D200 RAW & Aperture

Hi there,

Before I bought my D200 i read a lot that said with nikon you must be ready for a lot of post processing. And RAW always needs work. Never looks good 'out the camera'.

I have not used any other 'RAW converter' other than Aperture.
I normaly get good exposures when I shoot.

My shots look great out the camera!

From camera into Aperture, the shots (RAW) look great, sometimes i just tweak the levels a little or maybe brightness. But for the most part i don't need to do much at all to have a good basic image.

Am I missing something?

I thought it would be more work and i'm always reading that RAW files need a lot more attention to bring the best out of them.

Of course it helps that I expose well (mostly) and i do know what good images are all about.

I've done a lot of hand printing (b&w) over the years and i've had the pleasure & experiance of working with a couple of the best custom / hand printers (c-type, Cibachrome's & b&w) in London, (photography is my living - although digital is still quite new to me) so it's not that i don't know how to look at an image in genral terms - although the whole sharpness thing is still a bit tricky. I tend to set my D200 to +1 sharpening and it looks great on my screen (24"imac) so i don't think to add sharpening, although I know that in the printing is where it counts most.

So, am i missing something?
can i or should be doing more?

Is it correct that Aperture will show the RAW file with cameras adjustment settings (tone, sharpness etc.) ?

thanks
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Stan-o-Stan