D800 Battery Order with Vertical Grip

[AndrewGentle]

I just received a third party vertical grip for my D800. I had the battery order (setting D12) set to the grip first and attached it without a battery inserted into the grip itself. The camera wouldn't boot up, complaining of low battery, even though there was a charged battery in the body. It wasn't until I removed the grip and changed the order to body first that it was able to power on with the grip attached. Switching the order back to grip and putting the battery in the grip itself also works fine.

I found this behaviour odd, I would have assumed that not having a battery in the grip, the camera would fall back on the body if that is the order set. Is it possible that I needed a flat battery in the grip instead of no battery at all? Perhaps it's a bug because the grip is not an official Nikon product (it's the Meike version).

Any insight would be appreciated. I'm going to do some more testing tonight, perhaps I overlooked something.

[deejaysoul]

Im having the same issue, but what I also noticed it doesn't work with the AAs (the dead battery icon blinks). I tried with two different sets of new batteries.

[newtodvx100a]

You raised my curiosity regarding my new Bower grip and my D7000. Settings are set to grip, camera boots up with no battery in grip. Camera switches automatically.

[kawikao]

I saw the same issue this weekend. No battery in the grip disables the camera power-on and regular AAs don't show any info in the battery info screen. I also don't get the 6fps as the Nikon one does. I guess a 3rd party grip Version 2 is in order.