Chris Searle
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Updating D4S firmware
2016-01-06 Photography
nikond4sfirmware

My Nikon D4S had the C firmware 1.20 and L firmware (Distortion Control Data) 2.005. C 1.30 and L 2.009 were available.

I need to do the update from a mac.

C Firmware

Downloading the C firmware was simple.

It downloads a F-D4S-V130M.dmg which contains a D4SUpdate directory that has a D4S_0130.bin file.

copy that to the root of your memory card
plug that back into the camera
Menu -> Setup -> Firmware Version -> Update

L Firmware

This was harder.

Downloading gives you a S-DCDATA-002009MF-ALLIN-32BIT_.dmg which in turn contains a S-DCDATA-002009MF-ALLIN-32BIT_ app.

Starting this prompts you to select language (and if you need it region) - and then starts an installer.

This installer fails with the following error:

The installer could not install the software because there was no software found to install

OK - so - some googling - here's how I did it.

With the dmg still open - crack open a terminal.

cd /Volumes/S-DCDATA-002009MF-ALLIN-32BIT_/Packages/Distortion\ Control\ Data.pkg/Contents
cp Archive.pax.gz ~
cd
gzip -d Archive.pax.gz
pax -r < Archive.pax
cd tmp/jp.co.nikon.installer.apppkg/Nikon
open .

That should open a finder window with the .bin file sitting in it. Did for me - then you just do the same thing as for C above.

That is:

change to the directory on disk that is the mounted dmg file - then into a Packages/Distortion\ Control\ Data.pkg/Contents directory within that. Note that if you mount more than once or have a different version of the .dmg then the path here will need adjusting
get the Archive.pax.gz file and copy it to home directory
change to home directory
uncompress the pax file from gzip format
expand the pax file to its component files - this creates in this case a relative directory called tmp
change to tmp/jp.co.nikon.installer.apppkg/Nikon
open it in finder