D850 Exposure in camera

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hsjd700

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It seems that every time I shoot to the '0'centre line in any metering mode it looks great on the back of the camera and histogram, but when I get the images into light room the photos are always under exposed? I remember my D700 was always shooting on the hot side and used the fine tune in the menu to compensate. Is this the same for the D850?
 
Can you post a couple of examples? What metering mode do you use with the D850? Raw or jpg? If jpg there are a lot of camera settings that can affect how the raw data is converted in camera. Is you monitor calibrated, especially the gamma? Do the histograms in LR match the histograms on your camera's display?
 
Can you post a couple of examples? What metering mode do you use with the D850? Raw or jpg? If jpg there are a lot of camera settings that can affect how the raw data is converted in camera. Is you monitor calibrated, especially the gamma? Do the histograms in LR match the histograms on your camera's display?
My metering mode was matrix and I shoot Raw. My monitor is a BenQ SW2700 and is calibrated with X-rite i1Profiler. The histogram in LR does match the cameras display.
You mentioned gamma? My X-rite settings are Gamma to 2.20, Luminance 120 cd/m2, white point D65 and monitor is set to RGB LED. I'll try to post some examples as soon as I can. Thank you for your help on this.
 
It seems that every time I shoot to the '0'centre line in any metering mode it looks great on the back of the camera and histogram, but when I get the images into light room the photos are always under exposed? I remember my D700 was always shooting on the hot side and used the fine tune in the menu to compensate. Is this the same for the D850?
Is your LCD set too bright? Remember that the histogram won't be 100% accurate as I think it is based on the jpg you see on the LCD that might have had some processing applied to it in camera. No such issue with my D850 but I have the jpg set for neutral or whatever else is flat with all other jpg settings at zero and make sure the LCD is correctly set.
 
My metering mode was matrix and I shoot Raw. My monitor is a BenQ SW2700 and is calibrated with X-rite i1Profiler. The histogram in LR does match the cameras display.
You mentioned gamma? My X-rite settings are Gamma to 2.20, Luminance 120 cd/m2, white point D65 and monitor is set to RGB LED. I'll try to post some examples as soon as I can. Thank you for your help on this.
Seems like you’ve got everything buttoned down. While my 4 Nikon bodies are all a bit different none show less exposure than the others, including the D850. Last thought, compensation set to 0?
 
It seems that every time I shoot to the '0'centre line in any metering mode it looks great on the back of the camera and histogram, but when I get the images into light room the photos are always under exposed? I remember my D700 was always shooting on the hot side and used the fine tune in the menu to compensate. Is this the same for the D850?

How are you judging exposure for in camera and Lightroom. ?Screen appearance or histogram. As pointed out previously, brightness on the LCD is not good since the backlight brightness can vary.

I would suggest a simple test. Take exposures of a uniform white wall or other uniformly lit scene with the camera set to capture NEF+JPG. It doesn't matter if the target is white or grey, since the metered exposure will be the same; the camera meter has no way of knowing scene reflectance.

Look at the pixel value in the center of the images, with the in camera JPG and Lightroom raw conversions using exposure 0, and exposure -0.35. The -0.35 value is to correct for the hidden exposure correction (see link) that LR applies for the D850. If you have Rawdigger, look at the raw pixel value and determine percent sensor saturation.

With my D850 set to sRGB and using the Nikon Standard picture control, I get an sRGB value of 132 from the in camera JPEGs. With Lightroom I get 135 with no exposure adjustment and 115 with -0.35 exposure correction. Mid-grey in sRGB is 118. The values from the camera and LR with no exposure correction are slightly hot, while with the -0.35 EV correction the pixel value is very close to mid-grey.

Using Rawdigger, I get a raw pixel value of 1380. Saturation occurs at around 15780, so saturation is 9%. According to Iliah Borg, the Nikon D850 is calibrated to get a saturation of 10% under these conditions. I conclude that my D850 is exposing correctly.

Cheers,

Bill
 
Just speculating, but I know active D lighting can have an impact on metering, even in full manual. I know Lightroom completely ignores active D. So an image could look right in the jpeg based preview in camera but not look the same in lightroom. Try turning active D off if you have it on in camera. You can control the same things via a curves adjustment in Lightroom. Another idea would be to experiment bringing the raw into Nikon's raw converter, which won't ignore active D, then have Lightroom and the Nikon version side by side in different windows. This would show if the camera is responsible for the problem as you unclick different settings.
 
Is your LCD set too bright? Remember that the histogram won't be 100% accurate as I think it is based on the jpg you see on the LCD that might have had some processing applied to it in camera. No such issue with my D850 but I have the jpg set for neutral or whatever else is flat with all other jpg settings at zero and make sure the LCD is correctly set.
_HSJ2263.jpg
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This photos histogram on the back of the cameras LCD is touching the far right hand side of the whites. Lightroom histogram is showing me that it's about 1.5 stops under? Is it because the histogram is based on the jpeg image on the cameras LCD? I have active D-lighting turned off. cheers
 
This photos histogram on the back of the cameras LCD is touching the far right hand side of the whites. Lightroom histogram is showing me that it's about 1.5 stops under? Is it because the histogram is based on the jpeg image on the cameras LCD? I have active D-lighting turned off. cheers

Yep - as I said earlier (post #4), it is probably because either the image you see on the LCD is from a jpg image and jpg will not give as good a result as RAW files. Even if you shoot RAW, the image on the LCD is from the embedded jpg and it will be influenced by the picture control settings - photo shooting menu>set picture control>(mine's on neutral)>other settings here my sharpening 2 the rest zero. If the contrast/saturation/hue/brightness are not at zero they will influence the LCD image, and the camera histogram. Also bear in mind that the camera histogram is not 100% accurate.

Have you tried turning the LCD brigthness down by about 1.5 stops then check the histogram after taking some new images? If you are still getting good highlights on the histogram and the LCD image is more in line with the LR images, I'd say you have cracked it. So then increasing your exposure by 1.5 stops should result in the end of your conundrum.
 
One thought would be hit reset in lightroom in case you have inadvertently applied a preset. Another would be to think about how your in camera settings might be influencing the in-camera preview, contrast for example. Lightroom won't pick up the in camera setting but if you have it set high in camera it will reflect in the camera histogram and viewing screen. 1 1/2 stops is a lot for a top quality camera like yours to be off, so there must be a simple explanation other than 'your camera is broken'
 
This photos histogram on the back of the cameras LCD is touching the far right hand side of the whites. Lightroom histogram is showing me that it's about 1.5 stops under? Is it because the histogram is based on the jpeg image on the cameras LCD? I have active D-lighting turned off. cheers

Which camera histogram are you viewing, RGB or luminance? The luminance histogram reflects mainly the green channel, while clipping in red and blue can occur with minimal effect on the luminance histogram. For the red and blue channels, clipping can occur with white balance when the raw channels are intact. Too bad we don't have a raw histogram.

Bill
 
One thought would be hit reset in lightroom in case you have inadvertently applied a preset. Another would be to think about how your in camera settings might be influencing the in-camera preview, contrast for example. Lightroom won't pick up the in camera setting but if you have it set high in camera it will reflect in the camera histogram and viewing screen. 1 1/2 stops is a lot for a top quality camera like yours to be off, so there must be a simple explanation other than 'your camera is broken'

+1
Those are good suggestions. I have not noted such a discrepancy between LR/ACR with either my D850 or D800e.

The current process version of ACR/LR (version 5) is not optimal for evaluation of the raw file since they apply highlight recovery and other image adaptive corrections. This post on the FastrawViewer site has some suggestions.

  1. Switch color space from sRGB to ProphotoRGB
  2. Switch process version from Ver 5 to Ver 2
  3. Set point curve to linear
  4. Set all sliders to zero
  5. Override the baseline exposure correction (+0.35 for the D850)
Cheers,

Bill
 
Yep - as I said earlier (post #4), it is probably because either the image you see on the LCD is from a jpg image and jpg will not give as good a result as RAW files. Even if you shoot RAW, the image on the LCD is from the embedded jpg and it will be influenced by the picture control settings - photo shooting menu>set picture control>(mine's on neutral)>other settings here my sharpening 2 the rest zero. If the contrast/saturation/hue/brightness are not at zero they will influence the LCD image, and the camera histogram. Also bear in mind that the camera histogram is not 100% accurate.

Have you tried turning the LCD brigthness down by about 1.5 stops then check the histogram after taking some new images? If you are still getting good highlights on the histogram and the LCD image is more in line with the LR images, I'd say you have cracked it. So then increasing your exposure by 1.5 stops should result in the end of your conundrum.
I have my photo shooting menu the same as you except I was shooting standard picture control - I changed to neutral and lowered the LCD brightness by 2.
Then I changed 'Fine Tune Optimal Exposure' b7 on all my metering modes by + 1EV and did some test shots ranging from ISO 64 to 4000.
The LCD histogram now resembles the lightroom histogram and still have room to lift exposure in the raw file if I want to, noise has improved on the images which makes sense.

I've had a lot of great advice from this forum - Thank you to everyone much appreciated. Harry.
 
I have my photo shooting menu the same as you except I was shooting standard picture control - I changed to neutral and lowered the LCD brightness by 2.
Then I changed 'Fine Tune Optimal Exposure' b7 on all my metering modes by + 1EV and did some test shots ranging from ISO 64 to 4000.
The LCD histogram now resembles the lightroom histogram and still have room to lift exposure in the raw file if I want to, noise has improved on the images which makes sense.

I've had a lot of great advice from this forum - Thank you to everyone much appreciated. Harry.

Great to see some progress! I've had my matrix mode highlights set to minus 1/6th of a stop in all 3 of the Nikon cameras I've had since 2010.

What does your LCD image look like?
 
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