Nikon D300 User Manual page 163

primary colors for intense imagery. The contrast is
higher for striking shadow contrast, and the sharpness is
higher too. If you are shooting JPEGs and want to try to
imitate a saturated transparency film like Velvia, this
mode is for you! If you look at the red block under the
VI control in Figure 3-21, you'll see that it's pushed into
deep saturation, almost to the point of oversaturation.
Plus, the greens and blues are extra strong. That means
your nature shots will look saturated and contrasty. Be
careful when you are shooting on a high-contrast day,
such as in direct summer sunshine. If you use the VI
control then, you may find that your images are too high
in contrast. It may be better to back off to the SD or NL
control when shooting in bright sunshine. You'll need to
experiment with this to see what I mean. On a cloudy or
foggy, low-contrast day, when shadows are weak, you
may find that the VI control adds pleasing saturation and
contrast to the image.
▪ MC, or Monochrome, allows the black and white lovers
among us to shoot natively in toned black and white. The
MC control basically removes the color by desaturation.
It's still an RGB color image, but the colors have
become levels of gray. It does not look the same as
black-and-white film, in my opinion. The blacks are not
as deep, and the whites are a little muddy. To me, it
seems that the MC control is fairly low contrast, and
that's where the problem lies. Good black-and-white
images should have bright whites and deep blacks. To
get images like that from a digital camera, you'll have to
manually work with the image in a graphics program
like Photoshop. However, if you want to experiment
with black-and-white photography, this gives you a good
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