D70 / Linux

Using a Nikon D70 with nothing but Linux

There are a couple of good sites that deal with Linux and the D70. This pages intention is to sum up the basics of getting the best out of the D70s raw images using freely (and therefore cheaply) available tools and the operating system Linux.

Results

Ufraw

Ufraws picture

D70s preview

D70s preview picture

Why and thanks

There are a couple of good sites that deal with Linux and the D70. This pages intention is to sum up the basics of getting the best out of the D70s raw images using freely (and therefore cheaply) available tools and the operating system Linux.

Essentials

UFRaw

The most useful tool used in this guide is called The Unidentified Flying Raw (UFRaw). Together with some supporting files UFRaw will give you nearly everything you need to process .nef files.

Nikon

From the original software pack grab the file Nkx_D70_4_0739_02_308.icm or if you can't find that, the one called "NKD1_NEF.icm". The .icm contains the colour profile for the D70. The one labelled "NKD1_NEF.icm" is for the D1 but should work with the D70.

Camera Curves

Get the Correction Curves from Fotogenetic and SReala2 from here.

Using it

Basic settings

After installing UFRaw you can convert your first image.

  1. Fire up UFRaw
  2. Make the following changes to the settings:

    • Exposure: Use auto exposure or 0.

    • WB: Camera WB (Hint: Always try to make a sensible white balance setting while shooting.)

    • Base: Camera Curve

    • Color

      • Input Profile: Nkx_D70_4_0739_02_308 (or NKD1_NEF)
      • Gamma: 0.45
      • Linearity: 0.03 (0.05 for NKD1_NEF)
      • Output Profile: sRGB

    • Corrections

      • Curve: Linear Curve
      • Saturation: 1.0

That should give you a basically working image. You can fiddle around with the settings now. If you work with the NKD1_NEF profile you should load the Fotogenetic "Point and Shoot" or the "ev3_v42" curves to correct the darker look of that profile.

In a batch

Please try to find some settings that work for most of your pictures and save those once using the "Options->Configuration->Save Just this once" button. You can now use the program "UFRaw-batch" to convert whole lots of images using this standard settings. Of course the odd really good one should still get a hand optimization.

Useful things

Nefextract

Nefextract is able to extract the full size preview image from a .nef. Using this tool eliminates the need for shooting in the "Raw + jpg" mode.

Neftags2jpg

Neftags2jpg copies Exif information from a .nef to a .jpg.

Neftags2jpg and Nefextract are written by Joseph Heled.

ImageMagick

A set of tools to manipulate images.

Self made

Some scripts I wrote to automate boring tasks like extracting preview images from a whole folder of pictures.

nef2thumb
Extracts all preview images into a sub directory, rotates and copies the Exif information.
mkproof
Generates a light table view for proofing all Images in a directory.

Calibration

Please make sure that you can separate all patches in this graphic, especially A, B, C and Y,Z

Grey scale patch