Pre Release Capture and Picture Controls

[Hooligans Imagery]

Caveat: I have used AC quite a bit but not Pre Release.

I noted this footnote in Hogans latest post:

Tip: In my presentation on Black Friday I did a very brief demonstration of how Flexible Picture Controls are useful to the wildlife photographer (for when they use pre-release capture). What I didn’t say is this: on that Z50II I can disable Picture Controls I’m not interested in. Meaning that I can more quickly navigate to one of my predefined ones using that Picture Control button. Hopefully Nikon sees how useful this is and adds this small change (ability to remove Picture Controls from choices) to the other cameras.

In the post he describes how to use them on other cameras.

I am curious if anyone has used them for Pre Release?

What settings did you settle on?

 

[abc123brian]

Caveat: I have used AC quite a bit but not Pre Release.

I noted this footnote in Hogans latest post:

In the post he describes how to use them on other cameras.

I am curious if anyone has used them for Pre Release?

What settings did you settle on?

I have not yet but I could see how it would be useful with the jpg prerelease capture. I recently watched a video from Cammackey where he used NX Studio to customize a picture control and export to the camera. Sharing in case anyone find it useful. I am planning to try to create a picture control close to the edits I make to the RAW files to try. I think it could be useful for other casual shooting things I don’t want to always edit.

 

[Webbie!]

Experimenting and learning what works best for you is almost always a wise course of action. My experimentations helped me land on using Neutral for nearly every shooting situation, especially action and wildlife. I find the contrast is too pronounced with all the other color PCs, except of course, Flat.

 

[Lee R]

Caveat: I have used AC quite a bit but not Pre Release.

I noted this footnote in Hogans latest post:

In the post he describes how to use them on other cameras.

I am curious if anyone has used them for Pre Release?

What settings did you settle on?

I have been experimenting with the JPEG picture controls for pre-capture and just general use for HEIF as you can also change the profiles in camera for those.

My suggestion would be to take some of your RAW files into NX Studio where you can adjust the settings that your camera can also adjust and edit some files to see what settings fit your taste then make a wildlife profile off of that and try it out.

What I've found so far is Nikons Standard/Vivid/Landscape profiles are way too contrasty for birds. I use the Neutral or Portrait profiles and then push the sharpening settings up and also lower the contrast a bit and the clarity down as that helps retain feather details. I keep noise reduction either off or at low since it will wipe out detail and on the Z8 the noise grain actually doesn't look that bad mostly.

RAW is obviously better to retain detail but you really can dial in the JPEG's pretty well for using pre-capture. We still have a lot of editing room in the camera to pre-edit those JPEG profiles before shooting.

I really wish HEIF was an option for pre-capture as those files are much more editable after shooting, they're 10 bit vs 8 of jpeg and retail more detail. Highlights and shadow are much better with them. It's weird that Nikon didn't exploit those more.

 

[Webbie!]

I use the Neutral or Portrait profiles and then push the sharpening settings up and also lower the contrast a bit and the clarity down as that helps retain feather details.

Interesting … I’ll have to go back out and shoot some birds with the clarity down. I currently have clarity set to 5 and mid-range sharpening, which is Texture in Lightroom, to 2.5.

 

[Lee R]

Interesting … I’ll have to go back out and shoot some birds with the clarity down. I currently have clarity set to 5 and mid-range sharpening, which is Texture in Lightroom, to 2.5.

NX Studio replicates the in-camera adjustments so if you have RAWs already try it in there, or shoot a few next time your out. That's the best way to see what those settings do and experiment to get a baseline to try out. Nikon's JPEG engine loves contrasty images so that stuff needs to be toned down for birds.