Experiences with Nikon D750 and Aperture

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5 points

Experiences with Nikon D750 and Aperture

Hi,

a few weeks ago I bought a Nikon D750 – my camera before was a Nikon D700.

All in all I am disappointed about the quality of my photos with the D750 in Aperture – they’re all 14bit RAWs without compression. The problems e. g. are:

- Photos shot with the D750 at low light conditions at home are too much colour saturated - especially there’s too much red in it.

- Contrast is much too high.

- Dark areas are often black without details.

I looked at many of these photos in Adobe’s Lightroom. The RAW intepretation seems a bit better (especially regarding contrast and dark areas) but has other problems (e. g. with skin tones).

I made a few comparision photos with my D750 and the D700. All in all the D700 makes a much better job in home light conditions. You can see more details in the photos, colour saturation and contrast are better.

Can anyone confirm these problems? At the moment I am not sure if it is a problem of the D750 (which is reviewed everywhere so excellent!) or of the CameraRAW interpretation of Apple. Will future Camera RAW updates mabye have better interpretations?

Regards, Ulf

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1), Aperture 3.6

Posted on Jan 3, 2015 9:11 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 5, 2015 11:32 AM in response to Uelef

Double check you camera menu settings to make sure you are shooting RAW files at the "lossless compressed" setting. There is no "uncompressed" RAW file setting for the new d750.

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Answer 2

Uelef Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 5, 2015 12:54 PM in response to torreypines

Yes, they’re „lossless compressed“ …

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Answer 3

Tejono

Level 1

9 points

Jan 5, 2015 2:17 PM in response to Uelef

Hi Ulf,

check, whether your camera uses sRGB or Adobe RGB, then check in Nikon View NX 2 which xRGB View NX assigns to the photo, and then check in Aperture which xRGB Aperture assigns.

My guess is that your camera uses sRGB, View NX 2 assigns Nikon sRGB 4.0.0.3002, and Aperture assigns Adobe RGB (1998) to the photos.

If my guess is right, Aperture does not honor camera color space information.

Tejono

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Answer 4

Uelef Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 5, 2015 2:31 PM in response to torreypines

Good idea. Thanks. The camera setting is sRGB at the moment …

I’ll check it out tomorrow - in Germany it’s 11.30 p.m. Time to go to bed.

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Answer 5

Uelef Author

Level 1

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Jan 6, 2015 2:13 AM in response to Tejono

Camera settings are sRGB. In Nikon View NX 2 the profile ist sRGB Nikon 4.0.0..3002. Aperture says it’s Adobe RGB. So, you’re right with your suggestion, Tejono.

So what can I do? Should I chance the camera setting to Adobe RGB? Or can I tell Aperture to identify sRGB?

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Answer 6

Tejono

Level 1

9 points

Jan 6, 2015 3:04 AM in response to Uelef

Force Apple to honour camera colour space information (hope they are reading this) ... .

I don't know. Just got my new Nikon and stumbled over the same. So far it seems you can't tell Aperture to change to a specific RGB-space or apply a RGB-space of your like. My suspicion is that Aperture by default applies sRGB to jpg and Adobe RGB to RAW.

Happily, if you export "Original" from Aperture and open it in View/Capture NX, the original colour space information is preserved (e.g. sRGB). I will try out the following two in the coming weeks:

a) I use Aperture merely as database/storage place for my photos and export originals from there for processing in View/Capture NX.

b) I take all photos in RAW and Adobe RGB and buy a new hard disk. And for consumer prints export them into sRGB-JPGs (Aperture lets specify the colour space at export).

One more thing: is your D700 using 14-bit-RAW with Adobe RGB while your D750 uses 12-bit-RAW with sRGB?

Tejono

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Answer 7

Uelef Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 6, 2015 3:11 AM in response to Tejono

Both cameras are using 14-bit RAWs. And I took a look at the settings of my D700 (I never changed that): It’s using Adobe RGB.

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Answer 8

Tejono

Level 1

9 points

Jan 6, 2015 3:18 AM in response to Uelef

;-)

Let's meet here in a week and share our experiences and workflows. I will use Capture NX D-processed photos as reference.

Tejono

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Answer 9

Uelef Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 11, 2015 9:43 AM in response to Uelef

To illustrate, what I mean: I shot today a photo (nothing special) with my lensbaby fisheye lens in low light.

That’s the way the photo looks like in Aperture 3.6 (I tried to improve it a bit):

In Apertue the photo has to much contrast. But reducing it makes the photo ugly. You can also see that dark parts of the photo (not the black) tend to be brown and the transition between black and brown looks terrible.

The Same photo processed and also a bit improved with Lightroom 5.7 looks a lot better:

You can see a lot more details - details you can never get with Aperture.

In my opinion Apple’s camera raw for the Nikon D750 makes a very bad job. A lot of my photos can not good be processed in Aperture.

Does anyone with the D750 make same experiences?

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Answer 10

Uelef Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 29, 2015 1:34 AM in response to Uelef

3 weeks later … Apple has not delivered a new version of Camera RAW that solved my problems with the Nikon D750 and Aperture / iPhoto. Most photos are still looking awful in both applications (too much contrast, brown spots in low light areas, too much color saturation). Lightroom and Nikons Capture NX-D make a better job, but I don’t like the workflow in both.

Does no-one own a Nikon D750 and is using Aperture or iPhoto? I’m still looking for someone to confirm my problems, so I can be sure it’s not my camera that causes the problems.

Regards, Ulf

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Answer 11

Uelef Author

Level 1

5 points

Feb 26, 2015 7:06 AM in response to Uelef

I'm still surprised that no-one else reports about problems using a Nikon D750 with Aperture or iPhoto and Camera RAW Update 6.0.2.

I was hoping that the beta of Yosemite 10.0.3 with the new Photos.app will solve the problems – but the D750 RAWs are processed exactly the same way.

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Answer 12

Feb 26, 2015 9:46 AM in response to Uelef

A couple things:

First, you keep talking about the "RAW color space." There is no such thing as a color space in a RAW file. Regardless of the camera settings you have (Adobe RGB or sRGB) it does not affect RAW files. The color space and other tweaks (saturation, vivid, black & white, etc.) only affect JPEG files and the preview you see on the back of the camera. RAW files do not have a color space, so there is no "color space information" for Apple to honor.

You can try tweaking the camera RAW parameters yourself if you don't like the default conversion. If you've been using Aperture for a long time, it will show up as the top adjustment brick in the list. If you're relatively recent to Aperture, the camera RAW brick is not shown by default. Add it, and then go look at the numbers for sharpness, boost, etc., and see if you can tweak them to get results you like better.

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Answer 13

Uelef Author

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5 points

Feb 26, 2015 12:38 PM in response to William Lloyd

I tried to tweak the RAW parameters, it makes things a lot better, but neverthelesse I never had these problems with my D700. Setting down color saturation in RAW parameters (in German it's called "Farbton verstärken") causes other problems: photos get darker than they should be. In my opinion Camera RAW update has to tweak the standard settings for the D750.

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Answer 14

Feb 26, 2015 3:27 PM in response to Uelef

I suggest you send feedback to Apple. They do not necessarily read these forums. It has been a *long* time since the lead Aperture developer posted here.

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Answer 15

Uelef Author

Level 1

5 points

Feb 26, 2015 11:39 PM in response to Keith Barkley

I sent my feedback yesterday to Apple - but I'm not sure if there is anyone of the Aperture developers who will read it. Maybe there's no-one left … And for Camera RAW I did not find a possibility to send a feedback.

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