Customers have been offered a new D610 if they drop their claim against the firm, according to an email, purportedly from US law firm Zimmerman Reed, posted on the fredmiranda.com website.

In the email, Brian Gudmundson, a partner at the Minneapolis-based law firm, apparently states: ‘As a result of your involvement in the Nikon D600 camera lawsuit, Nikon has offered to immediately provide you with a new D610 camera, in exchange for settling your individual claim.’  

Asked to respond to the story, which first emerged on Nikon Rumors, Nikon’s UK office told Amateur Photographer: ‘We won’t be commenting on this. It’s a report on a post taken from a third-party website and is not from Nikon.

‘If a customer is having problems with their D600, they should check the service and support website and send their product in for service.’

At the time of writing, Brian Gudmundson had yet to respond to an emailed request for comment lodged yesterday.

The 37-page class-action complaint, filed on behalf of customers against New York-based Nikon Inc, claimed that the spots in question appear in the ‘upper left corner’ of customers’ pictures.

The complaint alleged that ‘the oil and dust spotting in the D600 is the result of a defective shutter mechanism which consistently splatters oil and dust onto the camera’s image sensor’.

In March, Nikon pledged to replace customers’ D600 if a parts replacement service repeatedly failed to resolve the problem.

The D600 was announced in September 2012.