Getting low contrast images from Nikon D70

This question seems a little odd as I write it, but lately I've been

noticing that nearly every picture I take with my D70 looks very

flat and needs the contrast increased to look decent. This is on the

camera display as well as the computer. Is there a setting that I

may have inadvertantly changed? Any thing I need to check? I've

tried adjusting the exposure compensation and that has not helped

much. I almost always shoot at ISO 200, and am using the D70 DX "kit

lens".

Thanks in advance.

DG

Assuming that you have changed no settings, maybe the light is less contrasty. Fewer sharp shadows in your pix? Coming of autumn and cloudy days, you know. Are your lenses and/or filters clean? Any new cheap bargain filters? Otherwise:

Check the Optimizing Images section of your manual. If you used a programmed setting(portrait, etc), there are presets for several settings, which can be changed.

If you use P, S, A, or M settings, go to Optimize image in the shooting menu, then choose one of the selections or choose Custom. Under Custom you can adjust contrast, among other things. You can go from low to high, and even use a contrast curve of your own downloading.

Bill

Thank you for you answers. It took a while prodding around in the menu, but I finally found it. I set it to "vivid", instead of "normal", and that seems to help. The exposure still looks better when with the mode set to Auto; I usually like to shoot on Aperture or Shutter, but I may have to start using Auto more often to get the better looking exposure.

Thanks again.

DG

You can use USM in photoshop to lift the contrast. I favour a range between... Amount: 10 - 20 percent, Radius 55, threshold 0 (on the full size JPEG or TIFF file) but use my values as a starting point and experiment. You also should try this in photoshop's 'lab mode' and click on 'lightness' channel and apply USM on that instead before clicking back onto lab mode to review.

If you like it remember to set back to RGB or CMYK or whatever you were in before 'lab mode'. (It will then only affect contrast on the lightness or luminance information and not on the colours. Same goes for USM sharpening also.)

Any final USM used for sharpening (rather than contrast as outlined above) should be applied on your final resized image.