inkpensieve said:
For all of them...
D-Lighting I'll check again and do a test shot tonight to check if thats the issue.
Also, LR doesn't renders the noise reduction effectively when I'm viewing the whole picture (It shows the render when I zoom in and when I zoom out the picture is again grainy), makes it impossible to judge what the image is going to look like. Is that normal?

Could it be that I need to reinstall LR ?

Question: If you use JPG instead of RAW, this also happens?
(On your test, take the photo using RAW+JPEG, this will allow you to compare the image using the same setting in the camera with the one the camera processes and the one you process.)

For all of them...
D-Lighting I'll check again and do a test shot tonight to check if thats the issue.
Also, LR doesn't renders the noise reduction effectively when I'm viewing the whole picture (It shows the render when I zoom in and when I zoom out the picture is again grainy), makes it impossible to judge what the image is going to look like. Is that normal?

Could it be that I need to reinstall LR ?

Is it for all pictures or only for some? ViewNX understands the camera settings so if you have active D-lighting set on it could bring up some of the darker areas. while LR just looks at the RAW as is.

NikoDoby said:
you don't have to post this twice. once is enough.

Like I said in your other thread, what color space are you using? Make sure you are shooting in sRGB.

Ah yes, I saw this thread later. I am using sRGB.

To repeat for others (since I guess you closed the other thread?) LR is showing my RAWs from D7000 to be a good stop or two underexposed. Here are the links:

RAW from VNX2
http://www.flickr.com/photos/61557228@N04/5600836869/

RAW from LR3.3
http://www.flickr.com/photos/61557228@N04/5600842589/

Any pointers?

you don't have to post this twice. once is enough.

Like I said in your other thread, what color space are you using? Make sure you are shooting in sRGB.

Haven't any of you guys faced a problem with D7000 raws and LR ? I'm having some issues with LR underexposing all the pictures by 1-2 stops (before I even start editing)... Settings issue? I just posted a thread about it and then thought this might be a better place to ask.

TaoTeJared said:
@rbid - If you are having that much trouble with your system why don't you just shoot Raw + jpg fine?

I regularly load and export 400+ at a time but I don't do conversions until I export them. Either way your system is fast enough for the conversion to happen in 20min or less. When I did batch files I did notice a big difference in what custom settings I used in the batch. One main setting was changing AdobeRGB to sRGB in the batch. That really slowed everything. Now I just leave everything set at AdobeRGB and do the sRGB conversion on the export side when posting to the web. The others that will kill it are the noise reduction, auto exposure, and similar extensive calculations.

For your system, if it is windows, Defrag it every night. Large groups of files can sometimes have a hard time fining the continual space.

Thanks, I found the reason... and it was not related to any PP software. (A conflict between the antivirus software and the driver of an old backup software that were making the access to the disk slower. Once I fixed the conflict, stuff become more acceptable.)

Now I'm playing with IFRaw to see what the hell I get.

heartyfisher said:
:-) Happy linux user here :-) (because they are an ecosystem of independent, inter-operating, interchangeable components. Old software will support new components like NEF converters) sorry I will keep quiet now....

Oh yes sorry almost forgot. You can get Opensource Raw converters for Windows too... Might not be as Fancy.. but they work. try DCRAW or some others.. there are a few.

From the same family of free tools sourceforge hosts comes this one: *Link Removed*

When I saw your post, I have downloaded DCRaw and wanted to play with it.. and now reading again while searching for D7000 and IR Photography, I discovered UFRaw that allows to play with the WB for IR ...Something other tools do not allow :(

@rbid - If you are having that much trouble with your system why don't you just shoot Raw + jpg fine?

I regularly load and export 400+ at a time but I don't do conversions until I export them. Either way your system is fast enough for the conversion to happen in 20min or less. When I did batch files I did notice a big difference in what custom settings I used in the batch. One main setting was changing AdobeRGB to sRGB in the batch. That really slowed everything. Now I just leave everything set at AdobeRGB and do the sRGB conversion on the export side when posting to the web. The others that will kill it are the noise reduction, auto exposure, and similar extensive calculations.

For your system, if it is windows, Defrag it every night. Large groups of files can sometimes have a hard time fining the continual space.

krevlingoodspeed said:
Lightroom is amazing but if you have a chance Capture One by PhaseOne blows everything out of the water.

Pricey but worth it.

And I thought I was the only one using C1 here. Glad to know I have company

bhoveyga said:
What do you like about it?

Overall Capture One is far better software than any other RAW converter out there. The image quality is amazing, and with the recently released 6.0 it bettered itself with a new RAW engine.

What struck me with years ago about the software is it intuitive nature, and the detail in dark shadows. Add a little contrast to a picture, and the details start to disappear. For this reason I have seen many pros to back-off on contrast to maintain details, however this is not a problem with Capture One as it will maintain the dark shadows far better. C1 also has a smart saturation feature which boosts the saturation of unsaturated colors while scaling back saturation of already saturated colors. This just makes it easier to bring out your colors without calling the saturation police.

The other feature which I use a lot is the color editor. If you have just one particular color you want to stand out or alter a bit, the color editor works wonders. Within this tool is a skin tone tab which will give you perfect skin tones while smoothing them out reducing blotchy areas of the skin.

With its use of sessions, styles and recipes makes it very easy to call up the settings you use the most. Also, if you are outputting to web, C1 can generate the cleanest JPEG
you have ever seen even when using higher amounts of compression.

That's right, rbid. I have a feeling you'll like it. Here are some hotkeys I use that make life easier.
D takes you to the develop module, and G takes you to the library module in grid view.
F toggles through normal, maximized, and full screen. I always work in full screen mode, though.
tapping spacebar is the zoom in/out hotkey, and holding it down gives you a temporary zoom and changes the cursor to the hand so you can drag the image on the screen.

CTRL+/ shows all available hotkeys for the module you're in.
L toggles between normal, lights dim, and lights out modes. It's nice for previewing without any clutter on the monitor.
SHIFT+TAB hides/shows all flyout panels
TAB hides/shows left+right flyout panels

jonnyapple said:
Yes, well, another free option is View NX, which has some basic functionality (WB, exposure, others). I did lightroom's 30-day free trial and have never looked back.

I just downloaded Lightroom's 30-day free trail, and I'm trying to play with it. (Before I do the next $tep)

To convert, I guess I need to import the NEF files and then Export them as JPG?.. is this true?

TaoTeJared said:
I hope you guys realize that if you shoot Raw, then convert it to Jpeg, then edit it, you loose all the editing power of the Raw file. In essence you are shooting with the highest Bit depth then compressing it so something smaller. It would be no different than just shooting Jpeg all the time. The better workflow should be Raw to Tiff. At that point you keep all of the ability of the Raw file. Sure you can change the WB etc. but Raw/Tiff editing gives one the major advantage over editing Jpeg files.

Note: I shoot probably 90% in Jpeg from the camera and rarely have any issues with editing but I do go to great lengths in getting the image I want from the camera. I have also learned when I will have to shoot Raw and change when needed.

Ted: You are absolutely right (As usual). I shot RAW all the time, and do a batch conversion to JPG for all the photos.. the ones that deserve a better conversion (This I have been doing on my D70s NEF files), open the RAW file with Photoshop and do the corresponding PP.

I treat my NEF files like my negatives, after working with them, I store them in a proper place protected from modifications or deletion.

Yes, bhovey, I've thought about upgrading, but I can't justify it now that I do less paid photography. It's maybe a bit ironic that now money's not really an issue I can't convince myself that I need an upgrade (this is sadly true of photographic equipment, too, so I hang around the forum and vicariously spend money by suggesting purchases to others ;-). The upgrade you're suggesting totals about what my current system cost me new (I've since added RAM and hard drives), but I have built my own system in the past and I'll probably do that again when it's time to upgrade (I just saw this deal post-Christmas 2007 and couldn't pass it up).

I hope you guys realize that if you shoot Raw, then convert it to Jpeg, then edit it, you loose all the editing power of the Raw file. In essence you are shooting with the highest Bit depth then compressing it so something smaller. It would be no different than just shooting Jpeg all the time. The better workflow should be Raw to Tiff. At that point you keep all of the ability of the Raw file. Sure you can change the WB etc. but Raw/Tiff editing gives one the major advantage over editing Jpeg files.

Note: I shoot probably 90% in Jpeg from the camera and rarely have any issues with editing but I do go to great lengths in getting the image I want from the camera. I have also learned when I will have to shoot Raw and change when needed.

jonnyapple said:
(I wish I had your modest machine, bhovey!)

Johnnyapple, you can get there easily, assuming you are comfortable opening up your computer... (and assuming you have a desktop, which are cheaper and easier to upgrade than laptops). A few critical parts changes might vastly improve your system for well below the cost of a new machine. Depending on your motherboard, you might be able to drop in another chip... the i7 in my machine was only around $250, probably less now. Some chip changes may require a motherboard swap, that's another $200 or so for a good one, but still cheaper than a new machine. And even if you stay with your current base hardware, you can probably double your performance by going to 64bit W7 and adding a couple of gigs of RAM. You won't see extreme benefits on 32-bit aps, but on the ones that are written to take advantage of 64-bit, you'll be impressed.

rbid said:

In the far past, I tried once to take photos in RAW + JPG on my old D70s.. since, the JPG was just a basic quality copy of the photo and I was not satisfied with the results. That is, with Nikon Capture I could translate the NEF files and get much better photos than the ones generated by the camera (RAW + JPG).

I guess I should give the D7000 a chance and try to take photos in RAW + JPG and see the results. (and break the myth I had from the D70s)

Thanks for the advice

You should see better results on the D7000 since it gives you three choices... RAW + Basic, RAW + Normal, and RAW + Fine. You are STILL going to get better images in the end if you process the RAW file, but the camera jpg's will be much better, and perhaps good enough in many cases, at least compared to Basic.

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised on both counts, rbid (raw + jpeg and Adobe's conversion times). I exported 10 14-bit files on a very modest machine (I wish I had your modest machine, bhovey!): 4GB ram, vista 32 bit (so actually 3.4 GB or whatever), 2.2 GHz core 2 duo. It took 2 min 5 s, so about 21 minutes for 100 files.

bhoveyga said:
I did it in Adobe Bridge in five minutes (302 seconds for 100 D7000 uncompressed 12 bit NEF's to jpegs). Host computer is pretty fast (Dual 6-core Xeon X5650's w/ 12gigs RAM, 2TB RAID) so YMMV. [edit] I tried it at home on a more modest system (quad core i7 960 2.67GHz, 6gigs RAM, no RAID) and it took 6 minutes, 50 sec. Both systems were Win7 64bit.

Either way, it looks like Bridge/Photoshop is pretty fast. Still slower than shooting RAW + jpg though. ;-)

Thanks for the benchmark.. I will run one here on my desktop as soon I get over 100 photos to translate and post the results in this thread.

Till this moment I was only taking photos in NEF in the camera and then use NC (on my old D70s) or ViewNX2 (for my D7000) to run the batch conversion.. but the huge 14bit NEF files from the D7000 take a long time to be converted!

In the far past, I tried once to take photos in RAW + JPG on my old D70s.. since, the JPG was just a basic quality copy of the photo and I was not satisfied with the results. That is, with Nikon Capture I could translate the NEF files and get much better photos than the ones generated by the camera (RAW + JPG).

I guess I should give the D7000 a chance and try to take photos in RAW + JPG and see the results. (and break the myth I had from the D70s)

Thanks for the advice

rbid said:
$^&!!*&*???!!$#$^^&*#%$^^.. Converting from NEF to JPG takes hours!.
(with ViewNX2 for D7000 NEF files)... I guess the same happens with Nikon Capture NX2.

How long takes you to convert 100 files from D7000 Nef files to Jpg?

I did it in Adobe Bridge in five minutes (302 seconds for 100 D7000 uncompressed 12 bit NEF's to jpegs). Host computer is pretty fast (Dual 6-core Xeon X5650's w/ 12gigs RAM, 2TB RAID) so YMMV. [edit] I tried it at home on a more modest system (quad core i7 960 2.67GHz, 6gigs RAM, no RAID) and it took 6 minutes, 50 sec. Both systems were Win7 64bit.

Either way, it looks like Bridge/Photoshop is pretty fast. Still slower than shooting RAW + jpg though. ;-)

$^&!!*&*???!!$#$^^&*#%$^^.. Converting from NEF to JPG takes hours!.
(with ViewNX2 for D7000 NEF files)... I guess the same happens with Nikon Capture NX2.

How long takes you to convert 100 files from D7000 Nef files to Jpg?

krevlingoodspeed said:
Lightroom is amazing but if you have a chance Capture One by PhaseOne blows everything out of the water.

What do you like about it?

Lightroom is amazing but if you have a chance Capture One by PhaseOne blows everything out of the water.

Pricey but worth it.

I use Lightroom 3 and really nothing else. Every once in a while I will use NX2 but very rarely.

heartyfisher said:
Just got a Windows 7 partition running on my pc... (yeh need to get back in to windows for work sake..) had a look around for raw conversion solutions and it looks like Paint Shop pro X3 SP4 has all the raw converters for D7000 and a few others. The "ultimate" package looks like its good value.

Also Rawtherapee has a beta for its new version 3 which looks good. Installed and started it but have not put any raw files through it yet. opened a few jpgs and it was fine. Anyone have some D7000 raw files for me to play with? Preferably one with a wide DR?

Thanks. Heartyfisher, drop me a personal message here in the forum with you e-mail and I will send you some NEF files.

KenRC51 said:
You can buy the Adobe Lightroom 3 from Adobe with student version for $89.99. You just need to email them your picture id or proof that your still in school to get the discounted price.

IMOP, this is the best RAW converters, library management, and editing software out there.

Nice, but I'm not a student :)

You can buy the Adobe Lightroom 3 from Adobe with student version for $89.99. You just need to email them your picture id or proof that your still in school to get the discounted price.

IMOP, this is the best RAW converters, library management, and editing software out there.