Poor JPEGs Quality with Nikon D100

I have just been testing my recently acquired D100, and am rather
dissatisfied with its jpeg performance (even at Fine Large setting).
Head to head against the same scene shot in NEF, the jpeg's contrast
is sorely lacking; very sorely lacking. To put things in better
perspective, I took the NEF version and saved it using Photoshop CS as
jpegs at the Max (10), Hi, and Med settings, that ended up in files
1800KB, 1051KB and 650KB, as compared to the original jpeg version
which was 2600KB in size. Even the Photoshop 650KB jpeg had better
color, better resolution, and very much better contrast.

Can anyone hazard a guess as to what gives? Is the D100 simply using
some primitive schlocky jpeg converter algorithm? The Photoshop CS
conversions to jpegs resulted in images that were nearly the quality
of the original NEF in contrast, resolution, and color.

Most of my shooting is overseas where I will not have access to
computers for uploading images, and/or storing them on CDs or the
like. My trips have generally resulting in 55-60 rolls of 36 exposure
film. I would certainly prefer to shoot jpegs to conserve space, but
clearly the cost in image quality is way too high.

From: (john chapman)

I have just been testing my recently acquired D100, and am rather
dissatisfied with its jpeg performance

Head to head against the same scene shot in NEF, the jpeg's contrast
is sorely lacking; very sorely lacking.

I don't use Nikons but this sounds odd, you should get a close match between
jpegs and tiffs unless you are either modifying the NEF when you do the RAW
conversion or have some strange settings defined for your in-camera jpeg
conversions. See if you have the in-camera settings set to low contrast, etc.

john chapman wrote:

Can anyone hazard a guess as to what gives?

Do you have sharpening turned on?
EV values set? Custom curves loaded?
Something must be set somewhere to
give this result.

I've used JPEG and NEF both, and usually
it's hard to tell the difference between a post-
processed NEF and a JPEG from the D100.

Could be a User A/User B issue. I'd look
up and down the menu tree a couple of times.

Well done spirit

There's no point in mincing words - that looks about as straight to the
pixel as one can ever read

das B

"spirit" wrote in message
...
On 4 Jul 2004 17:09:19 -0700, (john chapman) wrote:

I have just been testing my recently acquired D100, and am rather
dissatisfied with its jpeg performance (even at Fine Large setting).


Unfortunately this is the only but serious drawback in the D100 which
otherwise is an excellent camera and a fantastic travel camera as it
is lightweight and more importantly its battery has some serious
staying power ~ 600 shots over a two week vacation is not uncommon.

However, it must be seen as having only RAW (NEF) mode, like the Sigma
in reality as its JPEGs are appalling, its been Canon's best sales
vehicle and is probably responsible for the unprecedented success of
the 10D, a camera flawed in other areas but its JPEGs are fantastic.

I wouldn't recommend getting the Canon as the D100 is still a better
camera overall, except if you must shoot JPEG, you might as well leave
the Nikon at home altogether in that case.

You must consider shooting NEF, bringing extras batteries, CF storage
and one of those portable hard drives (and LOTS of batteries for
them).

If you have to shoot JPEG with the D100 make sure you overexpose a
little or a lot, you will blow out highlights but that may not matter,
Nikon's approach to preserving the highlights was to make the D100
underexpose, this in turn made for muddy, noisy images, particularly
JPEGs ~~ a plus ? as standard will clean up the moderately effected
shooting conditions.