Racin17 Loc: Western Pa

If someone could give me a brief overview on what is active d lighting and what it does i would appreciate it. Tried to search for one and all i could find is that it is a good thing to use. Thanks

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

The best advice I can give is to read that section in the manual and take a lot of with and without pictures and compare them. That's what I did, and I now leave ADL turned off. I can make changes in post. Sometimes it seems to help, and sometimes it doesn't.

PhotoMan1929 Loc: Virginia, USA

Needless to say, Nikon is not going to give you much information about the workings of their "Active D Lighting," but from what I have seen of it, it simply appears to be an in-camera form of shadow enhancement.

Shadow enhancement is simply a means of lightening the shadows in the image without significantly affecting the middle tones or highlights. The overall effect is an apparent increase in dynamic range. Carried too far the result is a lessening of contrast throughout the image.

Rather than use "Active D Lighting" with the camera doing the job, I would rather use some program such as Fastone Image Viewer or FlexPhotoDB, both of which have shadow enhancement features. Fastone is the easiest to use. I use a proprietary program which is quite effective especially when working with very contrasty lighting giving deep shadows.

JR1 Loc: Tavistock, Devon, UK

I searched for it

http://kenrockwell.com/nikon/d300/dynamic-range.htm

Racin17 Loc: Western Pa

Thank you all for the info. That helped alot. I will play around with it. Much appreciated

wilsondl2 Loc: Lincoln, Nebraska

Not sure how it works but I sure like it. I have taken pictures with my D80 that does not have it and can't see the shadows and the highlights are blown. Take the same shot with my D90 that has D lighting and the highlights are not blown and I can see in the shadows. I read somewhere that it is Nikons in camera HDR. NOt sure if that is true but whatever it is it work's - Dave

marty wild Loc: England

MtnMan Loc: ID

Others addressed kind of how it works.

It is one of two things I leave on auto and ignore. The other is white balance.

The one I really try to turn auto off on, but the camera won't pay attention too me on, is ISO.

I once did a little testing with it off, auto, and high. I didn't see huge differences on my test subjects. I suspect it depends a lot on the lighting of your subject. I've never seen it hurt anything.