D90 in camera RAW rendering

[JimmyO]

In the past few months ive started shooting raw for pretty much anything atleast semi serious. This is because i finally got Lightroom which is awesome after using just gimp for 2 years. My d90 rendered my jpgs pretty darn accurately on the display. But now that i shoot raw it seems that the screen ads about a stop of light to them and enhances contrast and clarity. This is a ***** becuase now i have to shoot what looks to bright on the screen and hope its about right once i get it on my imac. I can check the histogram but most of my shots are shot at night and/or with off camera lighting so its hard to judge from that. My camera screen brightness is set to 0 so its not that. Wonderin if anyone else has any similar issues.

 

[AnneClaire]

The reason for shooting in RAW is because you can edit the pictures afterwards without loss of quality. So if they appear too bright, just darken them a little bit. Also check out your display settings. Many displays don't produce colors correctly. Try using a calibrating software to see if this is the case.

 

[Garbz]

One thing is certain and that is you can never trust the display on the camera. It's not the display which is the problem, but your environment. How can you accurately see the tonality on the display when your eyes will adjust to the environment. With this I mean when out in the sun with my hand shading over the display I can barely make out the highlights when I squint, late at night however everything looks way too bright on my LCD.

I would only judge the composition on the display, judge the tone using a histogram (if you don't know how I suggest you learn), and leave the overall critique of the image for the screen at home.

 

[Derrel]

I think the Lightroom default image profile is what has changed Jimmy. The RAW files are just that, RAW Files, but the way Lightroom is set up to handle your camera's files is what has changed. A few years ago, when ADobe was just developing the Camera RAW module concept, when a person downloaded and opened a folder of RAW images, the RAWS were all shown AS-Shot, with a rather dull,dark look and a very bland tone curve, but beginning around ACR 3 I guess it was, somewhere in there, Adobe decided to apply AUTOMATIC image adjustments, with default profiles for each and every camera the software could handle...this meant that opening Nikon .NEF files was way,way,way different than before!

I think what you are seeing is a similar issue.

 

[JimmyO]

Thanks guys im sureits a combo of them all. Like i said i live and die by the histogram for most of my shots but certain ones the whole BG is black and just a little of the subject is lit (but correctly exposed) and thats really hard to read on the histogram. RAW give me enough lei-way that this has never been a problem but i was just wondering if anyone else has issues with this.

 

[IgsEMT]

D90 Bible
Thom Hogan's Guide to D90. You'll learn and know more about that camera that you ever wanted to know ON TOP of what you've been told here.
Good Luck

 

[KmH]

I don't think the histogram on your camera is of the RAW image you just made.

I think it's the histogram for the basic JPEG that is embedded in the RAW file that is displayed on the LCD.

 

[Dominantly]

It's just because what your D90 did for temporary processing to show you an image on the LCD and what Lightroom did for display, are a bit different. Either way, you still can bring out what you want the photo to look like, assuming you got it close in camera. If you are processing multiple shots from a shoot, save the a preset of the first one you edit, then just hit the rest of them with that preset.. It's a way to give you maximum, customized processing and organizing.

 

[Derrel]

I don't think the histogram on your camera is of the RAW image you just made.

I think it's the histogram for the basic JPEG that is embedded in the RAW file that is displayed on the LCD.

KmH is absolutely correct: the in-camera histogram is derived from the JPEG image; so, if the image parameters in-camera are set strongly one way or another, the histogram is not representative of the RAW data. For example, if you crank the saturation and the contrast up really high, the histogram will show channel blow-out well before the maximum exposure has been achieved. Very scientific and hard-core shooters load what is called a Uni-White Balance or a near-Uni white balance into the camera, either through camera maker software, or by putting an appropriate file onto a CF Card, and directing the camera's custom WB system to use the Uni-WB image file from the CF card as the source for the white balance. This image file will alos have a non-tone-mapped or "linear" tone curve response.

When shooting and trying to expose to the right, it is important that the camera's custom capture parameters NOT be "juiced", so do not boost the saturation or tone curve or allow the camera to have wildly off-based white balance settings. Otherwise, the histogram will slam over to the right hand side well,well befoere you have actually achieved pixel well saturation.

And JimmyO, I do like the type of stuff you and your friends shoot, and yuor dark and moody style is a good example of why an external light meter is still a valuable tool: you can only rely upon an LCD screen for so much, but when it comes time to actually KNOW if your camera is approach its limits, the unflinching eye of a good Minolta or Sekonic flash/incident/reflected light meter is worth its weight in re-shoots and "Oh, dang it!'s" Considering how much flash work you are doing, I think it'd be valuable to invest in a flash meter, so you can accurately predict, without even firing a single frame, what the background density will be, using incident light on the main/fill, and then reflected light metering the background from subject position. This is an old method called codified by Dean Collins decades ago. It was called ChromaZones. If you YouTube the Dean Collins videos you might see some great examples of how to use an incident light meter to measure subject, then the appropriate amount of offset measured with a *reflected* light meter to determine how much or how little light is needed for the proper background density.

Tony Corbell, a disciple of Dean Collins, wrote a book on studio lighting, and he talks a bit about the ChromaZones system in that book.

Use a google search on the terms Uni-WB or Uni-WHite Balance or near-Uni White Balance. There are YouTube, dPreview, and Fred MIrands links to this topic.

 

[Garbz]

Definitely true, but the histogram is still a more accurate representation than an image on an uncalibrated LCD which is exposed to very extreme changes in viewing conditions.

That is unless you're camera is doing something very strange with raw processing