Outdoors, daylight
Good color outdoors with very good highlight/shadow detail preservation. Options like Active D-Lighting and contrast adjustment are a help when faced with tough conditions like these.
Click to see D5100OUTBMP3.JPG Click to see D5100FARI0100.JPG
Manual White Balance,
+1.0 EV Auto White Balance,
0 EV
The Nikon D5100 handled tough outdoor lighting under harsh sunlight well, producing good overall color. We found skin tones a touch warm in our "Sunlit" Portrait shot with Auto white balance, preferring the Manual white balance results here, while in our Far-field House shot, Auto white balance was a touch cool. Default contrast was a bit on the high side (as most users prefer), but shadow and highlight detail in the Portrait shot shown above was quite good. Despite the bright appearance, only a few highlights mainly in the red and blue channels were clipped in the model's shirt, pendant and some of the flowers. The blue channel was lost in some of the deeper shadows, but shadow noise was very low. The +1.0 EV exposure compensation required to keep the mannequin's face bright was slightly above the +0.7 EV average for this scene, though the Far-field House shot was well exposed at 0 EV, clipping only a few highlights in the white trim. Again, detail in the shadows was very good, and shadow noise very low.