PhotographyBLOG reader Craig Coussins has alerted me to a potential issue with the Nikon MB-E5700 Battery Pack, and it seems with Nikon’s customer support. Craig is a Coolpix 8700 owner and recently experienced the problem outlined below when he tried to use some new NiMH 2400 mAh batteries.

“I thought that you would like to know this. Whether or not the Nikon 8700 is better than other digital cameras, I have one and use the 8700 battery pack (MB-E5700) with this. I recently upgraded the batteries from 2000 to 2400 but they did not work. I bought a new and expensive charger thinking that my old charger was not doing the job. Despite this the batteries still did not work I returned all 18 batteries to the vendor and they exchanged them. The new ones still did not work. I then asked Nikon about this and they replied that their cameras don’t take larger than 2000 rechargeable and if I did get them to work they would seriously damage the camera. Funny how most dealers are selling these higher grade batteries but neglect to inform us that a major company like Nikon can’t actually use these new higher grade batteries. I spent a fortune for nothing. I mentioned this issue to Jessop’s recently and they were amazed and completely unaware of this fact.”

Reader comments (see below) indicate that it is almost certainly an issue with the electrical contact between the batteries and the contacts in the battery pack. Have any other Nikon owners experienced something similar? Leave a comment and let me know.