"Nikon has gone through great pains to promote this feature without telling anybody what exactly is going on."
I have no idea who Frans Waterlander is, but I think he was spot on in a discussion forum. This blog post lists some known facts and some important guesses - if you switch Active D-Lighting (ADL) on.
ADL is a technology Nikon uses to handle pictures with big contrast - a lot of light and a lot of darkness in the same photo.
To make it work properly, use Matrix metering.
Switching on matrix metering on a Nikon D300.ADL is not the same thing as D-lighting. D-lighting does about the same thing - it reduces shadows and highlight, but it is made after the picture is taken. Active D-lighting is made while the picture is being taken.
How it is done, no one seems to know. One theory is that it is done by the camera sensor itself. Another is that it is a setting applied to the RAW camera data.
You cannot change the level of ADL in Capture NX or View NX. Normal D-lighting can be changed in those products.
It is rumoured that ADL does not work when you take pictures in Manual mode in the camera.
When you use ADL in A, P or S mode, it makes the general exposure slightly darker.
From experiments it seems like Adobe products ignore ADL in NEF files completely. In other words: if you shoot RAW and use Adobe products like Lightroom or Photoshop, Active D-lighting will serve no purpose.
Normal D-lighting can be applied in the retouch area of the camera in many models. It can also be applied in Capture NX and View NX.
My own strategy currently is to switch ADL off. It is complicated to handle, it takes time to switch on and off, there is a risk factor that you do something wrong, and life is too short to learn all the aspects. If there are high contrast images to take, they can often be handled by post processing anyhow.
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