I really want to use Aperture (3.3), but I keep running into a situation where the Nikon D700 NEF conversion is just plain ugly. This happens most when photographing colored lights. I created a blog post to easily show my findings.
Joseph said I should post here to see if anyone has a solution…
Bog, have the d5100. Never had a problem with RAW files. But maybe I haven’t notice it yet. I saw your pictures and saw the problem.
Do you have the latest firmware? Im guessing you do. Im going to do some test with my nikon and see if i find something….
The biggest problem with using any third party RAW converter is matching the individual brand cameras to the manufacturers process … and if you use any in-camera settings provided by the camera makers … the third party software can’t read and invoke that information because they are not privy to methods, coding the camera makers use to get there. So you are at the mercy of what the third party engineers provide in rendering out tone and color and how they think the data should be interpreted and rendered …. some options can be considered better or inferior, though much of the appraisals offered are purely a personal taste point of view.
I wholly agree that Capture NX can (and should) offer the the best match as compared to camera generated jpegs … considering that is what you are viewing on the camera’s LCD screen, even if you are shooting RAW. Nikon engineered both the camera AND the software so it should be closer.
I must also admit that Lr/ACR from Adobe offers a much more in the ability to dial in custom color by means of options on what you can select in the way of Camera Calibration color profiles … and better yet, there are options to create camera specific custom profiles that you can then set as default for your specific camera(s) … Something I hope that the next iteration of Aperture will incorporate.
That said, while the color rendition offered for my Nikon cameras in Aperture are “different” than what I can achieve in Lr/ACR by default, I wouldn’t consider the process inferior … I would much prefer I could tweak that look and establish it as default, allowing all other adjustment settings to remain at default (zeroed if you will) upon import as I can with Adobe products … this is one of the few areas that I think Lr/ACR has a slight edge over Aperture … though Aperture offers so much more in simplicity and speed of workflow that balances out the scale more than just a little …
In the end, I really don’t think one third party option is really superior over the other when it comes to image quality, as there are an infinite number of spectacular images created using them all …
What it really comes down to is simply “can you produce the same image” (or at least different but just as good). When viewing those highlights, it’s clear that NX has a massive advantage, for the reasons that Butch outlines.
Is it possible to get that same look with Aperture; to reduce the crazy blowouts?
-Joseph
@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?