So I noticed that I always use the Low setting for Active-D lighting on my D700 so that it will fill in some of the shadows when I am shooting. At the same time, I feel like my shots lack contrast right out of the camera and that it is something that I always have to fix in post. So I wanted to do a little test to see how big of a difference turning on Active-D lighting was. So I took a little Jamaican figurine that I have at my desk (it's a leftover from the guy who sat here before me) and figured I'd see how well it works.

The camera was about 2 feet away from the figurine and there was a light directly overhead, but a bit behind the figurine to give me a shadow on the front of the figurine. The setup was my D700 with Nikkor 28-70mm f/2.8 AF-S lens attached at 70mm; 1/80s; f/2.8. I did have Auto ISO turned on, but it did not fluctuate too much really. I tried it with the ISO set the same and the shutter speed never changed.