akamerica

It is very clear that the Nikon D850 will take HDR exposures only in JPG or TIFF. Setting the quality at NEF will cause the HDR menu selection to be "grayed out."

Now riddle me this. With the quality set at JPG fine large, what other camera settings keep HDR grayed out?

Bill_de Loc: US

I have read, but not confirmed, that a bracketing setting other than 0 will disable hdr.

Someone mentioned, not to clearly, that when in highlight weighted metering it may interfere with hdr.

Hope this at least points you in the right direction.

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akamerica

Yes, that was the answer.

I was trying to take more than 2 HDR pictures now understanding that HDR for in-camera procession only with two exposures. Bracket saves the exposures for post processing.

Joy and thanks.

Thomas902 Loc: Washington DC

akamerica have you ponder using a software solution for HDR?
Might look at HDRsoft.com free trail version to try before you buy

https://www.hdrsoft.com/download.html

I all honesty, I don't know any commercial photographers who would even consider using in camera HDR...
enough said...

I wish you well on your journey akamerica...

akamerica

We agree.
The 850 has so many options, so little time.
HDR, new 105mm lens to try, focus stacking, video of dog, and so on.

I will look at the dedicated software for HDR and thanks for the recommendation and reply.

Art

Strodav Loc: Houston, Tx

Thanks for the heads up. I just tried it here at my desk and it only works in jpg.

f8lee Loc: New Mexico

If you expect the HDR to be handled in-camera, then it cannot output a raw file (NEF in your case) because a raw file is not an image yet. Having the in-camera computer do the HDR processing necessarily requires the output to be a bona fide image file, like JPG or TIF.

If, on the other hand, you shoot in raw and bracket exposures then the set of raw files can be processed by any number of post processing programs - which will likely give you infinitely more power to tweak the final image.

The in-camera process is, I believe, really only useful in situations where you need to deliver the final output an hour after taking the images for some reason.