Active D lighting in jpeg

[Snappy Happy]

Do you guys turn on Active D Lighting? if so, where do you usually like to leave it?

On my old D3400 it didn't seem to do anything to pics while shooting, even though I had it set to "on," and only worked when applying it to photos one by one as an in-camera adjustment when reviewing them.

 

[PLShutterbug]

Do you guys turn on Active D Lighting? if so, where do you usually like to leave it?

On my old D3400 it didn't seem to do anything to pics while shooting, even though I had it set to "on," and only worked when applying it to photos one by one as an in-camera adjustment when reviewing them.

I leave it on. It reduces exposure to prevent blown highlights. The result is underexposed images compared with it being off, and some complain about that.

If you leave it on, then take a picture, then review that picture, in the camera monitor the Active-D adjustments have been applied. If you want to you can remove it, I think - but if you shoot in JPG I don't know how that works since you bake everything into a JPG when the image is shot.

If you don't take pictures of things with bright highlights then maybe you don't notice the effect Active-D Lighting has, because in "normal" images without bright highlights, it won't have much effect.

Do you normally shoot in JPG, or RAW?

 

[beavertown]

Is it possible to turn D Lighting on for Jpg only?

 

[Snappy Happy]

I leave it on. It reduces exposure to prevent blown highlights. The result is underexposed images compared with it being off, and some complain about that.

Yeah, I read earlier on Google that that's what it does to RAW images.

If you don't take pictures of things with bright highlights then maybe you don't notice the effect Active-D Lighting has, because in "normal" images without bright highlights, it won't have much effect.

But doesn't it brighten shadow areas? At least, jpeg? That's what it did when I would apply it to individual images on my D3400 (when I applied it to pics after I had taken them, as it didn't seem to do anything while I was taking them).

Do you normally shoot in JPG, or RAW?

I shoot jpeg.

 

[Snappy Happy]

Is it possible to turn D Lighting on for Jpg only?

I have my camera set to shoot in jpeg, and the Active D setting is there. Low, medium, high, extra high, and auto.

 

[vockman]

I only use active D lighting (usually autoD), very rarely, if I have to handover unprocessed jpgs to a client after a shoot for use without any additional post processing. It produces the best out of camera jpeg results but still not as good as processing and tweaking a RAW file manually - although it can come very close and gets better with each new Nikon Exspeed Camera image processing chip version. I also use it in video to minimize post production grading and because I have time to really preview the settings while I am setting up for the shoot to make sure I am happy with the result.

The draw back of Active D-lighting is that it is not applied to RAW files in adobe LR and it taxes/slows in camera image processing and can slow down the camera and frame rate. Most annoyingly it takes away effective manual exposure control by making tone/exposure adjustments that sometimes are in drastic opposition to what you are exposing for. Example; you want to blow out some highlights and no matter how you expose the active D lighting tries to bring the highlights back.

If you are shooting RAW + jpeg with D-lightin and using Lightroom you will see some RAW files that look very different than your active D jpegs. If you shoot RAW + jpegs without active D-lighting and apply the matching adobe Picture mode that you had set in the camera, the jpegs and raw will look similar.

I believe active D lighting settings are applied to RAW files and can be reversed in Nikon software.

 

[Snappy Happy]

I only use active D lighting (usually autoD), very rarely, if I have to handover unprocessed jpgs to a client after a shoot for use without any additional post processing. It produces the best out of camera jpeg results but still not as good as processing and tweaking a RAW file manually - although it can come very close and gets better with each new Nikon Exspeed Camera image processing chip version.

That's what I'm hoping for! It was cr1ppled on the D3400. I could only use it one by one after I took a pic. That's not terribly convenient when you are taking a number of pics at once.

The draw back of Active D-lighting is that it is not applied to RAW files in adobe LR and it taxes/slows in camera image processing and can slow down the camera and frame rate.

Do you only notice this when taking bursts, or do you notice it when taking pictures one at a time, say half a second or a second apart?

Most annoyingly it takes away effective manual exposure control by making tone/exposure adjustments that sometimes are in drastic opposition to what you are exposing for. Example; you want to blow out some highlights and no matter how you expose the active D lighting tries to bring the highlights back.

You're talking about RAW in that case, right?

 

[jthomas39]

With a scene with lots of dynamic range, try active-d lighting on High and Off. You'll likely see two different exposures, maybe 1/2 stop or perhaps 1 stop different. That's what the "active-d lighting affects the raw file" usually means, I think.

I edit raw, and shoot raw+jpg pairs. I'll usually leave the active-d on Low, just to get a better looking in-camera jpg.

~~

Slowing down the camera operation:

I don't think any menu settings slows down the Expeed 7 cameras. That processor is very fast. I never noticed anything on my old Z6 either with it's much slower Expeed 6, for active-d lighting or other camera features.

 

[Snappy Happy]

With a scene with lots of dynamic range, try active-d lighting on High and Off. You'll likely see two different exposures, maybe 1/2 stop or perhaps 1 stop different. That's what the "active-d lighting affects the raw file" usually means, I think.

I edit raw, and shoot raw+jpg pairs. I'll usually leave the active-d on Low, just to get a better looking in-camera jpg.

What do you notice in your jpegs when you have Active D set to auto? You still like low better?

~~

Slowing down the camera operation:

I don't think any menu settings slows down the Expeed 7 cameras. That processor is very fast. I never noticed anything on my old Z6 either with it's much slower Expeed 6, for active-d lighting or other camera features.

Good to hear.