One of the original pages on this website a few years back, was on the subject of my choice of Nikon’s custom curves.

Since I went over to a raw-only workflow about 5 years ago, I haven’t had any need for custom curves. The reason for this is that there are an infinite number of scenarios under which we take photographs, and hence there won’t be any single custom curve which would suit all situations.  Lighting scenarios change. The contrast will change, and  brightness and other settings will also change.  A raw workflow is the most flexible way to adapt to this.

The quest for the perfect custom curve is a dead-end street, and the best advice I can give to anyone who is curious about custom curves - for whatever reason that may be - is to forget about custom curves, and go to a raw workflow.  You’ll avoid many headaches this way.

However, I still get emails asking for info and my opinion on custom curves.  So for those who are curious about the original page on custom curves, I am reposting the article here as it orginally appeared. 

(For anyone else, this page will be trivial and of marginal interest.)

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exposure metering ..

Before reading any further about the custom tone curve option with your Nikon D-SLR,
  it is very important that you are sure that ..  

• your basic exposure metering technique is good,

• and you understand that using Fill-Flash D-TTL instead of Standard D-TTL under certain conditions WILL give you under-exposed images, (dependent on the camera you may be using).

I want to stress this point about good metering technique again, by repeating something I mention elsewhere on these pages … that I constantly see people complain on the various internet forums about the D100 or D70 under-exposing … and in the vast majority of cases when they post sample images, it is obvious that the photographer had no idea how to use a camera’s lightmeter. This problem seems to be especially prevalent with people who previously used colour print film and unknowingly had the lab correct their mistakes for them, and now expect the same results using digital cameras.

So please, before you latch onto the idea that your D100 (or other Nikon D-SLR) is not a very capable camera,
and that your camera gives you grossly under-exposed images, make sure your metering technique is up to scratch..

So do you need a custom curve ?

If this is your first look at custom curves, please take to heart my comments about exposure metering, and then perhaps try the following curves:
  -  basic-curve_152
  -  basic-curve_141

As mentioned previously, since I went over to a raw-only workflow, I don’t have any need for custom curves. There are an infinite number of scenarios under which we take photographs, and hence there won’t be a single one custom curve which would suit all situations.I would really recommend you only use a custom curve if you shoot in JPG and find that you do a lot of repetitive post-processing work in Photoshop, such as adjusting each image by the same amount using Curves. In this way, a custom curve in the camera, can pre-empt some post-production by biasing the images already towards what you would do anyway afterwards.  If you are happy with the images your camera produces, you don’t need a custom curve.And again, be aware that there is no single custom curve that will be the best choice in every possible situation.  At best you can hope for a better compromise.Custom curves will affect the contrast. If there is a curve to the slope, contrast will change, even if only subtly.Along with a change in contrast, a custom curve will also change the colours. This can be noticable in how skin tones change when a custom curve is used.Noise is also increased with any custom curve that raises the darker tones, or which truncates the high-lights.But if you still feel that the images out of your camera consistently appear too dark, and you find that you regularly spend time adjusting curves in Photoshop, then there are two ways to pre-emptively approach this with a Nikon D-SLR :

a basic custom curve ..

Since I mostly corrected for the D100 under-exposure by bumping up the midtones using the Curves setting in Photoshop -
I decided that I may as well use a simple curve like that in-camera.

The custom cuve I originally used, was the basic-curve_159,   (pictured on the right), which is a simple curve using a single point to pull the midtones up by around +0.42 stops.I’ve had variations of this basic curve, and it continually became more conservative with each incarnation.

The curve I then used, and which I’ve had good feedback from other users, was the basic-curve_152, which lifts the mid-tones by only +0.32 stops.  If you want to try a custom curve with your D100, then certainly download it and give it a try.

The curve I eventually used as a default with my D100, is the basic-curve_141, and is even more conservative, and only lifts the midtones by +0.20 of a stop. This is the curve I used with my D100 at the time, including my wedding photography.

The reason why I went with an even more conservative tone curve, is because I noticed that the contrast in the highlights
were affected in a way I didn’t like when I used the 159 curve. The 152 curve on the other hand showed much less change in
the contrast than the 159 curve, when compared with the Normal tone curve. And similarly, the effect of the 141 curve is less
pronounced, and just gives a nice pop in the overall brightness, without affecting colour and contrast in an immediately noticable way.

Please feel free to download any of these curves to try out and use if you like the results.  If you don’t, then it is a simple matter to deselect them in your camera and go back to the Normal default curve.  Or you may well want to edit a tone curve in any way that you feel is best suited to the results you expect.

So if this is a first-time try at custom curves, then perhaps try the basic-curve_152 if you have a D100,  or the basic-curve_141 if you have a D70 or D2H.

But as I stated above, I use the 141 curve in my D100, and although I have the 141 curve loaded in my D2H, I use Normal Tone as my default.

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shooting in RAW ..

A crucial point is that I shoot entirely in NEF / RAW format. This gives me the flexiblity of disabling the custom curve after the fact when I post-process my images. If you shoot in JPG, then carefully consider whether you really want to use custom curves, since you will be committed to your choice at the time of taking the photo, unlike the photographer shooting in RAW.Even though the RAW file format (NEF), allows the most flexibility in post-processing,  and the exposure and curves and levels can be adjusted in the computer afterwards,  I still use a custom tone curve in my D100 when I shoot in RAW mode.This is because, for me, the custom tone curve will still result in a better out-of-camera image with the D100, when the NEF file is directly converted to JPG without any adjustments.  So using a custom tone curve helps in simplifying my digital workflow slightly.If the image was shot in the NEF format, then the custom tone curve can be deselected after the fact in Nikon Capture Editor. One of the default tone curves similar to the D100 tone curve selections can be re-selected instead - and the tone curve can be adjusted in the Curves menu in Nikon Capture Editor.  The NEF file can then also be adjusted for exposure if needed, giving you more latitude than you would’ve had with JPG.Sometimes a normal tone curve or low contrast tone curve would give better results than a custom tone curve .. and then shooting in RAW format would obviously give the greatest amount of flexibility and also avoid compression, without loss of picture information. 

loading a custom tone curve into your camera ..

For this you need Nikon Capture Control, or software like Tone Up. Nikon Capture comes as a 30 day trial version which should allow you some time to see if you like having a custom tone curve available in your D100.The procedure to upload the custom tone curve is quite easy: