Nikon D300 and D70 RAW support broken

Question

I am an Aperture 1.5 user that recently upgraded to 2.x due to my purchase of a D300. I was shooting a D70 before.
I am just sort of getting my Aperture library back in shape (sold my G5 and moved completely to MBP until there is a Sub 2k machine that takes two external monitors and/or apple offers matte displays). I started importing some pictures from my D300 which were made with firmware 1.1. The first thing I noticed is that the autostack on import wasn't working. Moving the time domain slider over does nothing until I reach the far right hand side when it stacks the whole flash card full of files together.
The other odd thing I noticed right off is that it does not auto-rotate shots done in portrait. After noticing that, I changed the import view to the "spreadsheet" format and all of the metadata was blank. Another side effect was that I imported some photos and had aperture place them on a network drive using the year/month of the pictures as the directory structure. This resulted in all of the shots going into a folder structure of 2000/1/ which is completely incorrect as the shots were taken last month and have a correct date/time stamp in the exif header in the files as well as on the actual files themselves.
I though, perhaps I need to have the 1.10 firmware upgrade on my D300, so I applied that and shot some test pictures with the same result, autostack broken, autorotate broken, no metadata at import. I checked the picture post-import and the metadata seemed to all be there (F-stop, picture orientation, lens data, etc...). I though this might be a bug with the D300 format or using 12bit RAW+Jpeg Fine so I took a few shots with my trusty D70 in RAW and had the exact same issues.
I finally gave up and took a series of shots with the D300 in Jpeg Fine. All of the above features worked perfectly this time. I repeated the test with the D70 Jpeg files which also worked perfectly.
The issue only seems to present itself on import. RAW files that are already in my library seem to be fine.
There is some horrible bug in the handling of Nikon raw files from at least two camera bodies. I looked around and there are some other threads on the discussion groups here citing inability to import and some other camera makes and models and I wanted to get a thread started about the core of these issues as I was able to cross-check with two bodies. I have access to a D80 and a D90 body as well to test with but didn't bother as the D70 support should be well baked at this point.
Here are the numbers:
Hardware: MBP 17" 2.4 "Santa Rosa" 4 gig ram
OS: 10.5.5
Aperture: 2.1.2
RAW Support: 2.3 update
Flash Media: Sandisk Ultra II and Extreme III 30mb/sec
Flash Reader: Sandisk "14 in 1" OSX compatible (supposedly)
D300 Firmware: 1.01 and 1.10 tested
D300 image format: 12 bit RAW (.NEf) + Jpeg large/fine
D70 Firmware: 2.0
D70 image format: RAW (.NEF)
So when can we expect a fix for this issue and will this require an export and re-import of all of the shots I have already imported?
This is pretty serious as RAW file handling is the #1 feature of Aperture and Nikon is one of the top two brands of camera. This bug has broken multiple features in the software which should have set off red flags. This also broke support for an extremely old body. This is telling me that Apple has a QA problem in their test rig for Aperture.
This is serious for me personally as this is a heavy use time of year for me and I'm not feeling good about this software. I'm a 1.0 user that upgraded so I have $400 into aperture at this point and I'm not certain it's worth it.
Thanks

Answer 1

mindedc wrote:
Was your aperture a clean install or an upgrade like mine?
Yes upgraded from 1.5.6 to 2.0 and now 2.1.2
If an upgrade, did you move an old aperture library or did you export all of your pictures as projects and re-import them to a clean aperture library as I did?
Library was upgraded when the Aperture opened it in V2.0 - no did not bother to do what you did.
Did you purchase your Aperture 2.0 some time ago (when it first came out?) or in the last month as I did?
When it first came out. If you purchased it last month, it should have most, if not all of the updates.
Are you on PPC or Intel as I am?
On Intel - in fact on MBP like you, just 15" instead of 17"
Are you on a platform with a GPU or integrated graphics like I am (Shouldn't make a difference for this but...)?
To be clear, MBP has a dedicated GPU and not integrated graphics like MB.
Do you have the D300/D200 write something into the exif headers using the copyright or image comment as I do?
No image comment but Copyright, new feature since firmware 1.1, on D300.
Do you keep your machine meticulously clean or do you have lots of software installed like I do (xcode, office 2008, vmware, macports)?
I try to keep it clean as much as possible. Meaning that I clean out temp and cache out and try to keep the system up to date. As for apps, yes, yes, Parallels instead, and no, respectively. Have lots of other sw installed.
Do you have other pro apps like I do (final cut)?
No final cut.
Do you have iLife 08 installed like I do?
Yes. Also iWork.
Would you be willing to swap a raw image from your D300 with a raw image I have and try to cross-import into each others libraries to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is related to unique aperture installations (mine being a "bad" one) or that it is a setting/configuration issue on a per camera basis?
Actually, this test does not do anything. I don't recall the exact thread but it is here in the Aperture Forum, that stated that if you use a card reader (which is what I do), then there are no issues importing D300 nef files. But if you hook up the camera direct, then the issues you have articulated exists.
That might explain why some people are troubled by this and others are not.
Btw, I have D70 as well and have no issue with the nef files from that camera as well.
It seems to me that there is an issue. But there is also work around if you import via card reader. I realize one should be able to do whichever and not encounter any problems but I do believe it is not a major issue or deal breaker so to speak.
Cheers