D300 Firmware Upgrade available

[pressld2]

As there's a few of us using this camera now I thought I'd mention that there's a new release of the A firmware available from the Nikon Web site at Nikon UK - Home.

Originally Posted by Nikon Web Site

The D300 has two different sets of firmware, A and B. This download upgrades the A firmware to version 1.02 only.
This firmware resolves an issue which, in rare cases, causes vertical bands to appear in images captured at shutter speeds slower than 8 seconds.

The firmware was released on 12 Feb so if you bought yours very recently it may already have this version installed.

I've just installed it. I had a battery at 100% capacity in the camera and one at 53% in the battery grip and the first time I tried it told me "Battery too low"! So I disconnected the battery grip and tried again. This time no problems and it took about 20-30 seconds rather than the "several minutes" quoted on screen.

Dave P.

[peterjclarke]

Dave, Interesting! I've not got the grip yet and was wondering if it is worth it. I had them for the D200's I've owned and now the battery is different an thus you have to buy a new charger. I was amazed at how much more efficient the D300 is on the batteries Do you reckon the MBD10 is worth it?
Peter

[pressld2]

In terms of the extra battery power, probably not. I spent a full day at Stodmarsh yesterday and started with both batteries fully charged. The camera was on permanently from 8:30am to 5pm and I took a little over 600 shots. This used less than half the power in one battery.

The extra power might come in useful if you use the pop-up flash extensively, and you, being based in Scotland, might find it useful in the winter months as cold weather drains the batteries quicker.

But I do find the grip to be extremely useful when shooting in portrait mode. I never had one (don't think they ever made one) for my D70 so it's a treat to have the shutter release button and command dials on the battery grip. The MBD10 even has a multi-selector for switching focusing points but this is smaller and quite fiddly compared to the main one on the camera. Usable but fiddly.

Dave P.

[peterjclarke]

Thanks Dave. I did miss the controls on the battery pack when shooting portrait on the D300. On the whole I found the D200 batteries were pretty good in cold weather and in zero to minus ten degrees One would last a day taking 300+ shots.

Peter

[pressld2]

That's pretty good. Shortly before buying mine I read a review of the D300 where someone was complaining about only getting 50 shots out of a fully charged battery before it died. Then I read on and discovered he was in Canada and shooting at minus 30 degrees C! I stopped worrying at that point!

Dave P.

[peterjclarke]

Dave, I did manage to drain a battery in an hour. I was photographing star trails with the D200 in minus 20 but the shot was no good due to light pollution and horizontal banding. The camera froze and has not been the same since. I'm going to go back to film for star trails.
P

[pressld2]

A and B firmware upgrades are now available from the Nikon site at http://nikoneurope-en.custhelp.com/c...&p_nav=#tabtop

Both are version 1.03. I've just installed them with no problems at all. They haven't fixed the under-estimate of shots remaining though. The camera still shows 197 shots for an empty 4Gb card but I always get around 350.

Dave P.

[pressld2]

A new release of both A and B firmware taking us up to v1.10 was made available at the back end of October. You'd think that being a registered owner they'd email me to let me know but no, I have to stumble across the info by accident.

Lots of fixes to very minor things that I would never have come across (e.g. the absence of Ankara in the time zone options) but a few items look interesting:

- 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.

Still no mention of the incorrect shots remaining count. I haven't installed it yet so don't know if that's fixed. I'll load it up tonight and let you know.

Dave P.

[DrNickBurton]

Dave, that update also increases the frame rate slightly when using 14-bit RAW. This for me was the main improvement. I didn't notice any improvement in the AF acquisition to be honest.

The incorrect frame count thing (I assume you mean the thing about the LCD read-out of the number of remaining shots being, shall we say, erratic?) can't be fixed as it's inherent to shooting loss-less compressed NEFs. My D700 does exactly the same thing, and I expect the D3 does too.

[pressld2]

No, I can't say that I noticed any difference with the previous two updates and I'm not really expecting anything obvious from this one. I think it's worth staying at the latest version though.

Originally Posted by DrNickBurton

I assume you mean the thing about the LCD read-out of the number of remaining shots being, shall we say, erratic?

Mine's not erratic, it's very consistent. It's just that it's consistently wrong! My D70 was the same when I first got it but then they released a firmware upgrade and it was much much closer to a realistic number. I appreciate it could never be exact as the file size can very quite a lot according to the subject.

Dave P.