See original post here. I was woken up early this morning to banging on the door. Not expecting anyone I jumped out of bed, still in my pajamas, and peered through the window. To my surprise, a nice UPS man was at the door holding a rather large box, which I would soon find out was from Nikon.

I received an estimate last Thursday (today is now Wednesday) from Nikon. They said the camera would require a Rank A repair, costing me a total of $125 and change. It didn’t give me an estimated completion date or exactly what the cause of the problem was, just that I needed to pay it to get my work done. I did by credit card that afternoon and have been waiting until just a few hours ago.

Camera looks perfect. Looking over the repair summary, it appears that they replaced the rear LCD glass, a couple of sponges (not sure what / why), as well as performed a full clean and check. Camera looks and works like new, and I’m happy to have it back.

Sometimes, it’s the smallest thing that make the biggest difference. Adding a few simple accessories to your camera can not only help make it more usable, but help you to enjoy using it more. Two of the first things I have always replaced on every camera are the eyepiece and the focusing screen.

Eyepiece

The standard eyepiece that comes with most cameras is just short of pathetic. It’s really meant as a temporary solution, to prevent you from gouging our your eye against a sharp corner or scratching your glasses, rather then a permanent fixture. On Nikon cameras, the eyepiece is actually two pieces: a glass disk to prevent debris and contact with the prism, and a rubber gasket surrounding that glass. While it is possible to replace one and not the other, I always replace both.

At around $10,and probably the cheapest photography item you’ll ever buy, the Nikon DK-19 replaces the simple rubber washer with a full rubber cup. This cup can either be used extended, to block out light from entering while looking through the viewfinder, or folded back onto itself to act like the original washer, but provide extra protection. The other half of the eyepiece, a little more pricey at $25, but still worth it, is the Nikon DK-17A. This replaces the standard glass disk with a higher quality glass featuring an anti-fog coating. If you ever plan to use this camera anywhere near a cold area, the eyepiece is almost guaranteed to fog up without an anti-fog coating. This eyepiece does a perfect job at stopping fog, something that the original glass is quite prone to. Read more