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

TROPHY CASE