I recently bought a D200 after i finally found a shop - Bromfield Camera in Boston - that carried one. I was impressed by it, but after a trip i discovered it had the dreaded banding issue. It did not have the long type banding, but the short type banding was just too much. Here is a 200% crop of an image that shows the problem:

 This image is the back of a black leather chair with sunlight coming in from the back. It is shot at 1/90s - f/2.8, ISO400, EC=+1EV. The banding is vertical, because this image has been rotated. As you can see, the banding on the left side is too pronounced. The banding on the right side is so little that i don’t consider that an issue.

But the  left-side short banding is just too much. I opened an issue on support.nikontech.com and they acknowledged the problem.

The next day i sent it in to the Nikon Service Center in Melville, it arrived yesterday and today the online status page of Nikon Service Center shows that it is in repair:

Status	Code	Serial No	Description	CAT	Problem	Charges
In Shop 03/01/2006	25235	301xxxx	Service Repair Rank B2	B2	• TO GWO • BANDING	$0.00

25235 is the code for a D200 body.
A B2 Rank repair means "Moderate Repair. Major parts replaced."
TO GWO mean "To Good Working Order"
BANDING means…. well, that should be clear

I hope it will all be fixed!
To be continued…

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 2nd, 2006 at 11:38 and is filed under Just anything..., Photo Equipment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Edit this entry.