More D700 questions

[travis_mccormack]

 

 

<p>Ok so I have been able to shoot a few Photos with the camera. I have been reading through the manual and have a few questions on your opinions. Here I go: oh and the most outta my images With the settings even though I might not know what to do with them....... - I have lightroom and <a id="itxthook0" rel="nofollow" href="../nikon-camera-forum/00YCOg?start=30">Photoshop</a>, is it still nessacary to download the nikon software? - since I am using <a id="itxthook1" rel="nofollow" href="../nikon-camera-forum/00YCOg?start=30">adobe</a> should I use adobe rgb? Or srgb? - is active D lighting worth using? I tried it with not much of a result. - is what is in my shooting menu bank what I am currently shooting? - is custom menu bank what I am curently shooting with? Or do I have to set it to one or the other? -does it make a difference shooting with 14 bit raw or 12 bit raw?<br>

Ok so that's the questions Ive ran into so far, I know alot of them are probably personal Preference but I guess that's what I'm looking for. Thanks in advance.</p>

 

 

 

[melissapapajphotography]

<p>I don't use the Nikon software - never have. I typically use adobe rgb. As for Active D lighting, I have found it useful in the bright flat light in the middle of the day to help with contrast and loss of details in the shadows. I think the 14 bit vs. the 12 bit is still in debate, but I always shoot 14 bit raw just to be safe and supposedly it allows you to recover more details in the shadows...Best of luck and enjoy your new baby :)</p>

[jensvind]

<p>No it is not nessasary to use Nikon Software.<br />You should use Adobe 1998 in the camera, I use prophoto rgb in NX2, asume it is a possible in PS too, not because one can see the difference on screen or print (most/all of them) but in the future....<br />Active D-lightning works well if there are some very dark (not totaly black) areas. IN NX2 you can 'add' it later, do not know how in PS.<br />Menu banks are only presettings and not your current settings. seldom use them.<br />Shoot 14 bit compressed loseless, Cant see change in quality but like using Prophoto rgb, why not chose the best quality?</p>

 

[travis_mccormack]

<p>Great thanks for the help!<br>

So how do I use the presets of my menu banks? switch to program mode?<br>

I have never used the NX2 , is there an advantage to using it since it is a nikon product?<br>

I figure since I am already familiar with adobe I should just stay with that.</p>

 

[dan_brown4]

<p>I never use the Nikon software either. I have Aperture and Photoshop Elements. I like to work on images in Photoshop, and I like Aperture for organizing, viewing, and general portfolio management.</p>

[ShunCheung]

<p>Nikon makes excellent camera equipment but software is not their strength. I finally upgraded to NX2 a few months ago, but I still mainly use PhotoShop and Lightroom to process my RAW files.</p>

<p>Personally, I don't like Active D Lighting either. I think I am much better off post-process my images myself.</p>

[mark_sirota1]

<p>You seem to be shooting raw, based on your question about 12-bit vs. 14-bit.</p>

<p>If so, it doesn't matter what color space you choose in-camera -- that only applies to the in-camera raw->JPEG conversion, just like sharpness, contrast, saturation, etc.</p>

<p>If you're using a non-Nikon raw converter you should turn off Active D-Lighting, because what that does is silently adjust the exposure and then makes up for it in post-processing, but only if you're using Nikon's post-processing tools.</p>

<p>As for whether 12-bit vs. 14-bit makes a difference -- yes, it makes a difference, but it's a very small difference.</p>

[kevin_delson]

<p>If you are shooting jpeg, I recommend leaving active D Lighting off. If you turn it on, you're stuck with it.</p>

<p>If OTOH you are shooting RAW, it makes no difference since you can turn it on or off in post.</p>

<p>"Custom Settings" and "Shoot" selections will be a matter of personal preference. Personally I never use them.<br>

If shooting jpeg and you're in let's say "Shoot B", well; you're stuck with it if it was NOT your intention to use it.</p>

<p>Capture NX 2.xxx is designed to read the instruction sets from Nikon camera's. <br>

The consensus seems to be (and I agree), it is one of the best processing engines when shooting *.nef and althogh the GUI is a little cumbersome, it is a powerful pixel level editor that allows great convenience to Nikon shooters..</p>

<p>If you are primarily shooting jpeg, choose your settings carefully.<br>

If you set a custom setting, don't forget to return to a default neutral setting.<br>

If you shoot RAW, it makes no difference what you set, including the color space which can be assigned and/or converted later.</p>

[Andrew Garrard]

<p>I never used the Nikon software. I generally use sRGB, because if I'm creating JPEGs anyway then I usually want maximum compatibility; I have active D-lighting on auto, and almost always use RAW + JPEG (unless I need lots of shots in a short time or I'm running out of card space).<br />

<br />

In Photoshop, I usually use sRGB from the RAW converter. I'll use a larger space if I think I need it and I'm printing the result - but converting back to sRGB for saving portable JPEGs is an extra faff that I'm too prone to forgetting to do, so it's simpler to stick to sRGB in camera raw.<br />

<br />

The shooting bank in use is visible when you press "info" (page 269 of the manual) - you can change the bank in use (and that you're modifying) from the first option of the shooting menu (picture of a camera in the top-level menu). It affects everything, not just P mode. I agree that the manual talks about renaming banks and kind of glosses over actually selecting them!</p>

[travis_mccormack]

<p>Thanks again, I love hearing your opinions.<br>

So what is the major difference between srgb and adobe rgb?<br>

am confused when you you (andrew) talk about having top switch back to srgb when saving a portable jpeg?</p>

[Andrew Garrard]

<p>Just to counter Kevin's "never use them" comment about shooting banks... I have one set up for normal use, and the other set up for trap focus (A2 set to focus, A5 set to AF-On only). They're not quite Canon's "save everything" custom modes, but they're still useful, IMHO.</p>

[Andrew Garrard]

<p>Travis: Adobe RGB defines a larger colour space than sRGB (which was designed to represent what a normal monitor can display) - reds are more red, blues are more blue, etc. This is useful if you're shooting RAW and image processing in a high bit-depth mode, because you might be working with colours that are outside the range the sRGB can express. (Note: it can be a bad idea to use Adobe RGB in 24-bit mode, because the wider gamut spreads out the pixel values, meaning you can't express similar tones as accurately - it's worse if you're doing lots of editing.) ProPhotoRGB is similar, but more so.<br />

<br />

JPEG is often interpreted by simple software as using the sRGB colour space. More advanced software will look at the file and decide what colour space it was supposed to be in: there's a section of the file which defines the colour space, but not everything pays attention to it, so if you want to be as compatible as possible with everything (like giving files to non-techie friends), writing JPEG images with the sRGB colour space is idiot-proof - especially if the images don't run outside the sRGB colour space anyway. You can convert inside Photoshop (image/convert to colour space, or something like it), but I tend to forget to do it, so it's easier for me to stick to sRGB from end to end. I use 16-bit or 32-bit when editing, until I'm ready to save a JPEG (when I need to convert to 8-bit).<br />

<br />

Not that I claim to be a colour management expert, but I hope that helps. Good luck!</p>

[travis_mccormack]

<p>About the shooting banks:<br>

Thats what I was thinking it would be useful for was just saving some presets that I like and tend to use often, maybe save me a minute having it pre set.<br>

About the Adobe RGB and The srgb :<br>

Thanks for the great explanation first of all. If I shoot in adobe rgb and am set up to have the camera save a raw image and a jpeg can't I just use the jpeg to send a non techy friend or after I have edited the image just save as a Jpeg file in photoshop and use that to send? Or does it make it difficult to open even after it is saved as a Jpeg?<br>

Sorry for my lack of knowledge </p>

[mark_sirota1]

<p>If you're shooting raw+JPEG so you can quickly share the JPEG with non-techies, choose sRGB.</p>

<p>That's because your non-techie friends are much more likely to be using non-color-managed software to view your photos, and they'll look less wrong in sRGB than in Adobe RGB.</p>

[pge]

<p>Travis</p>

<p>As you know you have two sets of banks, the Custom Setting and the Shooting. There have been a few comments from people who do not use them, but I, like Andrew, use them all the time. I decided that I had 4 shooting situations. One of them for example I called "Studio". I set up a Shooting Menu bank and a Custom Setting Menu bank with this name, then I went through every setting and set it for that situation. Same with the other three. As a result I do fairly little changing of setting, I simply change the banks. Its just the way I do it, I am sure some others do too, and it does work.</p>

<p>Phil</p>

[Andrew Garrard]

<blockquote>Adobe RGB defines a larger colour space than sRGB (which was designed to represent what a normal monitor can display) - reds are more red, blues are more blue, etc.</blockquote>

 

<p>Actually, that was a confusing thing to say. Let me try again.<br />

<br />

The pixels that make up an image consist of a set of numbers. These numbers may be in the range 0..255 (one byte per channel), 0..65535 (two byte per channel), or some kind of floating point representation. The "colour space" defines the most extreme colours that can be specified - the "most red" red, the "most blue" blue, the colour of "white", etc. The values in each pixel define where inside the colour space the colour to be displayed might lie - "128, 128, 128" might be mid-grey and "192, 160, 32" might be a brownish orange, for example.<br />

<br />

sRGB defines one colour space, roughly corresponding to what CRT monitors tend to display (with appropriate settings), which means that the bytes contained in a JPEG file can produce roughly the same colours on everyone's monitor - this was a result of a standardisation effort in the 1990s, before which images tended to vary a lot more depending on the computer displaying them. Because it was designed to fit a CRT, there are some very saturated colours that it can't express; AdobeRGB is a "larger colour space" and <i>can</i> express these colours, and ProPhotoRGB is larger still.<br />

<br />

If you try to display an Adobe RGB image with software that thinks it's defined in sRGB, everything will be a bit washed out, because - with AdobeRGB's idea of "very red" much redder than sRGB's idea of "very red", AdobeRGB's idea of "skin tone" is correspondingly desaturated. It'll look "okay", but not right. JPEGs originally only supported sRGB, and although it's now possible to specify another colour space, some software doesn't check, and still assumes the values in the file should be interpreted as being in sRGB.<br />

<br />

My point about bit depth was that, in AdobeRGB, "the most red red" and "the most blue blue" are further apart than in sRGB. There are a limited number of colours that can be stored between them - much more limited for 8-bit (typical JPEG) files than for Photoshop's 16-bit format or PNG. As you spread the extreme colours apart, you end up with the closest-representable similar colours being farther apart as well, so smooth gradients get more banded. It's unusual for it to matter, but it can do. Hence if you're not taking an image with excessively saturated colours, it can be better - at least when saving a compressed JPEG file - to use a smaller colour space.<br />

<br />

I hope that's made matters slightly clearer. If it hasn't, Wikipedia has quite a good section on colour spaces!</p>

[Andrew Garrard]

<blockquote>Thanks for the great explanation first of all. If I shoot in adobe rgb and am set up to have the camera save a raw image and a jpeg can't I just use the jpeg to send a non techy friend or after I have edited the image just save as a Jpeg file in photoshop and use that to send? Or does it make it difficult to open even after it is saved as a Jpeg?</blockquote>

 

<p>Glad to help. Mark has it right - the JPEG should load, but there's less of a chance that the image will look wrong if the JPEG is saved in the sRGB colour space. It's like sticking to standard fonts for a text document - the text is still readable if you use something weird, but it's less likely that the recipient will get exactly what you intended.<br />

<br />

I could use AdobeRGB in the raw converter, work in that space, then - when saving a JPEG - convert colour space to sRGB (and then 8-bit), and then save the JPEG. Indeed, I did this for a while, but I kept getting JPEGs that were saved in AdobeRGB, because I'm incompetent. I'd rather treat the rare cases of RAW files of very saturated colours in a special way than have to remember to change colour space every time. YMMV.<br />

<br />

In contrast, if you're printing saturated colours and not preparing images for web view, there are good reasons to use AdobeRGB - the printer might be able to handle colours which sRGB can't express. Many modern monitors can do better than sRGB as well.<br />

<br />

No need to apologise for not knowing something. The only time to apologise is when you claim to know something, but don't! (Hence, I pre-emptively apologise if I've got any of this wrong...)</p>

[travis_mccormack]

<p>Wow, thanks.<br>

I am starting to understand it now. Is the difference very noticeable?I guess if I am doing it for my <br>

non techy friends they probably won't notice the difference anyways....right?<br>

As for the shooting banks, I have to go in the menu and select them right? I <br>

and when they are selected is there something that lets me know I am using them? </p>

 

[pge]

<blockquote>

<p>I and when they are selected is there something that lets me know I am using them?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes, several things, but perhaps the easiest is the screen on the right shoulder of the camera, it indicates which banks you are using.</p>

[travis_mccormack]

<p>Duh........ Thanks alot<br>

Sorry this is a whole new world to me</p>

[pge]

<p>That does underline the value of these forums. Personally I don't know anyone who owns a D700 so I have no one to ask, that is without these forums. My live preview stopped working once. Without this forum I would have returned the camera to nikon. However someone here pointed out that the live preview does not work when you have your aperture control set for the ring. I would have never related those two issues.</p>

[Andrew Garrard]

<blockquote>Is the difference very noticeable?I guess if I am doing it for my non techy friends they probably won't notice the difference anyways....right?</blockquote>

 

<p>That's probably true, but there's no harm in getting it right! For comparison, most TVs are set up incorrectly - more so in a store, because saturated colours sell more televisions than accurate skin tones. Whether it matters is up to you - if you went to the effort of tweaking the colour balance to get exactly the shades you want, it probably matters more than if you just trusted the camera's interpretation as "good enough". I recently dropped off some photos from a friend's wedding, and she was delighted because the pro hadn't corrected the white balance properly for the shots taken under a sunlit pavillion, so the flowers in my photos were pink, and the pro's ones were orange. Little things can matter, but it won't make or break a photo.<br />

<br />

Just to clarify: You're always (I think) using a shooting bank, although you might not have changed any of its settings from the default; there's only the question of <i>which one</i>.</p>

[travis_mccormack]

 

 

<blockquote>

<p>Just to clarify: You're always (I think) using a shooting bank, although you might not have changed any of its settings from the default; there's only the question of <em>which one</em>.</p>

</blockquote>

 

 

<p>Thats exactly what I was wondering I knowyou are always shooting from a type of bank because it is either default settings or something you changed but the menu bank and custom bank options at the bottom of the rear screen are only used when selected right?Unless selected you are just using the settings you have changed in the camera (Camera's shooting bank)?? </p>

[Andrew Garrard]

<p>Oh dear, I knew I'd get myself in a mess if I just tried to answer from reading the manual and not actually having the camera in front of me. (I blame Nikon - it's with them for a sensor clean, and a day overdue!)<br />

<br />

Having another look at the manual, there are two separate things: the shooting bank and the custom settings bank (I think you'd understood this, but I'd forgotten they were separate). I believe each works a bit like a car radio with "FM1" and "FM2" settings, if you've met such a thing: there are multiple options (or "station presets") each of which you can set to a value (or "frequency"), and changing them in one bank (="FM1" or "FM2") doesn't affect the other one. The shooting bank and custom settings bank are independent. I believe any changes you make persist in that shooting or custom settings bank (there's no such thing as a "temporary change", so you can't do the equivalent of tuning a car radio to a station and not storing it in a preset), and that you're always working in one of the shooting and custom settings banks - there's no such thing as "not using a bank", although the settings within it may be as the camera was shipped from the factory if you've not modified them.<br />

<br />

And I've learnt something useful: I'd not registered that the auto-ISO settings are in a shooting bank. That means I can change the auto-ISO maximum shutter speed between one of four settings by toggling the shooting bank in the "Info" display, which may or may not turn out to be fewer presses than having the ISO sensitivity settings in My Menu... If only I had my camera back, I could try it. :-)</p>

[mark_sirota1]

<p>For rapid access to Auto ISO (or any other menu function), put it first in My Menu, then map that to one of the configurable buttons (I have it mapped to AF-L/AE-L most of the time).</p>