The Sports Photo Guy

For a measly $500, Nikon will upgrade the buffer in your $5,000 D3.  What a deal?

Nikon has recently announced a Buffer Memory Expansion service for the D3.  Send your camera in to Nikon, and for $500, they will roughly double the buffer memory.  This will boost the number of consecutive shots by more than 100% for RAW formats, and up to 130 frames for most JPG formats.

Nikon loves to repeat itself, and indeed, this program mirrors the “Buffer Service Enhancement” for the D1x announced five years ago.  However, the D1x had been in service for a couple of years when Nikon made the buffer upgrade available; the first D3’s are still under warranty right now.  Not sure I’d be too happy about this 10% price increase if I were a D3 owner, especially on the heels of the introduction of the $3000 D700.