Active D-Lighting

Hello,

I am new to this forum (today!) and just starting to look around. So far, so good and great to be here.

I have the D3100 and find it to be fantastic. I am, however, very confused about the Active D-Lighting setting. I have shot with and without it and can't really see a difference. I don't fully understand what it actually does even though I have read the manual. I would really like to know what people in this forum think of it and whether there is a general consensus about having it on or off.

Can anyone help, please?

Many thanks, Alex

Function

Active D-Lighting works by using digital processing to adjust only specific areas of a photographic that may be overly dim or bright. For instance, with Active D-Lighting a shaded area under a tree juxtaposed to a glistening car windshield in the sun would reduce the severe contrast of the two areas to make light rendering more smooth and detailed.


Benefits

As compared to D-Lighting on previous Nikon models, Active D-Lighting occurs the instant a picture is taken. D-Lighting must go through post-processing within a computer program such as Nikon Capture. Also, Active D-Lighting has a tendency to enhance the vividness of color throughout a picture, and gives better detail to dark areas.



Considerations

Active D-Lighting makes its biggest impact in extreme, multifarious or abnormal lighting scenes. It is most noticeable in landscape and sporting event shots, as lighting can be complex.


I usually just turn my Active D Lighting off.

Active D-Lighting (ADL) analyses a photo as it’s metered and automatically adjusts the highlights and shadows to obtain the widest dynamic range. What this does, for example, is balance the exposure so subjects that are strongly back-lit are not under exposed.

Oh, wow, that's a huge difference! This was one of the settings on this camera that I have been trying to decipher, seeing a visual is much more striking than reading the explanation of what happens. I read some of the posts here and it's like reading a different language, it can be very frustrating, but seeing the drastic difference in the lighting of the little boy's face really tells me all I need to know about this setting. *runs off to find the user manual to figure out how to TURN ON this feature*

Me too. For my level of 'amateur'' photography I think it's one to switch on and leave on!!

I would just like to point out that my photos, using ADL, never turned out looking quite THAT good. I used that image to illustrate my post and show what ADL does, but that's not a shot I took myself. I have to wonder if it's the power of the D700 that was used to take that shot that helped it turn out so well.

In my experience with ADL you walk a fine line between getting better exposure and getting a LOT of "noise" in the shot as ADL attempts to improve things. And when I say a "lot", I man an awful lot. The ADL setting is certainly something I would encourage you to try on your cameras but I would also caution you to keep your expectations in check; ADL is not a miracle and, just like everything in photography, there's going to be a tradeoff somewhere.