Hi All:
I'm a Newbie to Nikon Forums... This is my first posting, so bear with me...
I've been shooting with Nikons since the 60's. First with the Photomic FTN, then an F2, then a D300 starting in 2008, and now a D810 in Jan 2016.
With the D300 I started using ViewNX and CaptureNX years ago. ViewNX matured over the years with new features added to it to where the latest ViewNX-2
is very functional with the D300. And CaptureNX-2 also improved. But there are many annoyances between them, including the fact that once RAW
files are edited by CaptureNX-2 they can no longer be edited/modified/converted by ViewNX-2. Really, the two programs should have been merged
into one and the incompatibilities eliminated. I do prefer the user interface in ViewNX-2 over CaptureNX-2.
When I bought the D810 I found that View-NX2 (v2.10.3, 64-bit) is happy with D810 RAW files. But CaptureNX-2 (V2.4.7, 64-bit) is NOT! Can't even open the
file for display. Get that annoying message that it can't find the lens distortion correction data. But CaptureNX-D (V1.4.3, 64-bit) ) works with the D810 RAW files.
I also installed ViewNX-i (V1.2.4, 64-bit) and it works with the D810 RAW files. So, what's not to like about this? Plenty! Including:
a. Installing ViewNX-I requires removing ViewNX-2. I did find, however, a work-around to this problem. The work-around is to install ViewNX-I and let its
installer remove ViewNX-2. Then re-install ViewNX-2. The ViewNX-2 knows nothing about ViewNX-I and there were no installation conflicts and no
operational conflicts. So I now have both ViewNX-I and ViewNX-2 working under Windows-7 in the same partition. This is very important as I'll
discuss below.
b. CaptureNX-D has no installation conflict with CaptureNX-2. The CaptureNX-D installer does NOT try to remove CaptureNX-2. Why Nikon has it this
way for CaptureNX-D/NX-2 but not for ViewNX-I/NX-2 is beyond me. Its like two different software teams workings on the Capture and View series programs.
c. CaptureNX-D and ViewNX-I seem rather buggie. E.g.: "CaptureNX-D has stopped working....." Basically it crashed and hasta be re-started. Not good.
And I've had ViewNX-I "hang" with it in "processing" mode forever.... Geez...
d. Now we get to the functionality issues. The "downgrades" in CaptureNX-D over CaptureNX-2, e.g.
I have a collection of old Nikon prime lenses going back to the 60's. 24mm to 300mm primes. Several of which I had AI converted to use on the D300 and
then the D810. And I have modern Nikon CPU lenses, e.g., the 18-200mm, 28-300mm, 24-120mm, 16-35mm, 200-500mm, and the TC14E-III TeleConverter.
The old prime lenses work great on the D300 and D810.
With CaptureNX-2 I had no problem doing lens distortion corrections on the D300 RAW files with any of the above lenses. As you probably know, the D300
does NOT do any in-camera lens distortion correction. While that is an option in the D810. CaptureNX-2 allows me to select the automatic mode to correct
RAW files from the D300 with CPU lenses. Further, I can manually tweak the corrections. This is important as in some cases the automatic corrections applied
don't look quite right. And when using legacy prime lenses I could always manually correct the distortion, though usually there wasn't much. Those old prime
lenses are pretty good, often with less distortion than consumer grade CPU zoom lenses.
The problem is that CaptureNX-D does NOT like the D300! It doesn't seem to matter if the D300 has a legacy prime lens on it or a modern CPU lens. The
D300 apparently has no field in the RAW file to tell CaptureNX-D that it has no lens distortion correction data. So when I look at the meta data for the
camera/lens, that field is blank. And since CaptureNX-D apparently has no "manual" lens distortion adjustment capability like its CaptureNX-2 predecessor,
I'm screwed.... This is especially bad when using the 18-200mm lens as it has a lot of distortion at the low-end. Of course, the work-around is to use
CaptureNX-2 rather than Capture-NX-D. But CaptureNX-D is supposed to "replace" the obsolete CaptureNX-2! Right? And yet it has less functionality.
And, of course, I can't manually adjust the "auto" lens distortion correction with CaptureNX-D like I can with CaptureNX-2. Why does CaptureNX-D not allow this
when its predecessor CaptureNX-2 does? Stupid! Really stupid!! Or, is it there and I just haven't found it?
Now we move on to the D810. Similar situation as to the D300. With a legacy prime lens on the D810 I'm screwed for distortion corrections with CaptureNX-D.
And its even worse as CaptureNX-2 won't even open the D810 RAW files and so I'm really screwed. When CaptureNX-2 sees a D810 RAW file, it responds with
the pop-up message: "These images can neither be displayed as a RAW image nor edited because the distortion control profiles used on them are not found."
Thus I'd hafta spend a lot of time doing a TIFF conversion and a bunch of monkeying around to do what I previously did so easily with CaptureNX-2 on D300 RAW
files. I'm not aware of any CaptureNX-2 versions that will work correctly with the D810 RAW files. V2.4.7 was the last CaptureNX-2 released before Nikon replaced
it with CaptureNX-D, IIRC.
And, of course, when using modern CPU lenses on the D810 I get lens distortion correction in the camera. And probably with CaptureNX-D, but no manual
tweaking allowed. Its either on or off I think. I've never seen a slider bar pop up to give me a manual correction capability of the CPU lenses. Maybe a manual
lens distortion correction slider bar will pop up in CaptureNX-D if I leave lens distortion correction OFF in the D810. I've got that on my "to-do" list to test.
e. I also dislike the user interfaces in CaptureNX-D and ViewNX-I. Much prefer the UI's in CaptureNX-2 and ViewNX-2, though they do need UI improvements.
But they're better than the UI's in their replacements.
I called Nikon technical support about these issues last week. The tech didn't disagree with me -- he's heard a lot of this before. But he had no answers, no workaround
and no insight on what Nikon mis-management plans to do about these deficiencies/downgrades in CaptureNX-D and ViewNX-I. All this makes me wonder if the
software engineers ever really use their creations with Nikon cameras....
Any thoughts, comments, work-arounds, things I got wrong or am missing, etc?
TIA,
--Nikon-Dog