At various events throughout the year, my immediate and extended family attempt to take shots of the whole group. This past weekend was just such an event. This was the first time I would be getting some shots using the D90 so I was excited to see the difference. I left the 18-105mm lens on with no flash. The sun was low in the western sky and we were backed up against some hedges. Usually we don’t get conditions like this for these types of shots, but the lighting looked decent. The small flash I have would not have been able to light the whole group in an even manner so I didn’t even bother.

Since I was in these shots, I couldn’t actually take them but I was hoping with the setup and getting the camera set to (P)rogram, it would be easy enough for a neighbor to help out. So here is the best of the bunch with no post-processing:

While this looked fairly good overall, I wasn’t really happy with the skin tones, exposure and white-balance. I have been using the Nikon Capture NX2 software after a friend swore by it vs. photoshop. After my first attempt to keep to correct the issues I saw with the original, I got this:

I am pretty happy with this, even if the saturation of the bright colored clothes in the front left is a little strong and there are some spots where the sunlight was shining through some trees that look more harsh than in the original. Overall, I’d say the Capture NX2 software is paying for itself by helping to take an alright picture and turn it into something that is close to wall-worthy.