Histogram inconsistencies with Camera profiles - Camera Raw

Question

Hi,
I've been going nuts with this issue for a year now since Adobe released the camera profiles for Camera Raw. Something tells me this shouldn't be happening.
Well exposed pictures taken with the D300 show an inconsistent histogram in camera raw when using the Adobe camera profiles for the D300.
This is a shame because I prefer the colour rendering of the camera profiles to that of the adobe standard profile.
This is the problem:
With the D300 I get a correct histogram in Camera Raw only if I choose the ACR 4.4 or the Adobe Standard profile. By correct I mean with black and white points filled to the edge of the histogram.
If I choose the camera neutral, standard, portrait or vivid suddenly there's an empty area in the histogram's blacks. Effectively the black point has been shifted quite a bit and I need to push up the slider for blacks up to 30 or so to get the black point back to the right place. While with Adobe standard the blacks are correct at 0 or so. Check out the pics here below.
Is this normal behaviour, or is there something wrong in my settings?

Answer 1

Nice pic of brain Bill. Still, I would   take it without any harsh light and rather use longer exposure with  tripod. You can see some sort of light source in left bottom part of  brain. I assume it was a flash gun or above by lamp. Then you may get  much better result ;-)
Thanks. The shot was taken using the Nikon R1C1 closeup flash unit using the diffusers to help eliminate glare. With such specular sources, one must adjust the light sources carefully to avoid glare, but the only sure way to eliminate the glare is to use crossed polarizing filters. Still, the subject is short scale and one must set the white and black points.
Now, to discuss your posted shots. If anything, your posts confirm my initial assertion, since you are correcting post processing and not by changing exposure in the camera. The corrected images are from the same raw expsosures with postprocessing. By the way, if you post your screen shots as PNG, you will eliminate the artifacts around the text.
I put some links of  images to explain my point since we still talk about something else.  (cannot insert pics via adobe).
http://hajes.org/img/acr/cairngorn.jpg
Brilliant example of screwed up "I have  been there" photography. Exposed not very well and at worst light  possible. Must go there once again and fix my incompetence.
http://hajes.org/img/acr/cairngorn2.jpg
Cairngorn is short scale because of atmospheric haze. There is no way to correct that with in camera exposure, but you could have exposed more to the right. Nonetheless, you have captured the whole dynamic range of the scene and exposing to the right would only improve the signal:noise. You had to use the exposure and black slider to set the white and black points, which only confirms what I said in my previious posts.
somehow "fixed" previous image. just for  fun and learn PS CS4.
http://hajes.org/img/acr/hrad.jpg
overexposed image at first glance by  untrained eye.
Hrad is a high dynamic range scene with blown highlights. Your use of the exposure control to bring down the highlights darkens the rest of the image to an undesirable degree. It would have been better to use recovery to tame the highlights. A better approach might be to deveolp for the highlights and shadows separtely and merge the results as shown below. Again the correction is in postprocessing. There would be no way to do that with a camera exposure. The use of +1EV in ACR in HRAD3 only worsens the highlight clipping.
http://imagingpro.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/expanding-the-dynamic-range-of-a-single-raw-fil e/
http://hajes.org/img/acr/hrad2.jpg
same image with 1EV extra without of any  detail loss. miracle of digital sensors.
http://hajes.org/img/acr/hrad3.jpg
final image. it is just for web, so no  bother about burned sky...
http://hajes.org/img/acr/tunka.jpg
again, overexposed image at first glance  by  untrained eye. we don't care about clipped shell in the left middle  of image. it is not main interest of pic...
http://hajes.org/img/acr/tunka2.jpg
..and we again get 0.50EV extra which  corrects clipping.
I don't see any evidence of overexposure. The highlights are well short of clipping and the shot is grossly underexposed--not exposed sufficiently to the right. Nonetheless, the full dynamic range of the short scale scene has been captured and the shadows are well above clipping.
In case some will wonder  about weird setting of ACR. It is just for web and I still don't know  all tricks of PS. Furthermore, I prefer to spend time in nature rather  than in front of computer.
The settings of ACR are indeed wierd. Thomas Knoll recommends setting the highlights with the expsoure slider and the midtones with brightness. An alternative way of doing this, introduced with Lightroom, would be to set the midtones with exposure and control the highlights with recovery. A black point setting would likely be required as well. Again, no way to do that with an in camera expsoure, validating my previous assertion.