Is my camera broken?
I have a new lens, a Tamron 70-300 which is definitely a big improvement over my Nikon 50-200. I have taken it to two air shows now, Yeovilton last weekend and RAIT yesterday. I usually shoot in shutter priority mode and at Yeovilton everything seemed fine, but I had the occasional problem with extreme under-exposure (near black picture) and sometimes a message on the screen "Error, press shutter again", but the taken picture was still fine so I wasn't too concerned...
Yesterday though I really started to get problems: the first few flying displays went fine (except for a few underexposed photos again), but then all of a sudden the camera refused to auto-focus and as a result the shutter wouldn't release. After lots of fettling, re-setting etc. I figured out that the problem happens when in maximum zoom. When I zoom out AF works and I can take pictures and also when I keep the shutter/focus button half depressed and then zoom in. But not with the zoom at full from the start. I changed the lens to the standard Nikon 18-50 and the problem exists there too!
Every now and then the problem seemed to clear and a did manage to take a few pics at full zoom, but it soon came back.
I've checked and re-checked settings and reset, switched-off, reset lenses and all sorts several times and tried different shooting modes as well, no luck.
I noticed a flashing "?" in the bottom right hand corner of the view finder and at one time I even had a flashing "error" message where usually your shooting is displayed!
So does that mean the camera is shot? Can such things be repaired or is it not worth it?
Jeffrey