What will a D300 cost you?

I don't know about UDMA cards, but I have tested among Sandisk Extreme III, Extreme IV and some Lexar 80x CF cards on my D2X. While there is some difference in write speed by perhaps 10 to 20%, the size of the buffer inside the camera is by far more important.

 

Apparently Nikon has not specified how many RAW files the D300's buffer can hold, nor how many the D3 can hold. Those two specifications were missing in the August 23 announcements. For JPEGs, the D300's buffer can hold 100 large/normal ones at 6 frames/sec; that indicates a deep buffer.

For Shun:

 

"Apparently Nikon has not specified how many RAW files the D300's buffer can hold...For JPEGs, the D300's buffer can hold 100 large/normal ones at 6 frames/sec; that indicates a deep buffer."

 

17 RAW frames is mentioned briefly here: http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/D300/D300A.HTM near the bottom under "New/upgraded features on the Nikon D300 compared to the D200:".

 

While slower than the D300, the D80 can also shoot 100 JPEGs as long as they are set to Large/Normal (it may in fact be able to do more, but the camera arbitrarily stops at that number, probably to try to prevent overheating the camera), for the D80 that number drops to 23 JPEGs when set to Large/Fine. DPR states that the D200 can shoot 37 Large/Fine JPEGs @ 5 fps.

 

Further complicating matters will be the issue of processing and writing 14-bit files (according to Thom Hogan, the Fuji S5's buffer capacity it reduced by about half when processing its highest quality files).

 

Currently, the D200 writes to CF cards slower than they are capable of reading the data, at least according to DPR here: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond200/page12.asp Like just about everything else about the D300 that is new, it remains to be seen how much of an improvement will be actually realized. If the camera lives up to Nikon's claims though, it will exceed the capacity of current CF cards to keep up and require more modern technology to fully realize its potential.

Anthony, in DPReview's D300 preview, it explicitely specifies that the D300's buffer size for RAW has "no data yet"

http://www.dpreview.com/previews/nikond300/page2.asp

and the same is true for the D3.

 

That is also not specified in Nikon's own D300 brochure:

http://nikonimaging.com/global/products/digitalcamera/slr/d300/pdf/d300_2p.pdf

 

Therefore, I would like to see some official confirmation from Nikon itself. 17 frames isn't a whole lot at 8 frames/sec. I have filled up my D2X's 17-frame RAW buffer a few more times than I would like to see (but certainly not that often), and that is at 5 frames/sec.

 

I doubt that 12 vs. 14 bits will make any major difference in final image quality, but if using 14 bits drops the frame rate, I would avoid it.

"...I would like to see some official confirmation from Nikon itself. 17 frames isn't a whole lot at 8 frames/sec."

 

For everyone except some at Nikon, it is all speculation at this point. I would not be surprised if the D2x benefited from faster CF cards as it appears to reach the benchmarks of the fastest cards tested at DPR; the D200 write speeds tested about 1 MB per second slower. Whether this plays a significant role in the capacity of the D300 buffer also remains to be seen; but it is a certainty that if the buffer flushes faster that will be a real advantage.

 

"I doubt that 12 vs. 14 bits will make any major difference in final image quality, but if using 14 bits drops the frame rate, I would avoid it."

 

For sports I would absolutely agree with you. For more methodical shooting though I would likely indulge myself with 14-bit files in much the same way that I currently choose uncompressed RAW over compressed RAW. Again, it is speculation and much will depend on how Nikon implements 14 bit NEF as more accuracy in shadows could be a tangible benefit in post processing those details in the files. It does raise another cost consideration (albeit relatively minor); larger 14-bit files will require more storage space.

I have tested my D2X with faster and slower CF cards, not in a real shooting situation but in my living room. I just took a bunch of shots as quickly as possible at 5 frames/second. On an Extreme IV, it might take 30 seconds to empty the entire buffer instead of 40 seconds on a older, slower Lexar card. There is a difference but it is not huge.

 

The real key is to have a deep buffer. In most actual shooting situations, there are pauses in the action so that there should be (plenty of) time to empty the buffer onto memory cards. For example, the D2Hs has a 40-frame RAW buffer. That is the kind of buffer depth I'd like to see on a sports DSLR such as the D3, but since the D2Hs is only 4MP, to achieve the same on a 12MP DSLR, you need a lot of costly memory. 40 frames is probably too much to expect from a prosumer-level D300.

First, in his correspondence with me, Thom Hogan seems to think the BL-3 is not necessary to use the EN-EL4a in the MB-D10. I am still investigating this and this will be definitively addressed in an anticipated follow-up thread to this one (probably sometime in December). Thom Hogan also is guessing that new L-plates will be required going from a D200 to a D300 (based on his most recent writings at his website).

 

Regarding the buffer size and the importance of UDMA CF cards, I received this email from Imaging-Resource's Technical Editor this morning:

 

Hi Tony,

 

We got that number from the Nikon folks when they briefed us on the D300. 17 14-bit NEFs, or 20 12-bit NEFs before the buffer fills and the burst rate slows down. That was with a SanDisk Extreme IV UDMA CompactFlash card. Of course that's not really the size of the buffer, as frames are being flushed to the card simultaneously. It's how many consecutive frames before it's full.

 

Zig Weidelich

 

The importance of the card used is still not clear here. At 2.5 fps shooting at 14-bits the buffer will take almost 7 seconds before 425 MB (my best guess at the approximate size of those files) have filled the buffer faster than it can be flushed. At 8 fps shooting at 12 bits it will take 2.5 seconds before 375 MB have filled the buffer faster than it can be flushed. This means that 4.5 additional seconds will allow the buffer to flush an additional 50 MB using the fastest currently available CF cards, an increase of perhaps 10-15% over the what the D2x does. As Shun says, the buffer will probably not be appreciably improved using the latest generation of CF cards, but increasing the speed that the buffer flushes by as much as 50% could often be very significant as waiting for the card to finish writing before changing it is often a critical bottleneck.

Just got a correction from Zig Weidelich:

 

"Sorry, I gave you D3 numbers. For the D300, they said 17 12-bit NEFs, at 6 or 8 fps. Didn't give us a 14-bit number."

 

Darn it, that means all that math in the last paragraph of the previous reply is not applicable. The most significant thing about the follow-up email is that it does not appear to make any difference if it takes 3 seconds or 2.5 seconds to fill the buffer, it is filled at 17 shots regardless and any further shots will require a pause for it to flush. Since there is only a small difference between 6 fps and 5 fps, it appears that the D300 will choke about 1 second sooner at 5 fps than the D200 (it's because of those larger files).

Phil Askey (DPReview) expliciately points out that the D300 drops to 2.5 frames/sec in the 14-bit NEF mode. Therefore, I would say the 14-bit mode is mainly for shooting still subjects.

I understand the implications of shooting 14 bits on the D300. Using it as a reference to the buffer was an attempt by me to calculate the implications of using various CF cards on the camera's buffer capacity vis-a-vis its flush rate.