Nikon Spins-Off Firmware Development

Strange… Worrying… Do you know what your precious D3x without good firmware? Yeah- it’s expensive, Italian-designer industrial art.

That’s why I’m a little concerned that Nikon is making a joint venture with Fujitsu to engineer future firmware. It really makes you wonder what’s going on.

The only scenario I can think of that makes sense is:

Software development for devices like this is always a loss-center: you sell the camera, but then you have to upgrade the firmware and you don’t get any more money for it. So if you spin off that cost to a different company, then you’re basically getting the liabilities off your books and the MBA’s are probably telling them that it’ll help the horrible revenue/profit numbers that have been coming in. In addition- you can now hire yourself out, openly, as happy to make firmware for whomever wants it and try to generate some revenue from it.

There may be other reasons, but this scenario or similar ones are the only thing that fits.

The only easily accessible link to the press release is at dpReview.

Nikon D3/D700 Firmware Updates

Sorry I’m late to this one. No reports on issues with the update that I’ve seen:

D3 for Windows here

The following improvements have been made in version 2.01

- Geodetic information is now displayed in ViewNX Ver. 1.2.0 or later and Capture NX 2 Ver. 2.1.0 or later for images captured with the GPS Unit GP-1 mounted on the camera.
- Autofocus-response performance in focus mode C (Continuous-servo AF mode) with relatively dark subjects has been increased.
- When the AF-ON button is pressed, the monitor turns off and a focus point can now be selected using the multiselector.

- Photo information displayed in full-frame playback has been modified as follows:
HI-, LO- has been changed to Hi, Lo
WARM TONE has been changed to WARM FILTER
COLOR CUSTOM has been changed to COLOR BALANCE

- Manamah, displayed in the Time zone options for the World time item in the setup menu, has been changed to Manama.
- An issue that, in extremely rare cases, resulted in noticeable black dots in images captured with Long exp. NR in the shooting menu set to On has been resolved.
- When the Speedlight SB-800 was mounted on the camera with flash mode set to Distance-priority manual (GN) mode, and then the exposure meters were reactivated or the camera was turned on, the distance information displayed on the SB-800 changed.  This issue has been resolved.
- An issue that, in some rare cases, caused images captured with the following lenses to be under-exposed, has been resolved.
AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED
AF VR Zoom-Nikkor 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D ED (5.0x)

I’m interested to see how the black dots issue has been resolved- I’ve seen this on every exposure >8 seconds or so that I’ve taken at night. I figured it was due to the dark-frame subtraction of HOT pixels, maybe they’re detecting the hot pixels and not quite doing an exact subtraction. The effect was noticeable enough that for any shot that I cared about, I had to do PP to fix it.

D700 for Windows here

The following improvements have been made in version 1.01

- When Custom Setting a4 Focus tracking with lock-on was set to Off in Continuous-servo AF, the lens drive moved gradually without achieving focus.  This issue has been resolved.
- When the Speedlight SB-800 was mounted on the camera with flash mode set to Distance-priority manual (GN) mode, and then the exposure meters were reactivated or the camera was turned on, the distance information displayed on the SB-800 changed.  This issue has been resolved.
- When the Multi-Power Battery Pack MB-D10 was mounted on the camera and an EN-EL3e battery inserted in the camera but no batteries inserted in the MB-D10, and SB-900 flash mode set to TTL auto flash mode, the flash mode changed to A mode when the exposure meters turned off or were reactivated, or the camera was turned off or on.  This issue has been resolved.  (This issue has also been resolved with SB-900 firmware Ver. 5.02.)
- An issue that, in extremely rare cases, resulted in noticeable black dots in images captured with Long exp. NR in the shooting menu set to On has been resolved.
- Manamah, displayed in the Time zone options for the World time item in the setup menu, has been changed to Manama.

Basically the same as the D3 except with a battery pack issue.

Presumably, the USA versions will follow. What’s the difference between the Euro versions and the USA, etc, versions? I’m guessing that the only actual difference is in the text translations (”localization”).

So if you learned French (or if you’re a native speaker) or you prefer “whilst” to “while”, then here’s your Windows and here’s your Mac link.

What’s changed? Highlights include:

• The range of settings available for ISO sensitivity settings > ISO sensitivity auto control > Minimum shutter speed in the shooting menu has been increased from 1/250 – 1 s to 1/4000 – 1 s.
• A Copyright information item has been added to the setup menu.  When Copyright information is enabled, the copyright symbol (©) is shown in the shooting info display.
• Focus acquisition performance in dynamic-area AF mode has been improved.
• Focus acquisition performance with contrast-detect AF has been improved.
• Auto white balance performance has been improved.
• An issue that caused an increase in noise with shooting in [M] exposure mode at a shutter speed setting of bulb with the shutter held open for less than 8 seconds and Long exp. NR enabled has been resolved.
  
• An issue that prevented shutter release at the specified shutter speed when no operations were performed for 30 seconds in mirror up mode has been resolved.
  
• An issue that caused abnormal image display when  Image review was set to On and the playback zoom in button was pressed immediately after shooting at the following settings has been resolved.
• Image quality:  NEF (RAW ) + JPEG
  
• NEF (RAW) recording:  Lossless compressed or Compressed
• Image size: S or M