NX2 opens NEF file as solid black, View NX says it's unsupported!!

Sempusa

Senior Member
I was working for the past few days with ViewNX vers. 2.10.3 64bit doing basic edits on NEF+JPEG files and it stopped working on a new folder of images. It says 'unsupported file type' every time I try to do an edit to these NEF+JPEG files - shot with a Nikon D7100 and transferred over to my computer with Nikon Transfer. If I turn off View NEF+JPEG files, then both show up in ViewNx but only the jpeg will respond, the NEF still gets the 'unsupported file type'!! NX2 opens it as a black window with 'updating image' at the top while listing as 27.3MB in size so it's also useless unless I can get the NEF to open. I reported this in the past and support told me NX2 will not work in Windows 10, don't believe it, and to use Capture NX-D which after hours I found out that it does not do a file save to make a JPEG which will be the end result of my project. Besides Capture NX-D doesn't open the NEFs in this folder either. I going to try using Nikon transfer again to make NEFs in a new folder or maybe convert them to Jpegs but I much rather have all the data to work with. I would try to post one but the forum will not take NEF files, I'm attaching my file data if that could be of any helpView attachment Shootingdata1.txt. Any suggestions on how to get these NEFs working again???
 

cwgrizz

Senior Member
Challenge Team
Windows 10, View NX-i and NX-d both open nef files from my D7100 without any problem. A few times in the past I have had to uninstall them and do a fresh install when they acted up. All seems to be working well now.
 

Sempusa

Senior Member
@Marilynne - No, I didn't know there was another viewer, thanks for the heads up. I'm downloading it now, but I think it's a problem with the files for some reason and not the ViewNX software because other folders/files work fine. Just wish I could fine a way to fix the files. Will let you know if ViewNX-i fixes
 

Marilynne

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
@Marilynne - No, I didn't know there was another viewer, thanks for the heads up. I'm downloading it now, but I think it's a problem with the files for some reason and not the ViewNX software because other folders/files work fine. Just wish I could fine a way to fix the files. Will let you know if ViewNX-i fixes

I had to switch to ViewNX-i when I got Windows10. I don't use NEF. I'm strictly JPEG.
 

Sempusa

Senior Member
@Marilynne - good idea to stick with Jpegs and never use NEF. I now have years worth of NEFs that are doing nothing but taking up four times as much space which can no longer be open, corrected, edited, or anything because they are NOT SUPPORTED BY NIKON'S SOFTWARE!!! I have so had it with Nikon and their useless support of their most special formats that end up wasting so much time just trying to get the most basic function to work on them. Nikon has become my nightmare!! Sooo many hours wasted on them.
 

Sempusa

Senior Member
Now ViewNX-i will not even open Jpegs!! I guess it's time to reinstall, even though it was just installed this morning --GARRBABBE!! Even when working Nikon Sw seems to always lock up Windows 9 out of 10 times. Just love trying to post here when it tells me to log in even though I'm already logged in and then loose everything I typed - must be sw from Nikon...Oz
 

aroy

Senior Member
@Marilynne - good idea to stick with Jpegs and never use NEF. I now have years worth of NEFs that are doing nothing but taking up four times as much space which can no longer be open, corrected, edited, or anything because they are NOT SUPPORTED BY NIKON'S SOFTWARE!!! I have so had it with Nikon and their useless support of their most special formats that end up wasting so much time just trying to get the most basic function to work on them. Nikon has become my nightmare!! Sooo many hours wasted on them.

Have you tried NX-D? It opens all NEF files. I have been using it for over four years and have had no problems, except for D850 files downloaded from the net, which could be viewed in NX-i but not in NX-D.
 

Sempusa

Senior Member
@aroy, Yes, I've tried NX-D, and it works like ViewNX-i - They Both do NOT open the NEFs from certain years worth of files. I have also tried with Capture NX and ViewNX-2. The whole point of using Nikon and their NEF format is completely lost and there is little I can think of to do with these images now except delete them to gain a huge amount of disk space. I sent one to Nikon support for answer, but haven't heard anything back. My past experiences with them have not proven to be very helpful, but if they can't help who else can I go to. It's their format but even NX software is telling me it's not supported so I won't be too surprised if that's what I get from them. I'm hoping maybe something in the meta data is set wrong and can be easily corrected - there are hundreds of images I was planing to go thru, crop and tweak where needed.
 

Blade Canyon

Senior Member
If you're mildly interested in photography, it's REALLY worth $10 per month to get Adobe Photoshop and it's related features, including Adobe Camera Raw. I've never had any issues. It still opens new and ancient RAW files.
 

pforsell

Senior Member
@aroy, Yes, I've tried NX-D, and it works like ViewNX-i - They Both do NOT open the NEFs from certain years worth of files. I have also tried with Capture NX and ViewNX-2. The whole point of using Nikon and their NEF format is completely lost and there is little I can think of to do with these images now except delete them to gain a huge amount of disk space. I sent one to Nikon support for answer, but haven't heard anything back. My past experiences with them have not proven to be very helpful, but if they can't help who else can I go to. It's their format but even NX software is telling me it's not supported so I won't be too surprised if that's what I get from them. I'm hoping maybe something in the meta data is set wrong and can be easily corrected - there are hundreds of images I was planing to go thru, crop and tweak where needed.

NX-D opens all NEF files from all Nikon DSLR cameras. Your problem sounds like you are having some disk corruption issues, either the software itself, or the image files, or both.

Are the hard disks good where you store your data and software? It seems that the corruption thing is escalating if even some JPEG files are causing problems now.

Systems check? Malware check? Perhaps it is time to buy new disks and dig up the backups.
 

aroy

Senior Member
Even I think that is a disk problem.

What you should do is
. Try copying the NEF files to an external disk. If they copy, fine, if any error comes then the files may be corrupted at disk level.
. Try viewers like IrfanView, which will open practically all file types with relevant extension (you can download the software and the extensions)
. You can also try various online viewers, some may be of help.

What ever the outcome, please invest in a few external USB disks. WD 4TB is available for less than US$100/ online (may be a bit more now and then). With evolving software scene;in future; you may be able to recover files that are partially corrupted.

For Nikon software to work, you need the relevant drivers. As they keep changing formats, drivers also change, so for very old NEF there may be different drivers needed.
 

Sempusa

Senior Member
@aroy, Yes, I have several external USB disks with back up and have them on another computer also. Somehow the files must be corrupted but the backups don't work either. It may have happened at the camera level, who knows. Nikon support, as expected, never got back with any answer at all. They did send an acknowledgement and a reference number, they even sent a survey asking how their support was, just never sent an answer to what's with the NEF files.
The associated (from the bad NEFs) Jpeg's open so I'm stuck with those. I'm still trying to figure out the mysterious VeiwNX-i and have lost much time trying to get a crop out of the good NEFs that still work to produce a Jpeg with the best res. Seems you can sort of set pixels but not size or dpi so the jpeg could be anything. Not so good for Powerpoint slides but may use NX veiwer all the way. Never thought it would be this difficult to make a 'hi res' slide show.
 

Sempusa

Senior Member
@aroy,pforsell and all others who helped with the issue with ViewNX, ViewNX-i, Capture NX,etc.Thanks so much for all the suggestions. One thing I did find is that ViewNX-i will reject any image NEF or Jpeg once I opened Window's Photos. The two programs don't play well together on my Windows 10 home with the latest update to both. I have to shut the programs down, restart the system before I will gain access to my files again. Don't really care who's at fault but both programs are not very stable and need to be restarted or reloaded at times. I wonder if anyone else has come across this issue?
 

aroy

Senior Member
@aroy,pforsell and all others who helped with the issue with ViewNX, ViewNX-i, Capture NX,etc.Thanks so much for all the suggestions. One thing I did find is that ViewNX-i will reject any image NEF or Jpeg once I opened Window's Photos. The two programs don't play well together on my Windows 10 home with the latest update to both. I have to shut the programs down, restart the system before I will gain access to my files again. Don't really care who's at fault but both programs are not very stable and need to be restarted or reloaded at times. I wonder if anyone else has come across this issue?

Most programs that can modify files, flag the opened files are "Read Only" or "Access Limited". If the file if opened by any other program, then they assume that they cannot take full control on that file, hence refuse to open. This is basically a programming fault (hang over from single user environment), as the program does not check what type of access is granted to another program using that file and always assumes that will be modified by the other program. The problem has been solved in Data Base environment, but others have yet not caught up.

You have to live with this limitation if you like the program, and hope that the problem is solved at a later date.
 

NewUser

New member
The ViewNX2 software that came on CD with my D5600 is clearly very out of date and not compatible with Windows 10. Go to the Nikon website and choose Imaging Products, search for ViewNX-i, select your camera model and download it. This is a much later version and able to run on Windows 10.
Uninstall the old ViewNX 2 software and then install ViewNX-I. T
hat solves the issue of "Unsupported File Type" for the .NEF format. Why do Nikon still send out software that is 10 years old with new cameras? Why didn't Nikon post something to tell us about ViewNX-I?
 

Bikerbrent

Senior Member
Welcome aboard NewUser. Enjoy the ride.
We look forward to seeing more posts and samples of your work.

Do you realize you are posting to a thread from 2018? Also, you might want to go to
[h=2]New Member Introductions[/h]
Introduce yourself to the community! Say Hi
 
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