I have been doing much research on this subject, but have not found much on the web and hope one of you can help me out.
In my research into Nikon's raw file format, NEF, I can't figure out how to best deal with their files in a workflow. I am quite attached to Lightroom as a raw converter and my go-to tool, but as I understand it, Nikon's raw converter, Capture NX, does a superior job of interpreting color. Also, with the introduction of the D300, that camera has a new Active D-Lighting feature - not sure if it is worth much, but I understand that only Capture NX can interpret it.
Ideally, I would like to import the raw NEF files into Capture NX to get the best color and then export that interpretation into Lightroom. Can someone tell me if Capture NX can export files as DNG (adobe raw)? I bet that it can't . . .
This leaves exporting the images as tiff, which is highly undesirable to me because of their increased size and un-flexible nature.
Any help in this is greatly appreciated. I am very interested in those of you who shoot RAW NEF's and use Lightroom.
there are two D-Lighting settings in a D300/D3. one happens in the camera during capture because it adjusts the exposure and tone curve. the other is plain D-lighting and that is post processing either in the camera or in Capture. i've never cared for the output of Capture and use Lightroom or CS3 for almost everything.
So it sounds like with the correct setting in the camera, the D-lighting feature can be shown on the raw (nef) files imported directly to Lightroom. Is this correct?
It sounds like I won't miss much by importing to Lightroom and skipping Capture NX. That is good news as I want to simplify as much as possible.
