Bring out the detail
Use Active D-Lighting to capture more detail in high-contrast conditions
There are many lighting conditions when it’s nighimpossible to keep detail in the highlights and shadows. To help you get better results when shooting highcontrast subjects, many Nikon SLRs have a feature called Active D-lighting.
Active D-lighting adjusts the contrast in the image to increase the shadow and highlight detail. There are different strength settings available. These range from a low setting, which applies a small amount of contrast adjustment, to a high (or even extra high), which should only be used in extremely high-contrast lighting.
Like any effect, Active D-lighting is not something that you want to leave on all of the time. In lower-contrast conditions the processing can reduce the contrast too much, giving a flat, dull image.