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Active D Lighting Question


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3 replies to this topic

#1
DocPit

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I'm hoping someone can confirm or correct my understanding of Active D.   From Nikon I get this: (http://www.nikonusa....-d-lighting.htm) “With Active D-Lighting chosen on my Nikon D-SLR, the camera's Matrix meter will identify the amount of contrast in the scene and process the final picture with the appropriate amount of compensation to lighten—open up—the scene's shadows. At the same time, Active D-Lighting maintains the highlight detail—detail that other systems often ignore.” (My italics.) So, my take-away is that Active D works only with matrix metering, and it does not affect the actual capture of information (essentially, the RAW file), only "the final picture."  Essentially, it's processing after capture.  Is that correct?

 



#2
Merco_61

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The ADL information is hidden in the maker's notes like the picture control. This makes everything but Capture or View NX ignore it. ADL works just as well with center-weighted metering as with matrix. It is processing during capture, but the recipe is lost unless you use Capture or ViewNX for your processing or shoot in .jpg. 



#3
DocPit

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Merco, so if I used Camera Raw to process a RAW file, would my ability to recover detail from highlights or shadows in ACR be affected by whether or not I used ADL?  



#4
Merco_61

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Merco, so if I used Camera Raw to process a RAW file, would my ability to recover detail from highlights or shadows in ACR be affected by whether or not I used ADL?  

No, it doesn't matter for ACR. To get the same tweaks as a starting point for further processing that you get in NX-D with ADL takes a bit of processing, but you can save the necessary settings as presets.