Neutral Color Control

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Stangman98

Senior Member
How many of you have shot in ND on the D300? I recently moved from Vivid to ND in the camera. I find that the photos are more flat, but much easier to edit and appear to be sharper also. I am still getting great color quality on preview, and not nearly as much blow out a lot of the time.
 
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westmill

Banned
I shoot in ND when I shoot JPGs. You will find all of the options have different paremeters. You can adjust each of the paremeters at will though on the individual settings to match watever you want. Vivid is good for dull overcast days and will add punch to an otherwise flat shot. In the same way as fuji velvia did for film. The way i work is simple. After taking a number of pics at different locations etc.... the chances are you find yourself altering a setting exactly the same for every pic. In my case, I noticed I increased contrast in every pic. I then upped the contrast in camera in ND mode. I then increased saturation slightly. I did this until I was happy with the results. Now I get good punchy results straight from the box.

Nikon leaves the standard sharpenning pretty soft for JPGs compaired to the likes of cannon etc so there is lots of scope there too.
I dont like overdoing sharpness in camera though. I find I get much better results just knocking sharpness up a couple of notches and then sharpening the end result in unsharp mask. This will give you biting sharp results :D
 
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Stangman98

Senior Member
I think it's called Neutral. I shoot everything in RAW. I just like the base photo much better in this setting than in the Vivid setting even after adjusting for contrast, saturation, etc.
 
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westmill

Banned
LOL i pondered over that one needlessly lol. I cant say as Ive ever noticed a differance in that respect, but then I dont use my view too much realy.
Its a quick glance at the most for a quick check all looks like it is supposed too. My checking is done later on the PC :D
 
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Stangman98

Senior Member
Same here. I am usually just looking quick and then looking at the historygrams on screen to see where I am at. Shooting in neutral really leveled out my historygrams also.
 
Eduard

Eduard

Super Mod
Staff member
Super Mod
The histograms are based on the embedded JPEG in a NEF file. Shooting at Neutral will give you a better representation.

(I have to admit that when I saw the title I expected questions about ND filters.)
 
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Bukitimah

Senior Member
I shoot in RAW and Neutral then edit them in CS4. However, I still having problem determining what is the right color tone. Sometimes, I look back on my hand to match what I see on the photo to see if I got the setting right!
 
E

Eye-level

Banned
I just use SD...neutral was to drab to me when I first tried it. Perhaps I should go use some of those and find out what I like best when...
 
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