spbStan
Senior Member
I use several software suites, from Adobe, Nikon, DxO, Raw Therapee, CaptureOne and find that LightRoom is fast versatile and simple but does being that it uses Adobe's ACR as the rendering engine, it just is not as good in rendering NEF files as the Nikon software. So, I use LR 4 for first import and evaluation and process all those which I decide to keep but are not top images. The very few that get printed large are opened in Nikon Capture NX2 and rendered and basic camera adjustments are made. Then they can be further processed if needed by pixel level editing in Adobe Photoshop CS6. Adobe is very good handling the print functions. From NX2, if later post processing is to be done, usually not needed, I save a copy as 16bit TIFF for export to Photoshop CS6.
There are differences in rendering raw files and comparing, I prefer how Nikon does it, and how it incorporates the camera settings in the initial rendering so little if anything has to be done. With LR, you start with a rendering that does not reflect camera settings so to get "up to" the look of finished image more adjustments are needed.
The D800 renders colors and extended DR wonderfully so many of the shots need no adjustment. The AWB is seldom fooled, even in tricky mixed light scenes. There is so much detail residing in deep shadows that the range of adjustment possible is astounding. I shot an event last Friday, in a large private party in a dance club. I was shooting with flash and with ambient light in about equal numbers and twice took shots in manual and mistakenly did not have the flash on. The frames came out black but the histogram showed a bit of data on the far left wall of the graph. No problem. In post, those two shots were salvaged and used on the event's web site and few people would ever be able to see they were exposed 5 stops under. Color and detail where there.
The reviewer was right, with the D800, you shoot less, at least I do, since it is always in the back of my mind how large each file is, I self edit more, just like film, before hitting the shutter. The results show, with fewer deleted files and more keepers. From the event, that lasted 6 hours, I shoot only 248 frames and all but 3 were turned over the event organizers for printing. Normally with lesser cameras I would have taken 600-1000 frames and kept 100-150.
There are differences in rendering raw files and comparing, I prefer how Nikon does it, and how it incorporates the camera settings in the initial rendering so little if anything has to be done. With LR, you start with a rendering that does not reflect camera settings so to get "up to" the look of finished image more adjustments are needed.
The D800 renders colors and extended DR wonderfully so many of the shots need no adjustment. The AWB is seldom fooled, even in tricky mixed light scenes. There is so much detail residing in deep shadows that the range of adjustment possible is astounding. I shot an event last Friday, in a large private party in a dance club. I was shooting with flash and with ambient light in about equal numbers and twice took shots in manual and mistakenly did not have the flash on. The frames came out black but the histogram showed a bit of data on the far left wall of the graph. No problem. In post, those two shots were salvaged and used on the event's web site and few people would ever be able to see they were exposed 5 stops under. Color and detail where there.
The reviewer was right, with the D800, you shoot less, at least I do, since it is always in the back of my mind how large each file is, I self edit more, just like film, before hitting the shutter. The results show, with fewer deleted files and more keepers. From the event, that lasted 6 hours, I shoot only 248 frames and all but 3 were turned over the event organizers for printing. Normally with lesser cameras I would have taken 600-1000 frames and kept 100-150.
Having a 24-70 and being able to crop "responsibly" for "reach" is a big plus. So, cropping is the same as printing big right?