Nope.

You want to turn it off, specially if you are shooting RAW.

Here's a link with a lot of discussion (and other links) about ADL and Lightroom.

http://photo.net/nikon-camera-forum/00ZTih

jonlieberman wrote:

 

It seems that as far as ADL and LR4 are concerned the ADL just results in a slighly underexposed shot and this could be accomplished variation of aperature, speed, or iso.   Is this correct?

Correct. - camera uses "ISO-biasing" to downthrottle exposure - that's the *only* effect on raw data. The rest is camera/Nikon software doing things that Lightroom can also do, only better .

Kinda like a modern microwave oven - there's settings for defrost and popcorn, but the only difference is the on/off duty cycle. ADL does not "compress dynamic range of raw data" - that's a misunderstanding.

Summary of ADL:

-------------------------

* Nikon Hardware: underexposure

* Nikon Software: exposure boost plus "intelligent" contrast reduction.

Cheers,

Rob

Yep. I think of ADL as a hint to the camera to protect highlights at the expense of shadows. This is a good thing when it's what you want, and a bad thing when it's not.

If you have it on when you have highlights in the scene that should be blown out (for optimal exposure), then you may end up with an image that is too underexposed (and when you bring up the exposure in post-processing, you get excessive noise in the shadows), in which case it would be best to turn it off. However, when you have a scene where what you want is to preserve as much of the highlights as possible, ADL can be a godsend (even when shooting raw and processing in Lightroom), since normal exposure would sacrifice some highlights to keep shadows from being too dark and clip blacks... Of course you could simply set a negative exposure bias to accomplish the same thing, but ADL is scene-adaptive whereas exposure bias is not (unless you are on the ball enough to keep changing it as the scene changes...)

PS - To those inclined to split hairs and pick nits: yes - I am aware that exposure bias does not accomplish exactly the same thing as ADL, since the manner of exposure reduction will be different, but I'm trying to get a point across and that nuance is not critical to the point.

i.e. the value of ADL is exactly the same when shooting raw, whether post-processing in NX2, or Lr. The difference is that you have to do the software compensation thang using +exposure -highlights +shadows sliders in Lightroom, instead of selecting the ADL "extent" using a drop-down in NX2.

Likewise, the potentially detrimental effects of ADL (too much exposure reduction) apply the same when post-processing in NX2, as Lr.

Even clearer now?, or more confused...??

Rob