D70 firmware upgrade

[shrapnel]

Hi Tim, i just thought there might have been a US UK difference like there always seems to be in most electronic objects and formats if you know what i mean. I'll email them for sure but i just thought some of the "techies" on this forum might have an idea.

Thanks for replying

regards

chris

[SmartWombat]

Video output is one difference - US is Never Twice the Same Color, or NTSC
France uses Systeme Elegant Contra AMericain, or SECAM
A lot of the rest of the world uses PAL

[shrapnel]

Well i emailed Nikon yesterday, and they replied straight away (very impressive), telling me that i would have to download the firmware from Nikon USA, for the simple reason that i would not be able to register my product on the UK site, hence not being able to download the firmware. I also asked them if there was any difference between the two, and they said none whatsoever.

Regards

Chris

PS: Smartwombat, i never knew what those stood for!!

[lidarman]

BTW, The firmware upgrade is available now. I downloaded and installed it today. The menus have a fresh look and apparently, ther 5 spot focus has been improved.

[MJS]

I did my upgrade via remote-control, I had Deckcadet do it since he is a speed demon on such matters. I like the autofocus, it seems to be faster and the menu's look cooler. If you are shooting in RAW, you will notice increased capacity on your cards.

[OldSchool]

Thanks for the update all.

MJS, just a minor correction.... As I understand it, there is no increased card capacity. It's just that the old firmware was super conservative when calculating how more free room there was for NEF files. This has been corrected now.

BR,
Tim

[MJS]

You are absolutely correct. 2 gigs is still 2 gigs. I can just cram more stuff into that bag. Used to be 190 shots, now its 360. Gotta love that with a trip to London and Paris coming this summer. I only have 3 and a half gigs of cards and don't want to travel with my laptop. I'll probably pick up a portable HD with card reader. Now if I could just figure where to get the green for that tokina 12-24 f/4.

[OldSchool]

Whoops! MJS. I think I wasn't clear. You will not be able to store more NEFs on your card with the v2.0 firmware. I'll try again becuase I don't want you to go on a trip thinking you get to snap more images with the same card (actually, you were able to snap more than you thought!).

The version 1.x firmware didn't do a good job of computing available space for NEF files. It was under-predicting to provide a conservative value. So, when you put in a empty 512 MB card, it told you you had room for 44 (or something) NEFs. As you continue to shoot, that number updates (but is still conservative). If you shoot on that card till it was full, you would typically get 80 (or so) images. Again, this is v1.x FW.

The NEFs are compressed. Depending on the complexity of the image, the amount of compression differes. So, your D70 with the v1.x FW errored on the low side just in case you descided to shoot only super complex images. The old rule of thumb with the 1.x FW was to take the remaining possible NEFs and multiply it by 2.

The new FW version 2.0 uses a "typical" NEF size when computing remaining capacity. Thus, the higher values. And agian, if you fill the card, you will not be able to cram more images on it even though you have updated the FW.

If your 2G card says you can get 360 images, then that's about what you were able to actually do before you upgraded the firmware. Does this make sense?

Cheers,
Tim

p.s. Check out this thread. There are many more like it if you do a search.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/re...essage=9828560


pp.s. I've just updated firmware. No problems. Just do them one at a time (starting with A).