Cascade Falls

[rickztahone]

Also what is D-lighting? Sounds like I should be using this in some of those Cascade Fall photos.

I believe that is a form of HDR? I haven't heard the term so I am assuming it may be a Nikon naming thing.

[SMB2]

From Nikon:Active D-Lighting is a technology that optimizes high contrast images to restore shadow and highlight details that are often lost when strong lighting increases the contrast between bright and dark areas of the image.
With Active D-Lighting chosen on my Nikon D-SLR, the camera's Matrix meter will identify the amount of contrast in the scene and process the final picture with the appropriate amount of compensation to lighten—open up—the scene's shadows. At the same time, Active D-Lighting maintains the highlight detail—detail that other systems often ignore. It's this balance—compensating for shadows while maintaining highlights—that makes Active D-Lighting so valuable.
But there's more: an exclusive feature of Active D-Lighting is its ability to automatically readjust midtone contrast to make the overall image look more natural. It's a tremendous combination: shadows opened up (without the use of flash), highlights maintained and mid-tones adjusted for a totally natural look to the image.

Can't say that I use it much as you are relying on the camera to do your processing. When faced with these situations I usually bracket my exposures (3 or 4) and work with each in LR or make an HDR. The latter I now do more often as the LR HDR is very subtle and I think works quite nicely. But I am willing to learn! So I will try and think about it when faced with mid-day shooting.