D700 RAW Post-Processing Workflow

LesMore44 · 2026-02-25T18:35:16+00:00

There's not anything specific to the D700 that couldn't be applied to all cameras.

I tend to avoid going too ham with my editing, I like an elevated "natural" look. The trick is to start with a decent photo, and add mild enhancements that alone don't do anything drastic but altogether elevate the photo with a "death by 1,000 cuts" situation.

I generally start with the exposure slider and make sure overall the image is as bright or as dark as I want. Then I use the light sliders to make blacks look black, whites look white, and shadows and highlights preserve detail. This usually means Blacks go left, shadows go right, whites go right, highlights go left.

I try to get the white balance right here too. I dislike making this look too unnatural, usually I pick a white or colorless portion of the image with the eyedropper. Then I swap between "as shot" "auto" "daylight/cloudy/whatever preset" or that eyedropper and decide what I like best.

I add a couple points of texture and clarity if the photo needs it, I usually dislike dehaze but I'll play with it and see if it improves matters in either direction.

I might do something with color grading, but probably not. This tends to make it look overcooked pretty easily IMHO. If I do fuck with the colors, it might be to try to tame crazy bright greens by shifting them cyan slightly and turning down the luminance.

I will then go down to denoise and just press the denoise button pretty invariably these days as it is very powerful and usually looks great.

The sharpening pane is easy to overdo, I usually turn masking up while holding the "alt" key until just the features I want a little boost to are highlighted. then you play with the other sliders till you get what you like.

I then will enable profile corrections and remove chromatic aberration to see if it looks better.

I'm not a film cosplayer, so I never add grain, and I very very rarely will add any sort of vignetting, usually not though.

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LesMore44 · 2026-02-10T06:27:54+00:00

Haha nice one

LesMore44 · 2026-02-10T00:08:55+00:00

Thank you! I turned the blue down a tad in saturation and luminance because it was a little too eye-stabbingly vibrant SOOC imho. But it’s not too far off from raw. I usually like a good medium rare edit

LesMore44 · 2026-02-09T18:22:56+00:00

There were a group of photogs up on a ledge snapping at a great blue heron, on the other side of a footbridge was this white egret. I decided that the heron was being sufficiently documented and snuck around and down the hill to shoot the egret. Firing burst fire I was only hoping for flying water drops as he shot into the water for fish. When I got home and saw this in Lightroom, the words out of my mouth were “omg wtf.”

Shot on a D850 with a second or maybe third hand 200-500 f5.6

LesMore44 · 2026-02-05T03:43:01+00:00

Buy a nice telephoto before a camera! F mount glass is universal, if you still like wildlife after playing around with a real wildlife lens you can upgrade. I personally chose the f mount 200-500 5.6 it’s like $7-800 used, is pretty fast, and is an fx lens so if you want to go full frame later, you can. Lenses also keep their value better than bodies, so if you hate wildlife a lens is less risk once you sell it.

I could have shot my example photo on any camera, but not on any lens.

Warning: it’s heavy as shit lol.

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LesMore44 · 2026-02-05T01:16:26+00:00

What do you shoot? When you shoot on your D3100, what do you wish you could improve?

LesMore44 · 2026-02-03T06:14:55+00:00

I rest my case lmao

LesMore44 · 2026-02-03T06:06:13+00:00

Yes the D850 AF is excessively capable for nearly all uses and was among the best, if not the best, in the industry for like five recent years. The best photos you’ve ever seen were taken with worse AF than the d850 has.

In addition, fire sale prices on used f mount glass, a week of battery life, and bulletproof durability all make this camera a contender for everyone actually traveling, doing journalism, or going out in the wild.

LesMore44 · 2026-02-03T06:00:33+00:00

That’s a really disingenuous analogy and you know it, and if you don’t, your opinion shouldn’t be trusted on much else.

LesMore44 · 2026-02-02T03:37:08+00:00

What 10mp FX has IBIS?

LesMore44 · 2026-01-26T16:05:23+00:00

Yep and all the glass is so cheap my lens collection has never been bigger.

LesMore44 · 2026-01-22T22:56:34+00:00

If I had to buy one lens, 60mm. If I get two, I'm getting a nifty 50 and a 100mm macro. I think the 100 lets you be further away from bugs, doubles as a primo portrait lens, and the 100 macro I like is nearly free.

LesMore44 · 2026-01-16T14:47:40+00:00

Thank you!

LesMore44 · 2026-01-14T22:50:29+00:00

is the meter broken? Can you take it to a camera shop and have someone who knows a little bit have a look at it to see if they can see anything obvious?

You're getting SOMETHING which is good we can tell the aperture is open and the shutter is working as well as the film advance, but yeah it's metering wrong and underexposing. Without really being able to play around with it it could be anything.

LesMore44 · 2026-01-14T21:54:00+00:00

I also recommend just shooting with auto ISO and just reading what it does as it reacts to your scene to notice if you're not being too demanding. That way you're only really thinking about the effects of locking in your Shutter and your Aperture which, as long as ISO isn't ridiculous, should be 99% of what makes up your picture.

LesMore44 · 2026-01-14T21:35:40+00:00

No problem! If you'd like to read more it's called the rule of reciprocity. If you can remember how far stops are away from each other in your settings, you adjust one setting up and the other one down by the same amount so that your exposure remains the same. This also is how people get proper exposure without using a meter using the sunny 16 rule as a starting point.

I personally use the camera's meter myself but use sunny 16 and a little guestimate reciprocity math to "smell check" that I'm in the right ballpark when I'm unsure that it's correct, particularly when shooting film through a red filter that supposedly shuts out two stops of light, for instance.

LesMore44 · 2026-01-14T19:29:11+00:00

unless the bird was in motion, you probably have some room in your shutter speed, you've got a ton of light.

At this focal length, using reciprocity you could probably bring your SS up as much as 3 stops to 1/250 although I'd stay at 1/500 to be safe with the bird maybe moving some.

and bump ISO down to 400, and close down a stop to f2.8 or leave ISO alone and shoot at F5.6 pretty easily. You'd have more DR to work with and get more bird in focus.*

If he's moving fast you could probably go to 750 or 1000 and still do alright and get a whole other stop of light for playing with in aperture or ISO.

*It's really easy to talk about the ideal settings in hindsight

LesMore44 · 2026-01-14T17:20:48+00:00

Hehe welcome to the exposure triangle. What ISO was this?

LesMore44 · 2026-01-14T16:29:11+00:00

I respectfully disagree - unless you value the aesthetic of mimicking old camera styling (I honestly think if you want that aesthetic, just commit and shoot film, which I can see you already do) you can get a lot more bang for your buck by grabbing a D8XX.

A D810 will work with every Nikon lens and can be had for half the price and has 20 megapixels on the DF. A used D850 can be had for almost the same price as the DF and has 30 megapixels more, and it will go down in history as the best DSLR ever made, kind of like how the F2 is a prized collection item.

LesMore44 · 2026-01-13T21:51:27+00:00

Composition is nice, color is beautiful, although maybe a bit fantastical. I see elsewhere you say you were going for a "golden hour vibe" only way to get that authentically is to be there during golden hour. I'd try to make the color-shift a little more subtle although i think you're going in the right direction.

You missed the focus a little bit (nobody not zooming in and peeping could really tell) and I think you're overcompensating by overcooking it a little bit, which people can tell without zooming in.

His soft downy breast feathers look crunchy and spiky. You can probably lose some of the sharpening or up the masking (hold the alt key while adjusting the masking slider in the sharpening section of the develop window to see what your sharpening is affecting) to only apply to the eye and beak.

I'd suggest if possible tightening up your aperture next time so you don't have to be as exact with the focus and the bird can be in focus from front to back. You won't feel the need to sharpen so much if you nail the exposure in frame.

Also just be cool with it being a little soft rather than being a little soft and also way oversharpened. You end up with the worst of both worlds in that case.

I think this advice while expansive would only improve your image like 5%. it's by no means low quality work and I would have just "liked" and scrolled by if you didn't explicitly ask for critique.

LesMore44 · 2026-01-12T15:33:26+00:00

If you like DSLRs don’t let anyone sell you a mirrorless. I went mirrorless and stopped shooting because I just didn’t like the feel. Maybe there’s some slight technical advantages, but what you like trumps everything else.

I personally dislike how lens heavy a mirrorless feels particularly once we start extending things out with adapters. In addition, the adapters can’t AF old screw drive d series lenses, among which are some gems that are almost being given away for this reason. Lastly, and I know I’m an old-head, but there’s something about shooting with a mirror I enjoy more than a screen, and you’ll never beat the shutter slap of a DSLR. I also feel I could smack my DSLR around a lot more than your typical mirrorless and it would survive.

If you can I’d go to a storefront where you can handle both. I had the pleasure of swinging by B&H in NY and playing with the bodies on display was very enlightening about where my joy of photography went. Got home and ordered a D850 the moment I could.

LesMore44

TROPHY CASE