The Sports Photo Guy

Nikon has released firmware upgrades for the D3 (to v2.00) and the D300 (v1.03).

The D3 firmware includes the following features (taken from Nikon USA web site):

•  Images captured with “Rotate tall”, in the playback menu, set to “On”, are not automatically rotated for display immediately after capture (image review).
• The following changes and additions have been made to “f4: Assign FUNC.Button > FUNC. Button + dials” ; “f5: Assign preview button > Preview + command dials”, and “f6: Assign AE-L / AF-L button > AE-L / AF-L + command dials” menus in Custom Settings:
• The “Choose image area” option has been separated into two options, “Choose image area (FX / DX / 5:4)” and “Choose image area (FX / DX)”
• A new “Shooting menu bank” option has been added.
• When “Choose image area (FX / DX / 5:4)” or “Choose image area (FX/DX)” is selected and the function button (Fn) is pressed, the image area setting is displayed in the top control panel, in the shooting information display, and at the bottom of the viewfinder.
• 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.
• “Recent settings” can now be displayed in place of “My Menu”.
• The virtual horizon can now be displayed with shooting in LiveView mode.
• The “Vignette control” setting can now be confimed in shooting information.
• The “Vignette control” item in the shooting menu now supports all types of G- and D-type lenses, except DX and PC lenses.
• The “Vignette control” compensation value has been optimized for shooting with “Active D-Lighting”  the shooting menu.
• Electronic analog exposure displays are now shown in the control panel and shooting info display while the exposure compensation setting is being applied.
• The degree of the “High ISO NR” setting can now be confirmed in the shooting info display while the “High ISO NR” setting item, in the shooting menu, is being applied.
• Design of the FX-format icon in the “Choose image area” setting has been modified.
• Ankara, Riyadh, Kuwait, and Manamah have been added to the “Time zone” options for the “World Time” item in the setup menu.
• When a GPS device is used and no heading information is available, –.–° is now displayed for the “Position > Heading” option in the “GPS” item in the setup menu.
• When shooting in LiveView mode using Camera Control Pro 2 (ver. 2.2.0) or later with a PC-E lens, the aperture setting can now be adjusted from the computer.
• Autofocus performance has been improved.
• Auto White Balance performance has been improved.
• An issue that, in some rare circumstances, caused the battery indicator to blink, regardless of actual battery charge, has been resolved.
• Errors in the German help displays have been corrected.

The D300 firmware includes only one change: to address the “dead battery syndrome” some users have experienced.  (For the record, I have not seen this in either of my D300s so I have no plans to upgrade.)

The new firmware can be downloaded from the following links at Nikon USA:

D3 - Windows
D3 - Mac

D300 - Windows
D300 - Mac