The function of Active D-Lighting that is built into many Nikon camera bodies is to help achieve photos with a more uniform image contrast. This is especially helpful in situations where your foreground is dark and background bright. There is a limit to the contrast that can reproduced by the camera sensor. Focusing on a dark foreground will mean that the background (for eg. skies) will be overexposed. Similarly, exposing for the sky will result in an overly dark foreground. It is almost impossible to recover details from areas which are totally washed-out or black. This is where Active D-Lighting comes in useful. Having said that, it is better not to active it when certain moods or styles are desired. One example is to keep certain areas dark in order for to allow the viewer to focus on the brighter parts of the image where the main “message” lies.
What Active D-lighting does is to try and reduce the exposure of over-exposed areas and brighten dark areas such as shadows. You may also find an increase in shutter speed after activating this function. There is also a limit to how much detail Active D-Lighting can recover. Needless to say, the higher the contrast, the less successful it will be in retaining details. For camera bodies such as D90 and D300, there is an option to adjust the strength of Active D-Lighting between Low, Normal and High settings to suit the shooting conditions you are in. However, take note that noise artifacts may become more obvious in dark areas after the image has been taken with Active D-Lighting turned on.
One disadvantage of Active D-Lighting is that more time is required to process each photo after it is taken which means it will take more time before the image is displayed on the LCD for reviewing. Recovery time may be critical where sports or wildlife photography is concerned. Another handicap is that the number of continuous shots (in continuous shooting mode) is reduced. For eg., if the camera is rated to be able to shoot 5 shots at any one time before reaching its limit, with Active D-Lighting on, it may drop to around 3 frames. Turn it off if time is of the utmost concern.
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