Hello,

I haven't posted here for a while, but I hope someone with D700 expertise can help.

I recently purchased a used D700 with ~20,000 shutter actuations. I have two FX lenses: the second version 24-120 zoom (purchased used) and a new 16-35mm zoom. I've been an avid D300 user and have had great success with that camera, so I was really looking forward to the D700.

The D700 images are quite disappointing. In Lightroom 4 they appear washed out, so I wonder if have set something incorrectly or if there is another problem. Shots taken at fairly close or near range exhibit excellent sharpness, but at longer distances I am not experiencing the type of shrpness I had expected from this camera. It's the same with both lenses so I doubt a lens is the problem. I'm shooting RAW.

Any thoughts? Many thanks in advance!

This is an excellent camera with plenty of sharpness. Either you are setting something wrong or there is something wrong with the camera. Have you tried a factory reset?

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Lightroom does not read all the data in the NEF files, so the defaults it picks may not be to your liking. (Only Nikon's software reads all the settings.)

Have you tried viewing the raw files in Nikon's ViewNX or CaptureNX?

If nothing else, post a link to your NEF file and let us see what you are seeing.

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Joseph K
Seattle, WA, USA

D700, D200, D70S, 24-70mm f/2.8, VR 70-200mm f/2.8 II, 50mm f/1.4 D,
17-55mm f/2.8 DX, 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 VR, 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5 DX

Reset the camera back to factory defaults, set the camera for jpg and then see what you get.

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>In Lightroom 4 they appear washed out

Have you checked the Picture Control settings? goto Shooting menu>Set Picture Control.

Could be set to Neutral which does look a bit washed out and slightly overexposed, I prefer Standard.

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Hello, and thanks for the input! All good suggestions.

I have determined that most if not all of the "problem" is attributable to the import settings in Lightroom. By default Lightroom uses "Adobe Standard" as the camera calibration profile for the D700. Changing that to "Camera Standard" (as per a suggestion on Adobe Lightroom Forums) provides a much better image. That makes me happy as I have a Lightroom catalog of almost 50,000 images and will not migrate to another software program on account of a camera. A shame that Nikon will not allow the user the choice of an open RAW format like DNG (as Leica does).

Thanks again,

Bob Woods