Nikon today announced a Service Advisory for the Z9. Specifically, the advisory is for a lens lock pin that won’t release, making it impossible to change lenses on the camera. Nikon says this is due to a part that they’ve determined doesn’t meet their standards, but I suspect there may be a little more to it than Nikon reports.
On my recent Galapagos workshop, for instance, we had one student’s Z9 do the opposite: it wouldn’t engage the lens lock pin. Over the years, this has been a common problem: that particular pin and its spring are both susceptible to damage as well as not always being fully up to rigorous use. It doesn’t help that the pin can be susceptible to crud that gets in the area. However, the Z9 in the Galapagos was new, clean, and hadn’t been subjected to constant lens changing yet. The lock pin failed while a lens had been mounted to the camera for awhile.
You can determine if your camera has a lock pin problem by going to a Nikon Web site and entering the serial number. It’s unknown how many Z9’s are impacted by this problem.
Update: This appears to be a problem for some but not all cameras made in the October to November manufacturing window. This involves some but not all cameras in the 3026xxx through 3028xxx serial number range.
I’m also now aware that Nikon has a problem for the GPS Date/Time error—the camera appears to travel into the future—but that this requires that the camera be returned to Nikon to implement the fix.
