I bought a Nikon S8100 recently to because I had my wonderful little Panasonic Lumix DZ10 stolen in Chile.
To be honest the Lumix was on it’s way out anyhow. Mechanically it was perfect, but it had started to collect so much dust behind the lens that photo-shopping every picture for large splodges was becoming the order of the day. This was partly due to me as I had not carried it in a case for the first part of my trip and therefore it had picked up dust from my pockets.
So. The lovely Mary (my ladies mum) bought me a Nikon S8100 for my birthday and so can now compare the two. And here’s my conclusion:
The Nikon s8100 seized up within a few days of use with a ‘lens error’ command presenting itself on the screen. The camera had not been mistreated at all, but simply got confused and stopped working. I packed it away with the lens extended and no battery as per the makers instructions (it seems like this is a serial problem for the Nikon) but no joy, it’s buggered.
I’ll give it more of a chance and report back if there is any improvement, but right now I am missing my old Lumix DZ10.
The Nikon 8100 didn’t right itself, so I have a camera with an extended lens that does not work. This is very frustrating as I want to take loads of pics of my travels in Australia.
I’m contacting customer support here in Oz to see what they can do….
No news from Nikon support about the terrible state of the Nikon 8100, reviews of the Nikon 8100. I have read about the lens error on a few sites without them going into too much detail, but I would have expected Nikon Support to have gotten back to me by now. I’ll wait a little longer and see…
No word from Nikon service centre, time for action.
So, Nikon Point and shoot cameras, Nikon portable cameras, Nikon pocket cameras, The Nikon 8100 etc are getting a bad rap for this issue. If you search in Google on ‘nikon 8100 lens error’ it seems that quite a few people have this problem yet The Nikon Service Centre really don’t want to help me sort it out.
I’ll go down there when I get back to Sydney!
Nikon Australia did get back to me – and told me that if I wanted the camera repaired I would have to pay for it as it was bought for me, as a present, from Hong Kong.
Therefore a Nikon 8100 that goes wrong after 2 days from no fault of my own should be repaired by me because it was bought in a different country to the one I am in.
This obviously means DO NOT BUY A NIKON IF YOU ARE THINKING OF TRAVELLING. If you search for Nikon 8100 Lens Error in Google there are many complaints of the same issue, yet Nikon expect to get away with people trashing their Nikon travel cameras after a few days use.
I had have the Lens error thing too, not really much I could do about it but trash the camera. I was surprised as I had always thought of Nikon as bullet proof, now I think of Nikon Cameras as a bad investment
I don’t think we’re isolated cases AW, I bought a Nikon thinking they would be reliable, but now wouldn’t touch a Nikon travel camera/Nikon portable camera or any kind of Nikon product.
An update to my nightmare with Nikon is that I had an email reply from Kurtis at Nikon support Australia, simply stating that they HAD replied to my support request. Now the only place I had stated that they HAD NOT was on this blog (prior to getting a reply from them), therefore they are obviously scouring the web for negative press about Nikons, but instead of repairing the fact that my Nikon is a useles piece of junk in a drawer in Sydney right now (I am in Laos at the moment with no camera), or even apologise that a brand new Nikon screwed up, Kurtis at Sydney Nikon decides to simply push the point that they did reply to my request for help.
I have a coolpix S9100 and I am SOOOO upset by the awful image quality. It SUCKS. I wouldn’t buy a Coolpix if you paid me to..
Get a lumix instead, they take great pictures compared to Nikon Coolpix which are terrible.
Nikon are playing on a reputation they had years ago and are losing fast, they are terrible now.
Well I have decided to send my camera to Makoto Kimura, he’s the CEO at Nikon and hopefully he has the integrity to stand by his products!
HI Mr Reid I’m going to send mine to that guy my s8100 just stopped working suddenly so I though it was the battery so I bought a new batter but nothing happened I’m just upset
Please provide me his address
Thank you in advance