Head to Head Shoot-out: Nikon NX2 vs Lightroom 4.3 vs DXO 8

For everyone expecting a full size analysis with clever, long and fancy words I am afraid you are going to be very disappointed. This is a straight shoot-out between Nikon NX2, Lightroom 4.3 and DXO 8. As such I will just show a number of photos that have been given only very basic and gentle massaging in all three programs. In DXO 8 it was entirely default settings, in Nikon NX2 I checked the buttons for auto repair of chromatic aberrations (CA's) while all other settings were left unchanged from default, and in Lightroom 4.3 I checked the boxes that enables the profile correction for camera and lens combination and that corrects for CA's while all other settings were left unchanged from default.

I used a hand held Nikon D90 with a Nikkor AF-S DX 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR attached. The lens is well known for having loads of distortion and CA's.



First up the whole image with a totally unaltered jpeg conversion to start off with for comparison purposes.

Completely unedited conversion:

Nikon NX2:

Lightroom 4.3:

DXO 8:

Now for crops from each pic above taken from the top left corner at 100% magnification, they are 500x500 pixels each.

Completely unedited conversion:

Nikon NX2:

Lightroom 4.3:

DXO 8:

The next crop is from the right hand side in the centre:

Completely unedited conversion:

Nikon NX2:

Lightroom 4.3:

DXO 8:

And lastly crops from the dead centre of the photo where lenses are normally at their best:

Completely unedited conversion:

Nikon NX2:

Lightroom 4.3:

DXO 8:

Now it may just be me, but Nikon NX2 looks pretty darn good, and while it doesn't seem to correct for lens distortion (I can't find it so correct me if I'm wrong) the photo looks pretty sharp, with great colour and contrast, but it is the noisiest of the three conversions. It is also the only free program in the line-up, and that already makes it worthwhile in my book!

DXO 8 is the easiest of the three to use and it's default settings do a great job, while Lightroom 4.3 needs a little more input but admittedly not very much.

All three programs could do with a little more fiddling about with knobs and sliders to get the best results and  that will improve the final result a lot, but at least now we can see what each can do quickly and easily at (mostly) the default output.