JohnR Loc: Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

For many years now I’ve been a fan of the small compact zoom cameras that I use mainly for cycling activities but also bushwalking (trekking I believe its called in some places). They fit easily into a pocket or handlebar bag and in the case of a bingle then only a couple of hundred dollars are at risk – also they do tend to be more shockproof than the larger DSLRs (and waterproof too !) Anyway they fit in well with my style of photography with my pics usually going no further than my iMac just occasionally to Facebook or via emails to family. A recent GAS attack has seen me move from my Lumix TZ80 & Sony HX90V to a Nikon A1000. I do like to have an EVF (which they both had) but the Sony flip up EVF is incredibly fiddly and annoying and the Lumix lenses are a bit soft (especially past 10X ) so the new Nikon was just too tempting. Sharper than the Lumix and having an equally good non pop up EVF I just had to have it! Anyway daughters have benefitted with one getting the Lumix and another the Sony.

Sadly the Nikon has not been a wonderful success as I find the SOOC jpgs very disappointing being woefully overdone with very high contrast in some situations and very poor detail in others. I have tried many many different settings without much success. It does however have the option of shooting Raw so I thought why not give that a go! I’ve never bothered much with Raw over the years as I much prefer SOOC not liking to sit in front of the PC for hours doing PP. Problems, problems though!! My preferred software for many years has been Aperture on my various iMacs/MacBooks and Aperture will not even consider opening Nikon Raw files – doesn’t even like to find them to download! So I’ve spent many happy? hours with trials of Luminar, Capture 1, ACDSee, Photoshop Elements, among others, finding none of them will open the Nikon raw files anyway! Luckily they were only trials – would have cost me heaps to buy!

Take the camera back? No – its really nice to use - great ergonomics with nice feel and a good size/weight so I thought as I have Windows 10 on my iMac why not see what that’ll do – I downloaded FastStone Viewer some time ago at the recommend of some Hoggers and although I felt it wasn’t as good as Aperture it wasn’t bad so I gave it a go and lo and behold it recognised, imported and opened my Nikon NRW files without missing a beat! A couple of quick edits adjusting sharpness and exposure then saved back to the SD card as jpgs. Back into Mac OS and they imported straight into Aperture with really good results. Phew what a relief!

Anyway for those Hoggers that like(d) Aperture it’s a means of continuing to use it with your new cameras despite there being no support for them from Apple.

I run Windows under Parallels VM software but it can be done in Apples Boot Camp. Parallels costs money but is easier in many ways as you run it as an App in Mac OS. Boot Camp is free but you have to boot into Windows from Mac then boot back into Mac from Windows. A bit fiddlier. In both cases though you will need a Windows installer and product key.

Anyone who needs help doing this is welcome to yell and I’ll see if I can.

Cheers JohnR.

martinfisherphoto Loc: Lake Placid Florida

I feel your pain a long time lover of aperture who is just now finding a replacement.
On another note and a short story about a friend of mine that's a Cannon shooter, I'm a Nikon guy. He bought an expensive 400mm prime lens, top shelf stuff, 10 grand worth. For awhile the lens took fantastic shots, crisp and sharp, you could not take a bad photo with the lens. Slowly but surely my friend started having problems with the lens, sharpness was down. He was several years older, not in the best of shape so he gave me the camera and lens to see if it was user related, as I shoot mostly wildlife and lots of birds in flight. I took it for a long weekend and man did I struggle trying to nail the focus. I even set up a target and tripod and tried to fine tune the lens using the fine tune adjustments in the camera, nothing seemed to work. I then started going trough the camera, learning all of the adjustment. It's what I do with Nikon, learn the camera inside and out as most failures are User related. Finally I found the culprit... We were looking at his JPEG shot out of camera files and with JPEGS come all of the different in camera adjustments. He had set the In Camera Sharpening to the max. It's just like if you over sharpen an image it begins to look soft. Took three days of trail and error to find out why the lens was failing. I set the camera back to neutral on all of the settings and presto, the lens was like new again. More than once I have set my Nikon back to factor settings, only so I can make all of my fine adjustments and to make sure every little thing is properly set. It's good practice and stops any of the unseen user related fails.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

FWIW.... Apple uses a raw decoder built into OSX, so Photos, iPhotos and Aperture make use of the Apple Raw engine. You should check to see which version of Apple Raw supports the Nikon camera that you are trying - I used to make use of Aperture using a Nikon D3000 & D5100 & a Nikon D7100 shooting raw. Depending on the version of OSX you are running, you may be able to upgrade the raw decoder to support the specific camera.

You could also get a copy of Adobe's free DNG CONVERTER to read the Nikon raws and convert them to DNG to see if Aperture will read them (same for the other products you mentioned.)

https://support.apple.com/kb/index?page=search&type=organic&src=support_searchbox_main&locale=en_US&q=apple+raw

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/adobe-dng-converter.html

FYI: Looks like Adobe Camera Raw will handle the A1000 raws as of version 11.2, currently Lightroom Classic and Photoshop are at 11.2.1.x

You could get a trial of the Adobe CC package - Lightroom, Photoshop & Bridge - $9.99 a month if you like it. You end up with always the latest improvements, including support for new cameras soon after they are available at no additional cost.

BTW - The Adobe packages use Adobe Camera Raw to decode raws, not the OSX decoder.

JD750 Loc: SoCal

Ahh Aperture, I remember it fondly. It was a great program.

Apple announced the end of support for Aperture back in June of 2014 so this is not totally a surprise. But Aperture Digital Camera Raw as does Photos and Digital Camera Raw is kept up to date. But I used to use Aperture and it would definitely read NEF files. However looking at the list of supported cameras, I do not see the A1000 listed. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207972

VABob

Why not try to use Photos. It should open the A1000. I found that Photos opened up my Sony RX10-IV raw after I updated to 10.14.4

JohnR Loc: Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

Thanks VABob, but NO, Photos will not even see the NRW files - says the folder is empty!

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

I suspect your issue is that the Apple raw engine in OS X will not convert the new A1000 raw files.... you will need to either convert them to DNG using the free Adobe DNG converter, or use an Adobe product that uses the newer version of Adobe Camera Raw....

For grins... what version of OSX are you running?

JD750 Loc: SoCal

Per my post above, it appears that Apple Digital Camera Raw does not support the A1000 series.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207972

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

Yes, thats what I suspected all along ;) Adobe DNG or Lightroom/Photoshop CC would be a good choice for working on the raw images.

JD750 Loc: SoCal

JohnR,

You can use the free Nikon software Capture NX-D to open the NRW files and can edit them and save as TIFF, JPG etc.

Nikon Capture NX-D is free and it supports:
RAW (.NEF/.NRW format images captured with a Nikon digital camera, JPEG and TIFF images supported)
Source: https://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/a/tips-and-techniques/nikon-capture-nx-d-software.html

Note: Capture NX-D is not to be confused with the old Capture NX-2.

JD750 Loc: SoCal

Regarding Nikon Capture NX-D:
Capture NX-D is NOT Capture NX, If I remember correctly, NX-D was written, by Silkipix for Nikon, after Nix sold out to Google and Nikon lost the rights to the control point technology in Capture NX. Capture NX-D does not have the control point technology that made NX-2 so popular. But NX-D will open and render Nikon raw formats.

Advantages: (1) Free; (2) You will get the best color using the Nikon software for raw images. And all the in-camera features are there as well and can be adjusted using the Nikon software.
(Also true for Canon software for Canon raw images; Olympus software for Olympus raw images, etc etc etc.)

The disadvantages of NX-D are it is slow and clunky and uses a lot of computer resources, and I sometimes referred to it as Nikon "crashware". But it is free and it will do what you want.

JohnR Loc: Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

Hi JD750. I have indeed tried Nikons software - - gosh its awful! FastStone is also free and is quick and easy to use - not clunky and slow as is the Nikons software and it also allows one to save as TIFF, JPG etc. It works very well just requiring one to have Windows available on ones Mac!

Cheers JohnR

xt2 Loc: British Columbia, Canada

Love (d) Aperture in its day. Love Luminar 3 now!

Cheers!

JohnR Loc: Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

Hi again - just remembered another issue with Mac Photos - it does not support dual monitors. I can edit in Aperture with the thumbnails and workspace on one screen displaying the instant result full screen on the 2nd. Very handy indeed.! FastStone will also allow this but I was not able to find anyway of doing it in Luminar or Capture 1 etc

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Are you using Mac OS 10.14.4 with all current updates?