The Sports Photo Guy

Nikon has announced two software updates this week, along with a firmware upgrade for the D3.  UPDATE: Nikon has confirmed the widely reported bug in the D3 firmware v1.10 and withdrawn the download.

Capture NX has been updated to v1.3.3.  No great news here, just a few changes to support the new D3 firmware features (see below) and bug fixes.

ViewNX has been updated to v1.04.  Again, the most notable changes have to do with accommodating the D3’s new firmware features.

The D3’s firmware has been updated to v1.10.  A major new feature is a “vignette control” addition to the shooting menu.  Also of note is the expansion of ranges for minimum shutter speed (increased from 1/250 to 1/4,000) for ISO sensitivity auto control — this makes the secret high-speed auto-ISO trick unnecessary and brings this capability to all shooting modes (not just manual).  WARNING: As reported on SportsShooter.com, there is a possible error in this firmware.  Although minor, you should weigh the value of the update to you until Nikon posts a fix.  Nikon has withdrawn the firmware update and posted the following explanation:

On April 15, 2008, an announcement was made on the Nikon website that the Ver. 1.10 firmware update for the D3 digital-SLR camera was available for download. However, it has been confirmed that when the following settings are applied with the updated firmware, image data may, in some rare cases, be corrupted. Therefore, we have terminated the firmware update download. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this issue may have caused.

• Release mode: Continuous high speed (CH), or Continuous low speed (CL) with Custom Setting d2 set to 9 fps
• Image area: FX format (36×24) or 5:4 (30×24)
• Image quality: NEF (RAW) or NEF (RAW) + JPEG fine/normal/basic
• NEF (RAW) recording>NEF (RAW) bit depth: 14-bit

  *The issue related to NEF (RAW) recording>NEF (RAW) bit depth may occur regardless of the option selected for NEF (RAW) recording>Type (Lossless compressed, Compressed, or Uncompressed).

Click here for Nikon’s complete information bulletin.

All links above are to the Windows versions of the updates.  Macintosh versions are also available.