Really Useful Software for Nikon DSLRs
Here’s a page with Really Useful Software for Nikon DSLRs. The main piece is a JPG extractor for pulling out the JPG embedded in Nikon’s NEF files. This saves a little bit of space on the camera, as you can shoot just RAW instead of RAW+JPG, saving about 15% on the CF card. No need for Nikon Capture or View software to be installed on the laptop, also, as preview files can be generated by the extrator. The page about the program notes that you can just leave a copy on the CF card, so you can run this on any machine.
The author also has a FixNEF tool that supposedly does a better job than Nikon Capture in correcting the White Balance when shooting RAW. In the discussion, Capture apparently applies the camera’s stored WB value, and then follows with any WB adjustments from Capture. A badly white-balanced photo can’t be fully adjusted back to neutral, then. FixNEF apparently lets you muck directly with the stored WB settings, writing out a NEF file so that the original isn’t changed.
I’ll give these a whirl in the next few weeks.