Last week, I charged one of my D80 battery's to only about half way, because I was running low on time. We were trying to get out the door to take my daughter to a Christmas function.

When I got to where we were going, I pulled the camera out and put it on "auto" for the sake of not holding up the crowd. But the camera blinked "off", while it was obviously on.

I power cycled it, and it came back on, and I was able to take about 3 or 4 shots. Then it started to flash "off" again.

I turned it off, took the battery out and re-seated it again.

This time, we got in front of Santa, and I went to take pics again. It flashed off, I cycled it, got off 4 or 5 pics then back to flashing "off" again.

I thought that it was a low light issue, but on Christmas morning I was trying to take pics, and had the same issues. The difference was that I had time to fully charge the battery.

None the less, same problems. The damn thing is not even usable.

Anyone have any idea what the issue might be?

 

Never mind...

I changed lenses, and it seems that re-seating a lens fixes the problem. So I actually think that perhaps the firmware got out of whack somehow in a low light situation.

I'm only guessing, but when nothing else worked, I resort to cave man and start taking stuff apart. In this case, it seems to have worked. I've chased my wifes a** around in her robe taking pics to test...

 

That happens to me sometimes on my D200 if the lens isn't seated quite as tight as it should be and other times, I have had to just take the batteries out and put them back in before it works fine. Glad you got it figured out. It shouldn't shut off just because it's in a low-light situation. If it keeps doing it, maybe consider sending it in to Nikon or as you already thought of, updating the firmware.

 

A friend of mine had the same issue when his lens wasn't fasten tightly enough to his camera, so maybe it's this ... Since he re-installed his firmware he had no trouble anymore. Try to see on Nikon forums if it already happend to other people ...