Nikon F5 broken W/ error message?

[Shakedown St.]

I recently sold a Nikon F5 I had been using weeks prior on the Bay with no apparent problem, about a week later I receive a complaint from the buyer of an "error message" when no film is loaded.

He replied to me that while it works with film inside, you should be able to fire the shutter with no film and therefore it is "not fully functional".

Is this true, I had read somewhere that F5's do not allow you to fire a shot before loading film. It seemed to work 100% fine for the year I was using it, have never heard of that before.

 

[jcdeboever]

Not sure but 95% that the F5 has an interlock that prevents full shutter control until the film has been wound onto frame. Download the manual to confirm. My mentor had one and I seem to recall that. I'd call him but he unexpectedly passed away earlier this year. @Derrel should know for sure.

 

[benhasajeep]

Not sure but 95% that the F5 has an interlock that prevents full shutter control until the film has been wound onto frame. Download the manual to confirm. My mentor had one and I seem to recall that. I'd call him but he unexpectedly passed away earlier this year. @Derrel should know for sure.

I know it locks out if film is not loaded correctly. Get ERR, and LED on the back flashes. Not sure if this is the case with no film at all in it. F4 did have a interlock. Not sure if F5 is the same.

 

[fmw]

Normal. If you want to fire the shutter without film loaded, it must be in manual mode.

 

[Derrel]

Gotta love a clueless internet buyer who claims working gear is not propely working. I had some young dude from Arizona pull the same shizz on me this January after he bought a lens from me on e-Bay, a perfectly FINE 400mm f/3.5 ED~IF that had been CPU chipped....he had NO IDEA how to use an AI-P type lens (manual focus with CPU chip) on his modern cameras...he INSISTED it was not working correctly, and e-bay made me refund him his money I later sold that lens for $200 more! to a dude in his 60's who had been looking for one for years...works GREAT--but then, he actually KNOWS how to use a lens with a CPU in it and how to tell his camera to communicate properly to set the f/stop with that type of lens.

It can be difficult reasoning with people who automatically assume they have been "ripped off", or have been sold "not fully dfunctional" gear, when the issue is that they actuallty do not know the proper way to work things, or the idiosynchratic design nature of some older cameras. Jeeze....interlocks...meters that do NOT function until Frame 1 has been achieved....subtractive film frame counters...gad zooks....it's like, "This rotary dial phone cannot take a picture! it's busted!"

Once a buyer feels like he's been deceived, he can often be difficult to reason with...and RTFM suggestions are typically disregarded...I've had people like this who were SURE they had been ripped of by a seller, and would not listen to reason. We used to deal with clients like this in the store, ones who would come in with batteries in wrong polarity, or covered with finger-grease, POSITIVE that they had been sold a "bad camera".

 

[Flash Harry]

Basically its everything on ebay these days, too many scammers and idiots and too many dishonest 'punters'. The wife used to make around 3-500 a week selling outsize clothes, a 'friend' then asked if she'd list an expensive watch, the watch sold was a signed for delivery and the nonce at the other end then said it wasn't delivered, we'd already paid the friend, tried to reason with ebay/paypal and had our account frozen with a thousand in it, three months like that and blocked from buying or selling as soon as we 'won' the case we withdrew the cash and sold or bought nothing since. More trouble that its worth these days and as for the other similar sites they're worse.