The Garden is Getting Glorious ... and My Camera May Be Dead

My trusty, ancient Nikon D70 is acting up.  I use it a lot during rose season to take photos of the garden in bloom.  The camera in my iPhone 8+ takes good photos, but the Nikon is better at capturing accurate, large, close-up images.  I really hope that this problem is something that can be easily sorted out.

Here are the facts:

In order to get the photo files from my camera to my computer, I download them directly from the camera to my PC, using a USB cable.  Earlier this morning, I hooked everything together, and highlighted, copied, and pasted the files like I always do.  There were about 40 photos, ... the last dozen or so came out distorted.  Corrupted files, I'm guessing.

IMG0247, looks perfect as it downloaded initially.

I deleted the wonky files from the PC, and attempted to download them again ... figuring that something went astray during the first transfer process.  This time, ALL of the files on the memory card were distorted.  They were compressed to one side and overlaid with black lines, lime green bars, and most of the frame was blank.

IMG0247 now looks like this, when viewed from the memory card.

A quick Google search and some reading on various forums indicated that the problem could be a bad memory card, faulty USB cable, or something REALLY wrong with the camera.

The easiest thing to test was the USB cable.  Tried to transfer files with another one ... same problem.

Switching out memory cards, and now I get a CHA error.  Turn the camera off, then back on, the error goes away.  I took a few test shots, which didn't write to the memory card, then the CHA error comes back.  This happened with all three of the three memory cards that I tried.  On my last attempt to transfer files to my PC, it got even worse:

Catastrophic failure is never a good thing.

Same error, and worsening chain of events, with two different USB cables and three memory cards, tells me that it's probably a camera issue.

So .... it looks like my iPhone will be my only photo-taking tool this season.  I am thankful to have it, because it really can take great photos. Folks over on Instagram saw this one that I took yesterday morning.

"Connie's Favorite Gallica" straight out of the phone, with watermark added in Photoshop.

I'm not giving up on the Nikon just yet.  It may be an easy fix.  I'll have to get a recommendation for a good camera shop and see what they say.