Std Neutral Vivid for Portraits?

lifeinfocuslifeinfocus Registered Users Posts: 1,461 Major grins
edited February 25, 2012 in Technique
I have an assignment to take photos of many girl scouts and one parent. It will be in a very nice setting indoors. I have often used "Vivid" picture control in taking photos of people. But for this type of portrait I would like the collective opinion on use of various Picture Control settings for a Nikon camera.

Standard, Neutral, Vivid, Saturation and Sharpening. Which to use - standard, neutral or vivid and to what degree for saturation and sharpening?

What is the recommended setting for a portrait type photo?

I will be using LR for post processing.

Thank you,
Phil
http://www.PhilsImaging.com
"You don't take a photograph, you make it." ~Ansel Adams
Phil

Comments

  • IcebearIcebear Registered Users Posts: 4,015 Major grins
    edited February 19, 2012
    I have an assignment to take photos of many girl scouts and one parent. It will be in a very nice setting indoors. I have often used "Vivid" picture control in taking photos of people. But for this type of portrait I would like the collective opinion on use of various Picture Control settings for a Nikon camera.

    Standard, Neutral, Vivid, Saturation and Sharpening. Which to use - standard, neutral or vivid and to what degree for saturation and sharpening?

    What is the recommended setting for a portrait type photo?

    I will be using LR for post processing.

    Thank you,
    Phil

    Why are you shooting anything but raw?
    John :
    Natural selection is responsible for every living thing that exists.
    D3s, D500, D5300, and way more glass than the wife knows about.
  • MomaZunkMomaZunk Registered Users Posts: 421 Major grins
    edited February 19, 2012
    I shoot nikon as well, and use the camera vivid setting as my starting point for everything (kids stuff and sports)
    I recommend shooting in raw and using a preset that is applied at import to mimic the camera settings.
    My preset on import includes these settings:
    Under tone curve: Strong contrast
    Under Lens correction: enable profile corrections
    Under Camera Calibration: Process = 2010 Profile: Camera Vivid
    Detail: is default ( I usually add a little more later, but it is more image and end use specific)

    This preset gets me pretty close to the camera vivid in the camera

    If you are shooting in raw, the nikon settings only affect your jpeg preview that you see on the back of the camera. I do make the following adjustments to get the jpeg preview to look as close to the LR raw conversion later
    as follows:

    I warm up the auto white balance just a bit (+A2) as I believe the nikon auto white balance feels a little blue to me. (The WB does affect the WB starting point for the raw image in LR)
    Camera vivd
    Standard sharpening

    I believe the biggest challenge with portraits is the white balance with potentially mixed lighting. I recommend using a gray disc in a starting shot for each lighting change, and then either setting a custom white balance in camera, or using the eye dropper in LR during post processing. If you do not use the custom WB in camera, then you will want to put your white balance on a particular setting like daylight or incandescent so the white balance is not moving around, and post processing will be easier.

    If you are not comfortable with raw yet, then shoot raw + jpeg, and then if you want to change the images later, you can use the raw to modify or experiment.

    White balance adjustments can be made on jpegs, but the temp and tint ranges are more exact with the raw image file.

    I hope this helps.
  • lifeinfocuslifeinfocus Registered Users Posts: 1,461 Major grins
    edited February 19, 2012
    Icebear wrote: »
    Why are you shooting anything but raw?

    Good point. Just came back from very long trip and I suppose not thinking well.

    Thanks much.
    http://www.PhilsImaging.com
    "You don't take a photograph, you make it." ~Ansel Adams
    Phil
  • lifeinfocuslifeinfocus Registered Users Posts: 1,461 Major grins
    edited February 19, 2012
    MomaZunk, thanks so much for taking the time to go through all your processes in such detail. I will try all of them iin advance.

    Take care,
    Phil
    http://www.PhilsImaging.com
    "You don't take a photograph, you make it." ~Ansel Adams
    Phil
  • IcebearIcebear Registered Users Posts: 4,015 Major grins
    edited February 19, 2012
    Good point. Just came back from very long trip and I suppose not thinking well.

    Thanks much.

    Lightroom has really changed the game.
    John :
    Natural selection is responsible for every living thing that exists.
    D3s, D500, D5300, and way more glass than the wife knows about.
  • arodneyarodney Registered Users Posts: 2,005 Major grins
    edited February 19, 2012
    If you shoot raw (and I would suggest you do) the picture styles have no effect on that data. Only ISO and exposure settings affect raw. So you could in theory have the camera white balance set wildly off, it wouldn’t matter a lick.
    Andrew Rodney
    Author "Color Management for Photographers"
    http://www.digitaldog.net/
  • spinerospinero Registered Users Posts: 11 Big grins
    edited February 24, 2012
    The answer to your question, is do not shoot vivid for people. You won't be happy in the long run with skin tones. Shoot raw or jpeg, as is your preference, but vivid really saturates the skin tones and adds a lot of contrast in an unpleasant way.
  • zoomerzoomer Registered Users Posts: 3,688 Major grins
    edited February 24, 2012
    Definitely Neutral for people's faces. In a controlled setting like that shooting Jpeg would work just fine if that is what you wanted to do.
    Vivid is the last setting I would use for portraits.
    If you shoot Raw once you get into Lightroom go to the bottom right in the develop menu and those Mode choices can be made in Lightroom for Raw's.
    I usually use a setting of 7 for saturation, sharpening 90 2 20 90.
  • lifeinfocuslifeinfocus Registered Users Posts: 1,461 Major grins
    edited February 25, 2012
    zoomer wrote: »
    Definitely Neutral for people's faces. In a controlled setting like that shooting Jpeg would work just fine if that is what you wanted to do.
    Vivid is the last setting I would use for portraits.
    If you shoot Raw once you get into Lightroom go to the bottom right in the develop menu and those Mode choices can be made in Lightroom for Raw's.
    I usually use a setting of 7 for saturation, sharpening 90 2 20 90.

    Thank you. I ended up shooting just raw, should have done both.
    http://www.PhilsImaging.com
    "You don't take a photograph, you make it." ~Ansel Adams
    Phil
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