typical 40d color settings

lukeo

I never seem to get the saturation correctly set in-camera. When you're out walking around shooting, what are the typical settings that you use on your 40d for Sharpness, Contrast, Saturation, and Color tone. Do you play around with them every shot? Or every time you go out? Right now I use [3,0,+1,0].

Richard

lukeo wrote:

I never seem to get the saturation correctly set in-camera. When you're out walking around shooting, what are the typical settings that you use on your 40d for Sharpness, Contrast, Saturation, and Color tone. Do you play around with them every shot? Or every time you go out? Right now I use [3,0,+1,0].

I ignore all of those settings and shoot RAW 100% of the time. The settings only apply to the camera produced JPGs. If you shoot RAW, you can control all of those things much better in post.

lukeo

Richard wrote:

I ignore all of those settings and shoot RAW 100% of the time. The settings only apply to the camera produced JPGs. If you shoot RAW, you can control all of those things much better in post.

Ok, just to be difficult , what if I wanted to use JPG in camera? If I'm shooting "photographs" then I'll go RAW; that's fine. If I'm taking "snapshots" and have a ton of pics from a picnic or the park, the I don't want to mess with RAWs and would rather have JPG out of the camera. Preference I guess.

Good point though...

pathfinder

Luckeo,

While I agree with Richard that shooting RAW is the better way to capture images, I also agree that sometimes I just want to shoot some fast snapshots that I know I will have tons of, and never spend the time in front of my monitor to edit them. So......

The settings from my 50D ( the 40D is very similar ) are here

Color Space is Adobe ( I understand the reasons for sRGB, but I use Adobe - when they get to Smugmug they have been converted to sRGB for the web )

Picture style Sharpness +1, Contrast=0 ( neutral ), Saturation=+1, Color tone=0

I am not saying these are the best or the right ones, simply the ones I used to shoot the jpgs in this post The jpgs are the snapshots, which should be pretty obvious from the context.

One other trick I have been using a lot of lately, courtesy of kdog, is to shoot sRAW files unless I really know I will need the full size file for prints. Saves a lot of hard drive space and faster processing times.

Two points that I think are very imoportant about shooting jpgs. First, avoid AWB if you can, correctly choosing sunshine, or shade, or tungsten helps a lot. Also, correct exposure is even more critical for jpgs than RAW files. I really think you have to be within 1/3 stop of accurate exposure to shoot jpgs and be happy with them.

lukeo

pathfinder wrote:

Luckeo,

While I agree with Richard that shooting RAW is the better way to capture images, I also agree that sometimes I just want to shoot some fast snapshots that I know I will have tons of, and never spend the time in front of my monitor to edit them. So......

The settings from my 50D ( the 40D is very similar ) are here

Color Space is Adobe ( I understand the reasons for sRGB, but I use Adobe - when they get to Smugmug they have been converted to sRGB for the web )

Picture style Sharpness +1, Contrast=0 ( neutral ), Saturation=+1, Color tone=0

I am not saying these are the best or the right ones, simply the ones I used to shoot the jpgs in this post The jpgs are the snapshots, which should be pretty obvious from the context.

One other trick I have been using a lot of lately, courtesy of kdog, is to shoot sRAW files unless I really know I will need the full size file for prints. Saves a lot of hard drive space and faster processing times.

Two points that I think are very imoportant about shooting jpgs. First, avoid AWB if you can, correctly choosing sunshine, or shade, or tungsten helps a lot. Also, correct exposure is even more critical for jpgs than RAW files. I really think you have to be within 1/3 stop of accurate exposure to shoot jpgs and be happy with them.

I've noticed the same thing. That exposure and AWB are very delicate (of course these are easily fixed in RAW).

Do you ever end up playing with the sharpness, etc? Like lowering the sharpness for portraits. Or raising the saturation on a really flat, blah day (yes... I know, just don't take pictures then!).

pathfinder

lukeo wrote:

I've noticed the same thing. That exposure and AWB are very delicate (of course these are easily fixed in RAW).

Do you ever end up playing with the sharpness, etc? Like lowering the sharpness for portraits. Or raising the saturation on a really flat, blah day (yes... I know, just don't take pictures then!).

No, I don't interactively change settings in my camera, because I know they will be loaded into Lightroom2, and from there I can edit them, if needed, however I want, either in LR or Photoshop. I can always blur away sharpness in the computer, but I cannot create sharpness that I did not capture at the time. Fortunately, for snapshots, the bar is not quite as high.

Flat lighting days are good days for digital files, I hate real bright sunny days with blue skies. Give me clouds and overcast first. Best of all, is more dramatic lighting!

ctcks

Settings
I got this idea from an EOS book: 3-1-1

White Balace: Neutral
Sharpness: +3
Contrast: +1
Saturation: +1
Color tone: 0

I shoot raw and import in Lightroom. I really like this consistently.

lukeo

ctcks wrote:

I got this idea from an EOS book: 3-1-1

White Balace: Neutral
Sharpness: +3
Contrast: +1
Saturation: +1
Color tone: 0

I shoot raw and import in Lightroom. I really like this consistently.

So these settings do impact RAW? I have the impression from Richard, above, that these settings only apply to JPG processing in-camera...

ctcks

lukeo wrote:

So these settings do impact RAW? I have the impression from Richard, above, that these settings only apply to JPG processing in-camera...

I'm no techie, but I do like the way these turn out when brought into Lightroom under "General-Auto Tone" or "Import-None".

mercphoto

lukeo wrote:

So these settings do impact RAW?

They only impact RAW when you are using Canon's DPP software. No other converter pays attention them. So the poster who sets those parameters but shoots in RAW and uses Lightroom is getting zero benefit from those parameter settings.

Richard

mercphoto wrote:

They only impact RAW when you are using Canon's DPP software. No other converter pays attention them. So the poster who sets those parameters but shoots in RAW and uses Lightroom is getting zero benefit from those parameter settings.

It has been a long time since I used DPP, but IIRC, even there, all the settings do is provide the default settings in the converter; you can always change them at conversion time. So at best they can save you a little bit of time in a DPP workflow.

Nikolai

Richard wrote:

It has been a long time since I used DPP, but IIRC, even there, all the settings do is provide the default settings in the converter; you can always change them at conversion time. So at best they can save you a little bit of time in a DPP workflow.

+1
In Bridge/ACR world you can simply set RAW defaults (which can even be camera/iso specific if you want to:-) or simply create presets and then apply them in bulk...
Picture Styles do affect the jpegs. And if you want "P&S effect" for your snaps just raise all them sliders to their max
I would also shoot small size /low quality jpegs to save the upload time, hardly anybody gonna order poster size prints from them, right?