Hi all,

I tried sending this beofre but I never saw it appear. Apologies if this is
a double post.

I've had my D200 for about eight months now. I love it, but it has been
plagued with a number of sensor problems.

First was the long banding. That was fixed (I believe they replaced the
sensor, although the service report only said "tiny parts replaced"). Then
pixels started dying. First there were three; a month later I noticed about
20 new ones--in some situations the small white crosses turned into red and
blue squares. Now a month later I am noticing some new ones.

But the big surprise came when I tried to do a long exposure (~3 minutes) of
the African night sky. On viewing the four corners and top edge of the frame
bloomed with pink luminosity, looking something like light-struck film. In
addition there were scores of seemingly-dead pixels speckling the whole
frame in white, red and blue. But these pixels were not dead, in shorter
exposures they behaved normally, but as the exposure time increased more and
more of them blew out. Likewise the pink blooming was undetectable at under
30 secs., becoming progressively worse as trhe exposure time increased.

Obviously the camer is going back to Nikon, but I am actually very curious
about whether these are common defects. They only became apparent in my case
in rather rare shooting conditions (long exposures). If anyone with a D200
is willing, I would ask you to do the following simple test: Put a body cap
on your camera and do a 3 minute exposure at ISO 1600 in a dark room (or put
an eyepiece cap on as well). If you have anything like the same problems as
mine they will be very obvious on preview--the blooming at full frame and
the pixel problems on either of the last two crop magnifications.

I would be very interested to hear what your experience is.

TIA,

Toby

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