Camera Help!!

[nu2scene]

Hi everyone. I've been busy the past few weeks. I've moved from Florida to Las Vegas. For the move I mailed my camera (Nikon D50) to myself. I packed it into it's original box and padded that into another box. The whole thing got here nicely. Everything seemed fine.

Yesterday I took out my camera hoping to get some shooting in. But I think I have some sort of problem. The camera tries to autofocus, the lens goes up and down once, but the focus is not locked in. The little green focus light blinks inside the view finder, indicating the focus is not locked in. The camera will not take the picture. I've tried multiple lenses and the same thing happens. I can take a picture with manual focus though.

I took some pictures with the camera before I left Florida, and it seemed fine at the time. Anybody have any ideas or suggestions? I'd really appreciate your help.

[genevh]

If this is happening with all your lenses (did you ship them also?) it sounds like something may have happened to the camera in transit even though everything looks fine. Make sure all your camera settings are correct. You could try resetting it to the factory default settings. If you can get access to another lens (go "shopping" for one and take your camera) and see if it does the same thing. If it still doesn't work properly, you may need to get it serviced.

[GaryK]

I'm not sure how the Nikons mate up but it could be just some foam or dirt on one of the contacts where the lens and body meet. even a loose screw causing the contacts to not mate properly will cause weird things to happen. Maybe a button got pushed putting your camera into a different mode so the AF is trying to do something else???

[douglas m scott]

Or maybe the battery is too low for auto focus.
doug

[Not4wood]

Try removing the Lens and then re-attach it. Also, double check all of your camera settings to make sure nothing is off and throwing your Focus off.

I agree with the above comment, try resetting to the factory defaults by hitting all three buttons at the same time. I don't have the D50 but the D80 and I did have this problem once before where I had to re-set to the factory defaults and haven't had a problem since. I had changed one of the settings in the Camera Menu and for some reason the camera didn't like this change to the other settings I had the camera on. Once I did a reset, all was well again.

Also, not only make sure your batteries are charged but also verify you have a Memory Card in place and also that there is room for another shot.

[nu2scene]

Thank you everyone for responding and offering suggestions. I tried everything, and it didn't seem to help. I called Nikon and discussed it with them. They feel I need to send the camera in for evaluation. So I guess I'll be sending it in. Hopefully it's not too complicated to fix.