Nikon Picture Control Preset

There seems to be a matching profile for every Nikon Picture Control setting except Flat, but Nikon pushes Flat as the best choice for RAW editing. I've used Camera Neutral to reasonably good effect, but are there other ways? Is a Flat matching profile coming? Or does it even matter? Existing preset and custom Picture Controls can be modified to suit the scene or your creative intent. Choose a balanced combination of sharpening, contrast, and saturation using Quick adjust, or make manual adjustments to individual settings.

Shooting in N-Log 10-bit 4:2:2 is the best option right now for the Nikon Z6 (Amazon, B&H) – at least until RAW comes out.

However, sometimes you don’t want to grade. There’s no time, or maybe you’re just not good at it. In this video I share my favorite picture control, how I’ve tweaked it, and how I’ve used it to shoot video:

My favorite picture control

My favorite picture control is the Portrait Style. Here are the settings for you to use:

• Quick Sharp – 0
• Sharpnening – 0 (or -3 for a more filmic look)
• Clarity – o
• Contrast – -3
• Brightness – 0
• Saturation – 0
• Hue – 0

How to shoot cinematic videos with the Nikon Z6

For best results, use this method:

1. Record via an external recorder. I recommend DNxHR HQX or Prores 4444. You get better color and control for tweaks in post.
2. Select the following settings in HDMI:
   • 10-bit 4:2:2
   • Full Range – If your recorder shows negative blacks, switch to Limited Range (only for direct-to-YouTube videos, otherwise you can bring them back up in post).
   • N-log: Off
   • View Assist: Off
3. Native ISO of 100 (you can go to ISO 12800 without much penalty)
4. Middle grey is 45 IRE, similar to Rec. 709. However, the Portrait control is greater than Rec. 709, so your colors will not line up on a vectorscope.
5. Expose normally. You can do this because of the great low light ability of this camera.
6. Use Zebras to help you with highlight clipping and skin tone clipping.
7. Use the False Color tool and Waveform for perfect skin tone exposure.
8. The maximum dynamic range I’ve tested here is about 10.7 stops internally, and possibly 11 stops via HDMI.

Why not Neutral or Flat?

With both Neutral and Flat picture controls, you still need to grade. In that case, N-log is definitely the better option.

If you’re recording internally, the 8-bit 4:2:0 compressed footage falls apart even on simple grading. So there’s no point in shooting Neutral or Flat if you even need to grade even a little bit. Neutral is still okay, but avoid Flat completely – there’s just no benefit.

Nikon Picture Control Raw

For me, skin tones are the most important thing – everything else is secondary. And, after testing all the styles, I’ve decided Portrait is the best setting overall, for my work. You can see the results for yourself.

Can you use this on the Nikon Z7?

Yes, no problem!

You probably didn’t know about this free resource so I thought I’d share it with you. It will allow you to make better quality films with your camera, give you more interesting colours when you just want to shoot JPEGs and let you mess around shooting great looking black and white files in-camera that look like proper film photos.

The Nikon D500 camera has a new Flat picture control preset that gives a really low contrast, low saturation look. For photographers, this may seem superfluous. If you shoot in RAW mode (which you should), then the picture control adjustments you choose in-camera won’t show in Lightroom or Capture One. But because Nikon has overtaken Canon for video capability in its dSLR cameras, this flat mode is to designed to help film-makers.

You may have heard about ungraded vs graded footage when shooting films. It’s simple enough. Film cameras shoot with ‘flat’ low-contrast files which can be more easily colour-graded in post-processing software like DaVinci Resolve. This helps to keep detail in the highlights and shadows so the maximum amount of information can be captured and the editing decisions can be made later. Sony uses the SLog2 format for example, and you can see more examples from the best cameras available if you search for ungraded footage on Vimeo or YouTube.

Here’s an example of the difference;

Free Nikon Presets and Flat Profiles for Color-Grading Movies

I’ve tested them all and the best for film making is the AlvaroYus-Curve. The Flaat_11p is good too. So follow the instructions on the site and put these two Nikon Picture Control presets on your camera. Use them whenever you make films with your dSLR. Now your movie clips will be much lower contrast so they will retain more information and you can grade them later for better results.

Here’s a good tutorial to explain the essentials; What Is Color Grading for Movies?

Nikon Picture Control Presets

How do you grade the Nikon movies you make? Well the generous folks at BlackMagic Design have given us a gift; the professional colour-grading software that should cost a lot of money is free. Yes, DaVinci Resolve is available for download. There is a paid version, but you almost certainly don’t need it. And there’s even enough controls built in so you can use this as your main video editing software. Thanks to them!

There are plenty of tutorials available online about how to colour-grade your flat movie clips. I recommend this one to get you started – How To Colour Grade Video Footage. You’ll notice that they say you should download LUTs. What are they? They are Look Up Tables, which are basically presets that give you interesting looks quickly. Why not apply them in-camera? Because you have more control like this.

Free Nikon Presets for Photographer Who Shoot JPEGs

Funny how many short-sighted guides say professional photographers only shoot in RAW like some kind of cult law. Fact is, a lot of clients want photos fast and so I’ve been asked to provide JPEG photos pretty often. It’s always great to hear actually; I love photographing and generally hate being stuck inside editing.

But sometimes the supplied camera presets are a bit plain. So I was very happy to find these free Nikon Picture Control presets that emulate different films. They mean that when you want to shoot JPEGs and avoid your editing chores, your photos still look polished and edited. And the colours look different than those that your clients’ camera produces…

Free Nikon Presets for Photographers Who Still Love Film

Sometimes my students turn up with film cameras. Almost invariably, I have them put it straight back in the bag and lend them a digital SLR camera. And later, to put it somewhere there friends can see it (in #shootfilm selfies on Instagram…). Or on eBay.

Is film dead? Not yet and there are reasons to do ‘analogue’ photography. The image quality from an 8×10″ negative is still unbeaten by digital cameras costing more than a Porsche. And many large format cameras can take pictures that digital cameras just can’t. It’s also charmingly tactile. I love using my antique Hasselblad camera and printing 120 negatives in the darkroom.

But coming from a place of appreciation for film photography, I still say that it’s basically a waste of time and money for results that are rarely as good. Just scanning and removing the dust from negatives is a pain. But there is a big plus; no computer-time. Sitting is killing you. No editing means you focus on getting the picture looking great in-camera, and that’s great fun.

Enter the free Nikon presets. When you’re in a creative rut, or you just want to really enjoy photographing, use these Picture Control presets to pretend you have a film camera. But without spending lots of money and time to actually see the pictures. My favourite is the Tmax400 preset for monochrome and the Ektachrome preset for colour photography.

Lightroom Nikon Picture Control Preset

In fact, you can save literally thousands of dollars on the new Leica MD by just turning your camera’s screen off so you’re not tempted to look at the pictures before you download them later…

Set Picture Control Nikon

You can download the presets for yourself now at Nikon PC – http://nikonpc.com/