Enjoyed dinner at Rudy's Lakeside on the Lake Ontario shoreline last night. After a beautiful sunset, I caught these boaters heading home. 18-200VR at 200mm, 1/125s, f/8, -0.3 EV
No filter. Using Color IIIa, Saturation on '+' and WB set to Auto -3 on my D70. Really pops the yellows and reds which has backfired on me at times. Wide angle views of this sunset shows the blues and purples (see below).
Never do this with lighted stage shows. : I turned Ariel into a flaming redhead! ;D Only time the histograms on my D70 fails me is when I blow out reds.
very nice scott. Try shooting cloudy wb +1 too. it warms up the reds and yellow. or sunny -2. I like the saturation set to + also. also, I noticed you set to underexpose by 1/3 stop. My d80 at sunset, requires -1 to -1 1/3 or it will blow out the pretty colors. ( i am getting kind of frustrated with my d80 meter. -2/3 in daylight. -1/3 in dim light. 0.0 inside. I am constantly fiddling with that button.)
I read somewhere Nikon did something funky with the D80 meter. Has there been any D80 firmware upgrades since you got yours? You might want to check out dpreview forums. If there's an issue with the D80, they'll beat it to death there. : I have found when it comes to including sky with my D70, I start shooting with -0.3 EV which seems to be my camera's bias. Don't know if it's something all D70s have in common. I'll give your WB suggestions a try, too. Wish the D70 had a way to save multiple setups like my old Coolpix 995 did. That would make it easy to change from my current setup to a portrait one for instance. That was the only thing I miss about the 995, the lag between shutter presses drove me nuts.
from what I have read people complained to nikon that the meter in the d70 exposed for highlights at the expense of shadow detail so nikon reversed it and the d80 keeps shadow detail at the expense of highlights. Even Ken Rockwell like him or not says the d80 meter is goofy and requires some ev playing. I generally shoot -3 to -7 ev and alot of chimping
