Defective Coolpix 4500--Common? (1 Viewer)

I recently purchased one of the many "factory refurbished" Nikon Coolpix 4500s offered on eBay by clearing houses in New York state. These are offered by several retailers as "salesmen's samples" or "factory demo" cameras. All come with a 90-day warranty, and a buyer has the option of purchasing an extended 3-year warranty.

The one I bought would not focus on the broad side of a barn--LITERALLY. In autofocus mode, with no focusing icon on the monitor, the camera would focus readily on close objects up to two feet away, but would focus on more distant objects only once in every twenty to forty attempts. I called Nikon customer service and they determined by telephone that the body was defective.

The customer service representative of the retailer who sold it said that the Nikon Coolpix series is notoriously erratic, and that no two bodies placed side by side will function exactly the same. She was referring in particular to the focusing chip. However, here is a more disconcerting issue: the Nikon service representative I spoke with told me that virtually NONE of the "refurbished" bodies were ever used as factory demos or salesmen's samples. He said that all of them were returns from consumers.

If he is correct, and several hundred Coolpix 4500s were returned, this does not speak well of the camera. In various forums and websites, I have seen other descriptions of strange behavior in the Coolpix cameras, so now I have reservations about buying one. In the meantime I have returned the defective body and asked for a refund, rather than another body.

Have some of you had similar experiences with this camera?

Both the cp995 and the cp4500 have a reputation of being slighlty unpredictable from one camera to the next in ability to focus. There are plenty of good ones out there, but the bad ones get talked about and the complaints stick in the mind.

It would be interesting to know how many cp995's and cp4500's were produced, I reckon that the numbers are very high in comparison to other manufacturer's models because Nikon has relatively few cameras in it line-up and doesn't update models as frequently as many companies....therefore there could be more faulty 4500's than any other camera model. Just a theory The CP990 had a long production run and a very good reliability record.....so there goes my theory.

Just to even the balance a bit. I have a secondhand CP4500 and to date it has been trouble free. Having said that, I don't particularly rate it as a general purpose camera, but for digiscoping it is ideal.

I suspect this explains some of my problems with using the 4500 for digiscoping. Its fine for photos of insects at 2-3 feet but I get about 1 in 20 focussed even reasonably through the scope.
Hugh

I purchased a Nikon Coolpix 4500 six weeks ago. After two weeks the focusing mechanism started to make growling noises then jammed. The local Nikon service people repaired it but it jammed again after another week. It was exchanged for a new camera by the shop who sold it to me. The new camera sounds sweet but so far I have not made a single sharp digiscope image. This may be due to my technique since the camera can produce sharp normal camera images

My old Nikon 35mm SLR worked well for thirty years. It is a bit dissapointing to buy a new Nikon model which seems to have too many defective units.

My Coolpix 4500 record so far:

#1:

Bought in July, had been used as a shop demo, functioned perfectly (or as perfectly as 4500s ever do - I have some design gripes, but they are the subject for another thread).

Bashed against a log when I slipped over in September, broken into two halves. Sent to Nikon, returned repaired 10 days later, at the astonishingly low cost of $AU135. Worked perfectly except that the viewfinder picture is mildly distorted and never clear except around the edges. For a while I thought it wasn't focussing correctly, but it was my imagination. Viewfinder aside, it worked just fine.

#2:

Bought in Townsville during mid-October as a spare - I was 3000 kilometres from home and couldn't bear the thought of having my camera fail, leaving me 3000 kilometres of driving to do and no way to take pictures. Also, it could serve as a second camera, to take landscapes and flowers and the like, and save constantly having to stuff about detaching the main camera from the scope. Never been out of the box before, worked perfectly.

I used this one as my main camera to begin with, on the theory that it would focus more sharply, and the old one as the belt camera for landscapes. After a while, I realised that there was no difference at all between the two cameras so far as digiscoping went, and that it would make more sense to use the old one on the scope (as the viewfinder doesn't matter at all when you are digiscoping) and the new one as my belt camera.

Three weeks later, it failed catastrophically. No matter what setting it was on, it insisted that it was pitch black outside and needed several seconds of exposure. Nevertheless, test shots come out pitch black. I reset, removed batteries, all that stuff, made no difference at all. By this time I was 3000 kilometres from Townsville, 1000 kilometres from the nearest large town (Darwin) 4000 kilometrs from home and 5000 kilometres from Nikon's office in Sydney. With no practical way to send it to them and get it back again, I simply packed it away in my bag and went back to using the old camera on the scope, missing out on a lot of non-bird shots in consequence - and praying that old faithful battered Coolpix #1 would hold out for the rest of the trip!

It did, and the #2 Coolpix is still in my bag, dead as mutton. I must send it off to Nikon. I was very dissapointed that the camera I bought as a spare in case the other one failed only lasted for three weeks.

On the other hand, Nikon's repair work on the #1 camera was prompt and efficient. I can only hope that they are as good at warranty work as they are at paid work!

PS: In the second part of the trip (after the #2 camera failed), it was incredibly humid and the old #1 camera was exposed to very tough conditions - the humidity in the Top End as the wet season is building up is phenomenal, and later on it coped with being exposed to more rain and sudden temperature changes than it is fair to expose a camera to.

If my old faithful Coolpix #1 lasts another six months of that treatment, I think I might marry it.

I can't comment on the 4500, but I was having exactly the same focusing problems with my 995 - as Andy says, both models have a reputation for this problem. Even non-digiscoped photos were not so good. The ratio of bad shots to good shots was way too high to be merely technique problems.

It was returned to Nikon for checking and came back exactly the same, along with some strange marks on the image when reviewing the photos. Luckily the marks didn't show on the downloaded image, but it was sold shortly afterwards anyway.

Having said that, everyone I've seen digiscoping with the 4500 achieve good shots. I was almost tempted to change to this camera myself, but instead went for a non-recommended (for digiscoping) external zoom Canon G3.

Hi

Just yesterday I seem to have fallen prey to the problem that jimsmart had. Fine one minute then next time I try to focus a dreadful ratchet sound from the lense area and completely inoperable. Luckily it's still in warrenty so once I find the papers with the damn number for Nikon I will speak to them and send it off. Just when I had got my new Swaro scope to do some digiscoping as well:-(

Ivan