The Nikon D3100 camera disaster, a thank you, and a recommendation.

Back when the weather was fine, I was out in the garden taking some nice photos at a barbecue party. All was well until I dropped my beloved Nikon D3100 camera onto concrete.... The lens developed a bit of lateral play in the zoom, but it was still working OK....

... until it stopped auto-focusing a couple of weeks later ...

Nothing to it, but to investigate.

I proved the lens was at fault by borrowing another lens from a friend. The camera body was fine...

So I stripped the lens down... sadly I don't have any pictures.

There was a bush missing, which was causing the play, so I fabricated a new one and fitted it. Lateral play issue resolved.

I managed to find the old bush, in two parts, jammed up against the primary lens cover.

 Auto focus was still not working... damn.

At this point I decided to get another lens.

Whilst looking on eBay, I spotted a replacement lens. The description was perfect, but it showed pictures of a Cannon lens. I emailed the seller, who replied, thanking me for spotting the error, and they had corrected the listing. By this stage I had purchased another lens from another dealer.

The box arrived after a few days wait..... Now I'd done a bit of research on the lens before I hit the buy button. Nikon's website informed me the lens was compatible "with all DX cameras"... and mine's a DX camera....

... what they didn't say was the auto-focus wasn't compatible with all DX cameras (well, they do, but you've really got to go looking for the information!)... boo. I needed an AF-S lens, and the new one was AF-P.

I emailed the dealer that had originally listed the correct lens wrongly on eBay (the Canon one) asking if they'd part-ex my new, but incorrect lens for the right one.

They emailed back straight away, and said they'd be happy to swap it for me anyway (despite the fact I never bought it from them!) Now that's service. I suppose I could have sent the wrong lens back, but that would have been hassle....

As a deal wasn't done on eBay, I can't even leave them positive feedback....

So thank you eBay seller alldigital0869. (Shop is called The Photographers Bag link here.) You're the best.

The two recommendations are :

1) Don't drop your camera.
2) Use alldigital0869 on eBay with complete confidence!

There's some posts in the pipe-line with photo's taken with my old Samsung camera, but, rest-assured the Nikon is back!