had worse than I did. It is resolved each time by turning the power off and on again. This was fixed by Nikon.

Lastly, a screw had fallen out of the camera. This also was fixed.

I got my camera back to me within a week and they also gave my camera a complete cleaning, all under warranty. I am very pleased with their service! I forgot how much crud accumulates in a viewfinder over a year.

Over all, they repaired the problems, left no tool marks or technician tracks, and returned my equipment quickly and cleaner then when it went to them. Thanks Nikon!

One small item came back misadjusted, however.

My manual focussing screen was now ever so slightly misadjusted. It wasn't enough of a bother to warrant me returning the camera for readjustment, but it did mean that one should not have used the ground glass for any focussing. I preferred to live with it than ship the camera back.

When my brand new 17-35 died in April, 2001 I also brought in my F100 to have this presumably simple adjustment corrected. Even though it was out of the formal 6 month warranty period for the previous repair, Nikon understood and offered me the courtesy of just fixing it. Thanks again, Nikon!

The camera was ready in just four business days, along with the 17-35.

Unfortunately it was now adjusted a little bit worse and for the first time the on-film images were just a hair out of focus, so I returned it again to Nikon in Torrance.

This time I had them stumped. They spent a week and a half and went through several film tests. Golly, I thought for sure that this adjustment must be something so simple I could do it myself with a butter knife, as one can with manual focus cameras. Boy am I glad I didn't screw with it myself and left it to the experts at Nikon!

I got a call from Sammy at Nikon and was told my camera was ready again. He also mentioned that, "Oh, didn't they tell you? We decided to replace your camera with a new one." Intrigued, I dropped by Torrance to pick it up.

Lo and behold, they weren't kidding. There was a brand new F100 waiting for me, in a big golden box complete with new manuals, warrantee cards and everything! This new F100 seems to lack some of the auto focus errors I noted above as well.

Thanks again, Nikon! This is first-class service!

That's it!!! Back to F100 Index > >

Home     <<Back     Gallery     How-To     Links    Workshops     About     Contact