Troubleshooting

A grey heron has stood in the shallows for twenty minutes. Its neck draws back, you press the shutter release fully, and nothing happens. There is no sound and no frame, only –E– in the control panel, the small status screen on the camera's top plate.

The camera is not broken. Both cards are still on the desk at home, and Slot empty release lock is doing the job it was set to do. Most trouble on this camera has that shape: a setting working as designed, or a limit reported in a short code few owners learn to read.

So this chapter is arranged by symptom. Each section gives the likely causes in the order worth checking, the fix, and a link to the chapter that explains the setting.

Page numbers in parentheses point to Nikon's Z6III Reference Guide, edition 09, which matches firmware 2.00.

01.Read the Camera Before You Restart

The Z6III reports trouble in two forms. An alert is a short code, often flashing, in the control panel and the shooting display, such as Full or Busy (pp. 923-924). An error message is a full sentence on the screen, such as No memory card. (p. 926). Read either before touching anything, because a restart clears the clue along with the fault.

When nothing is shown, Nikon's routine runs in a fixed order (p. 910). Check its lists of common problems, which this chapter rearranges by symptom. Then switch off, take the battery out, wait about a minute, refit it and switch on. After that come Nikon's websites and newer firmware, which Firmware and Updating covers, and last a Nikon-authorised service representative.

The minute matters, because the camera can go on writing to the card after the last frame (p. 910). Pulling a card or the battery, switching off, or unplugging a mains adapter while a card is being written or formatted risks losing data or damaging the card (p. 45). A frozen camera gets the same care: wait for recording or processing to end, switch off, and take the battery out only if it will not switch off. Whatever was being written at that moment is lost, but saved files are safe (p. 912).

02.The Camera Will Not Start or the Screens Stay Dark

Power First

Start with the battery. Its symbol steps down as the charge falls, and below the last step the camera shows Shutter release disabled. Recharge battery. and takes no pictures until the battery is charged or swapped (pp. 89, 926). A message that the battery cannot provide data has three causes, which Table 1 sorts out (p. 926). A genuine EN-EL15c carries a Nikon holographic seal, and Nikon warns that counterfeits can overheat, ignite, rupture or leak (p. 45).

If the battery will not charge in the camera, watch the charge lamp. A failed charge, from heat or from an older EN-EL15a, which Nikon says to charge only in an MH-25a charger, shows as the lamp blinking fast for about 30 seconds and then going out (pp. 91, 977). With USB in the network menu at iPhone or USB-LAN, the port neither powers nor charges the camera, so return it to MTP/PTP (p. 900). Batteries and USB Power covers charging, and Heat, Power and Recording Limits covers USB power.

Dark or Blurred Displays

If the camera is on but a screen stays dark, suspect the monitor mode button. Viewfinder only leaves the monitor dark, and Monitor only keeps the viewfinder dark even with your eye to it (p. 66). The eye sensor that switches between them also reacts to a finger held close, and dust can stop it working (pp. 65, 912). Viewfinder and Monitor Displays covers the modes and Limit monitor mode selection (p. 819).

Screens that go dark too soon are the standby timer, about 30 seconds unless you change it under c3 Power off delay (pp. 89, 661). The viewfinder may also refresh more slowly during roughly the last 20 seconds before the timer runs out (p. 913). At the default that leaves $30 - 20 = 10$ seconds after your last touch, which is why the view can stutter while you wait, motionless, for an animal to move. A half-press wakes everything.

A blurred viewfinder over sharp pictures is the diopter, the small control beside the eyepiece that matches the view to your eyesight. Lift it, turn it until the display is crisp and push it back (pp. 67, 912).

A camera slow to start is often searching a card crowded with files and folders (pp. 454, 913). A heat countdown the moment you switch on means the body is still hot, which can happen even with Auto temperature cutout at High (p. 830).

03.The Shutter Will Not Fire

A full press has to clear several checks before the shutter moves, and each has its own sign. Figure 1 puts them in the order worth checking, cheapest first.

The battery comes first because its message blocks everything (p. 926). Then the card. With none inserted, –E– shows (p. 933), and with Slot empty release lock at Release locked the shutter stays still (p. 859). Card Slots and File Handling recommends that lock, and the heron is its price: a refusal instead of a morning of frames never saved. A locked SD card raises a flashing Card (pp. 95, 925), and a card the camera cannot use brings For or Err (pp. 926-927).

Full flashing has two meanings: the card has no space, or the camera has run out of file numbers (p. 924). The second catches people holding a half-empty card, and Card Slots and File Handling explains how the numbers run out and how to recover.

Then the exposure mode. Choose Bulb or Time in M, switch to S, and the setting carries over and flashes, because S cannot use either. Pick a timed speed or return to M (pp. 913, 923).

Then focus priority. In AF-S at its default the camera fires only once it has focused, so a subject it cannot find leaves the focus point flashing red and the shutter locked (p. 121). Focus in Custom Setting a1 or a2 does the same in AF-C or AF-S (pp. 631, 632), as does a6 with Out-of-focus release at Disable (p. 637). The Focus Custom Settings gives this guide's pairings.

Last, processing and heat. Busy flashing means the camera is still processing, so wait (p. 923). With Long exposure NR at ON, an exposure slower than 1 s is followed by a noise-reduction pass, with Job NR flashing, and nothing can be shot until it ends (p. 475), as Long Exposure and Night explains. A heat countdown that reaches zero turns the camera off (p. 830).

Two things look like failures and are not. With Silent mode at ON neither the shutter nor the beep makes a sound (p. 914), so check playback before deciding the camera did not fire. And burst shooting is unavailable with HDR (p. 913).

04.Focus Will Not Lock

If the focus mode is MF, autofocus never runs, and AF-S, AF-C or AF-F brings it back (p. 913).

Next, ask whether the subject is one autofocus finds hard. Nikon's list comes down to too little contrast, a subject smaller than the focus point, regular patterns such as blinds, lines parallel to the frame's long edge, harsh brightness differences inside the point, changing light such as neon, and star filters (p. 913). The fix is to focus on something else at the same distance, hold focus and recompose (p. 134). How Autofocus Works on the Sensor explains why these defeat the camera.

In AF-C a focus point that starts flashing means the camera can no longer focus. Release the button and press again (p. 913).

AF-C never locks on a half-press, by design, because it keeps tracking while the button is held. Nikon's fix is the centre of the sub-selector, the small joystick on the back (pp. 134, 914), but this guide's button map reassigns that press, as Custom Controls records. Here focus is held the way Back-Button Focus teaches: with a6 AF activation at AF-ON only, lift your thumb from AF-ON and focus stays put (p. 135).

If a half-press does nothing at all, a6 AF activation is probably at AF-ON only, where the shutter-release button no longer starts autofocus (p. 637). That is the point of back-button focus, and a puzzle for anyone who borrows the camera. If the focus point will not move, the AF-area mode is probably Auto-area AF, where the camera picks the point (p. 914), and AF-Area Modes covers the alternatives.

If focus hunts but never reaches the subject, look for the focus limiter icon. Custom Setting a15 confines autofocus to a range whose near and far limits you set anywhere from 0.1 m to 999 m, so a subject outside it cannot be focused (p. 648), and Nikon wants a lens's own limit switch at FULL while a15 is in use (p. 650). On the Nikkor Z 180-600mm f/5.6-6.3 VR, the lens switch alone can put a near bird out of reach, because its second position limits focus to 6 m and beyond (180-600mm lens guide, p. 13), as Focus Limiter, Saved Positions and Manual Focus explains.

In a dark room, the AF-assist illuminator, a lamp on the front that lights the subject for autofocus, stays dark with a11 at OFF, in AF-C, in manual focus and in video (p. 916). This guide sets a11 to OFF to spare animals the light, so a dark lamp is expected.

05.Exposure or Colour Looks Wrong

The Display and the Picture Disagree

When the picture does not match the screen, check Custom Setting d10 View mode (photo Lv). At Adjust for ease of viewing the display ignores settings that change exposure and colour, and with Show effects of settings set to the Only when flash is not used choice it does the same for brightness whenever a flash is ready to fire (pp. 673, 914). Viewfinder and Monitor Displays keeps d10 at its default, which shows the settings' effects.

In M with a fixed ISO, exposure compensation moves only the exposure indicator, while with Auto ISO on the ISO follows it (p. 152), as ISO and Auto ISO explains. A camera that is always slightly bright or dark may have a value hidden in b6 Fine-tune optimal exposure, which shows no icon (p. 657), and Metering keeps it at zero for that reason.

When the Shutter Speed Flashes

If the exposure indicator flashes together with the shutter speed or aperture, the scene is outside what the camera can expose at the current settings (p. 924). For too much light, Nikon's remedies include a lower ISO, a faster speed in S and a smaller aperture in A, and for too little they run the other way (p. 924).

Here is how that happens. You spend a morning indoors at ISO 400 with the Nikkor Z 85mm f/1.8 S, step into a sunny garden for a portrait in A at f/1.8, and the shutter speed starts flashing. The sunny 16 rule shows why. It is a photographers' rule of thumb, not a Nikon figure: in bright direct sun, a mid-toned subject is correctly exposed at f/16 with a shutter time of $1/S$ seconds, where $S$ is the ISO setting.

Write $N$ for the f-number and $t$ for the shutter time in seconds. The light reaching the sensor through the lens is proportional to $1/N^2$, so to keep the same exposure the shutter time must grow in proportion to $N^2$. Starting from the rule's f/16,

$$t = \frac{1}{S} \left( \frac{N}{16} \right)^2 = \frac{N^2}{256\,S}.$$

At $N = 1.8$ and $S = 400$,

$$t = \frac{1.8^2}{256 \times 400} = \frac{3.24}{102\,400} \approx \frac{1}{31\,600} \text{ s}.$$

The fastest speed on offer is 1/8000 s, or 1/16000 s with the electronic shutter (p. 1000). A stop is a doubling or halving of light, and the required time is shorter than 1/8000 s by a factor of $31\,600 / 8000 \approx 3.95$, which is $\log_2 3.95 \approx 2$ stops. At 1/8000 s the picture comes out about two stops too bright, and the flashing display is the camera saying so. Even 1/16000 s leaves it about one stop over, since $31\,600 / 16\,000 \approx 1.98$.

Return to ISO 100, the lowest standard setting (p. 1001), and the same formula gives $t = 3.24 / 25\,600 \approx 1/7900$ s, just inside the limit. Close down to f/2.8 as well and $t = 7.84 / 25\,600 \approx 1/3300$ s, comfortably inside. The camera's remedy, a lower ISO, is the one the arithmetic points to.

Colour, Spots and Smudges

Colour that drifts has a few usual causes. A preset manual white balance reading fails when the reference is too dark or too bright (p. 916), as White Balance covers. A Picture Control at Auto, or with Quick sharp, Contrast or Saturation at A, changes from frame to frame by design (p. 916). And Picture Control effects on raw files show only in Nikon's software, such as NX Studio, so the same file looks different in another editor (p. 919).

Bright specks or fog can come from heat in the camera's circuits, so Nikon suggests switching off between uses (p. 915). For bright spots that persist, Pixel mapping in the setup menu checks the image sensor, with a Z mount lens or FTZ adapter fitted and a full battery or mains power (p. 834).

Dark smudges are dirt on a lens element or on the sensor (p. 915), which Sensor Cleaning and Weather deals with. With a flash in use, the shutter cannot go faster than the sync speed unless Auto FP is set (p. 914), a limit Flash explains.

06.Banding and Flicker

Horizontal bands, or brightness that changes from frame to frame under artificial light, are flicker: the lamps pulse with the mains supply and the camera catches them mid-pulse. For video, set Video flicker reduction to the local mains frequency (pp. 600, 914). For stills, Photo flicker reduction targets fluorescent and mercury-vapour lamps (p. 483), and High-frequency flicker reduction lets you adjust the shutter speed in finer steps in S and M while watching the display for the speed with the least banding (p. 485). A flashing sign or someone else's flash can also leave a bright band in a single frame (p. 915).

Shutter Types, Rolling Shutter and Flicker explains why the bands appear and when each setting helps, so this chapter stops at the diagnosis.

07.Video That Stops

Nikon lists six reasons recording ends on its own: the clip reaches its maximum length, the battery runs out, the shooting mode changes, the photo/video selector moves, the lens comes off, or the camera gets too hot inside (p. 109). The maximum is 125 minutes, and a slow card can end a clip sooner (p. 212). When the card cannot keep up, the camera shows Recording interrupted. Please wait., and the cure is a faster card or a different Frame size/frame rate (p. 927), which Cards and Data Rates for Video works through. Heat, Power and Recording Limits covers heat and clip length.

A no-video icon means video cannot be recorded at the current settings, and raw video cannot go to an SD card at all (p. 212). A message that a file cannot be saved to the destination card means a file of 4 GB or more is headed for a card not formatted in exFAT, the file system that allows files that large, so use a card larger than 64 GB formatted in the camera (p. 928).

Footage with no sound has three usual causes: the wrong Audio input selection, Audio input sensitivity at Microphone off, or a manual sensitivity set too low (p. 917). Audio and Timecode covers all three.

08.Card and Battery Messages

Table 1 collects the messages worth learning first. The bold text is what the camera shows, cut short where it runs long, and the rest is my wording.

The heat message is one message with two causes, the camera's internal temperature or the battery's, and the cures differ: stop shooting for the first, take the battery out and let it cool for the second (p. 927). Err flashing in the control panel without a card message means a camera malfunction. Press the shutter-release button again, and if it keeps happening, see a service representative (p. 925).

Two habits prevent most card trouble. Format every card in the camera, never in a computer, and reformat in the camera any card that a computer or another camera has formatted (pp. 45, 808). And leave a card in place while it is being written or formatted (p. 45). First-Day Setup covers formatting.

09.When Pictures Seem to Be Missing

Missing pictures are usually hidden ones. Playback folder at All shows every folder, which also clears Folder contains no pictures. (pp. 917, 918). With raw plus JPEG or HEIF, playback shows only the JPEG or HEIF copy, though both files are on the card (p. 917). A picture that will not delete is probably protected (p. 918). Upright pictures shown sideways point to Record camera orientation or Auto-rotate pictures at OFF (p. 917). Playback and Culling in the Camera covers these settings.

10.When a Connection Fails

Check Airplane mode first for any wireless failure. At ON it switches off Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and the link to an ML-L7 remote together (p. 872).

If the camera's network name never appears on the phone, confirm that Airplane mode is OFF, that Bluetooth connection under Connect to smart device is ON, and that Wi-Fi connection (AP mode) is enabled (p. 920). Automatic upload that stalls is often SnapBridge's Foreground link mode, which uploads only while the app is on screen (p. 920). A hot camera interrupts wireless transfer, with the Wi-Fi indicator flashing rapidly (pp. 920, 933). SnapBridge, Nikon Imaging Cloud and the Authenticity Service covers pairing.

When an ML-L7 remote will not pair, Nikon's checks are a charged battery, Airplane mode at OFF, USB at MTP/PTP, no other USB, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connection, and a camera that is not hot. When the camera ignores a paired remote, press the remote's power button and confirm that Wireless remote connection (ML-L7) is ON (p. 921).

Over a cable, USB decides what the port is for: MTP/PTP for computers and Android phones, USB-LAN for a USB-to-Ethernet adapter, and USB streaming (UVC/UAC) for live streaming (pp. 900, 922). When a computer will not copy pictures from the camera, a card reader will (p. 919). Network failures show as an error in the status line of the Connect to computer screen, and the Connect to FTP server screen adds Err. codes (pp. 377, 380-383). NX Studio and Tethered Shooting covers the computer connection.

A monitor or recorder that shows nothing calls for the HDMI cable first, then a look at External rec. cntrl (HDMI), which can upset the picture at ON (pp. 918-919). HDMI and External Monitors covers the output settings.

A wrong date on every picture is the camera's clock, which Nikon says is less accurate than most watches, so check it regularly (pp. 813, 921). First-Day Setup sets it.

11.Last Resorts

A greyed-out menu item is usually blocked by another setting rather than broken, because some items are unavailable in certain combinations (p. 921). When the culprit cannot be found, Reset all settings keeps only Language and Time zone and date and returns everything else to its default (p. 865).

The reset is blunt. It also clears copyright information and wireless network profiles, and it cannot be undone, so save your settings first with Save/load menu settings (pp. 865, 911), as User Settings and Settings Files shows. A fault that survives the reset and current firmware belongs with a Nikon-authorised service representative (p. 910).

12.Beginner Mistakes

• Restarting before reading the control panel, which clears the clue.
• Pulling the battery or a card the moment a burst ends, while the camera may still be writing (pp. 45, 910).
• Reading Full as a full card when the camera may have run out of file numbers (p. 924).
• Formatting a card in a computer, or skipping the in-camera format after one has been in a computer (pp. 45, 808).
• Blaming SnapBridge or a remote when Airplane mode is on (p. 872).
• Running Reset all settings without saving first (pp. 865, 911).

13.Related Chapters

• Card Slots and File Handling, for the release lock and running out of file numbers.
• Heat, Power and Recording Limits, for heat warnings, clip length and USB power.
• Cards and Data Rates for Video, for a card that interrupts recording.
• The Focus Custom Settings, for focus and release priority.
• Shutter Types, Rolling Shutter and Flicker, for why bands appear.
• SnapBridge, Nikon Imaging Cloud and the Authenticity Service, for phone pairing and upload.
• HDMI and External Monitors, for a monitor or recorder that shows nothing.