I shot all of the photos in this gallery on March 30, 2008, with a handheld Nikon D300 and a Nikon 18-200mm VR zoom lens. All the images shown are as is, as they came out of the camera; no post-processing was applied to them. However, I did resize the pictures for online viewing.

After some experimentation, I have settled on the following picture control settings as my D300 defaults: picture control STANDARD, sharpening 7, saturation +1, contrast 0, brightness 0 and hue 0. These were the settings I used to take the photos in this gallery.

I didn't use Active D-Lighting here because the evening light was mostly diffuse and flat; under more contrasty lighting, such as direct sunlight or floodlights, I do use AD-L -- picking low, normal or high depending on the lighting's degree of contrast and the extent to which I want to extend the images' dynamic range.

My other usual settings are -- focus mode AF-S and AF-area mode single, unless I am shooting action or sports; VR control on, unless I am using a tripod; exposure mode programmed automatic, unless aperture-priority auto, shutter-priority auto or full manual would be more appropriate; metering mode center-weighted, unless spot is called for; color space sRGB when I am shooting in JPEG mode only, and Adobe RGB when I am shooting RAW (NEF) or in both RAW and JPEG modes.

Having very limited free time for photography, I usually shoot JPEGs that I try to nail down in such a way that no further work outside the camera would be necessary, as in the case of the photos here. But I do not shy away from post-processing JPEGs when it is called for. I reserve the RAW mode -- and the additional CaptureNX work that may have to follow -- only for my most important shots.

My style of shooting requires me to get my exposures and white balance as close to perfect as often as possible "in camera." A lot of care and selectivity go into my efforts in these two areas -- even when I am using the automatic modes. I do use the exposure-compensation control whenever it is needed. Crucial in all of this are the accuracy and consistency of my D300's calibrated LCD monitor (brightness -2).

(For direct and bounce flash, my tentative settings are NEUTRAL picture control, +7 sharpening, +1 contrast, +2 saturation and no AD-L. ... Note that Nikon's CaptureNX automatically applies these camera settings to NEF [raw] files. But they can be canceled during NEF post-processing, if one needs or prefers to start from scratch.)

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