New Nikon picture controls

[Jared Lloyd]

what are peoples thoughts on using the newer Nikon bodies Vivid picture control and Active D-lighting?

[Robert O'Toole]

Honestly I havent used these options more than once. The files seem so good out of the camera many times I will shoot RAW then extract a jpeg without converting if the image is intended for web usage.
Have you tried them?

Robert

[Robert O'Toole]

what are peoples thoughts on using the newer Nikon bodies Vivid picture control and Active D-lighting?

Now that I think about it when I did use ADL, the images were slightly underexposed and in capture NX a tone curve was applied. I dont know if anyone really knows what ADL does exactly, Nikon is a little vague about it.

Best thing is to try it for yourself.

Robert

[Jared Lloyd]

according to Ken Rockwell, its adjusts the contrast and gamma of the scene so as to allow you to shoot in higher contrast situations when otherwise either the highlights would blow out. The vivid, turns up the saturation and "vividness" of the colors. Set at vivid 0, the colors are more vivid than they are set at Normal 0. Im just currious if these addatives (which are not post proccess) might degrade quality at all? I spent one day shooting with these settings and every photograph taken with my telephoto was slightly out of focus, where as shorter lenses (Nikkor and 3rd party) were tac sharp.

[Jim Fenton]

A) D-Lighting is only supposed to be used with matrix metering.

Personally, I think it s*cks, but that's just me.

B) I've settled on the D2X Mode III "Picture Style" Personally, I don't know what they had to introduce this except that if you shoot jpeg and are really trying to get perfection in camera, then I guess it helps. D2X Mode III tweaked a bit is what I've been using for about 3 years now.

[Jared Lloyd]

Jim, now are you talking about D-lighting or AD-lighting?

[Thomas Chamberlin]

Your experience with the telephoto is interesting. The D3 has a lens fine tuning feature that allows you to adjust the focus for a lens that is a bit different on focus than the others. It will then automatically compensate every time that lens is used (or any other lens like it). I haven't used vivid in Picture Controls or used D-lighting because I can always add them later in Capture NX (or you can always remove them, likewise, with RAW files). I have noticed that Normal setting in Picture Control seems a bit too contrasty for me, so I turned the contrast setting down two notches. I might switch to the Neutral setting, but suspect that would lead to more post-processing of each file. Adding the controls in-camera will not decrease the quality of RAW files. I would use caution with jpegs.

[Larry Daniel]

D Lighting in the camera works very well in high contrast situations IMHO.

[Jared Lloyd]

what about AD lighting.... as opposed to D lighting?

[Larry Daniel]

Sorry, I should have been more specific, Active D-Lighting in the camera works very well in high contract situations. It is 'in the camera' as well as in NX if one is using one of the new bodies AFAIK.