Picture Styles

canon400dcanon400d Banned Posts: 2,826 Major grins
edited May 14, 2012 in Technique
This is a question I should have probably asked a long time ago. It was only when I was setting up my 5D ll that I noticed I had my picture style setting on Standard on the 7D. In general which is the best setting and when taking landscapes or portraits is it best to change to the appropriate picture style setting.
Cheers
Bob

Comments

  • SamSam Registered Users Posts: 7,419 Major grins
    edited May 13, 2012
    canon400d wrote: »
    This is a question I should have probably asked a long time ago. It was only when I was setting up my 5D ll that I noticed I had my picture style setting on Standard on the 7D. In general which is the best setting and when taking landscapes or portraits is it best to change to the appropriate picture style setting.
    Cheers
    Bob

    Bob,

    It's best......very best, to shoot in raw where the picture styles don't mean a hill of beans.

    Now if your shooting both raw and jpg I suggest you try the different styles and modify them to taste.

    Sam
    www.samlinvillephotography.com
  • canon400dcanon400d Banned Posts: 2,826 Major grins
    edited May 13, 2012
    Sam wrote: »
    Bob,

    It's best......very best, to shoot in raw where the picture styles don't mean a hill of beans.

    Now if your shooting both raw and jpg I suggest you try the different styles and modify them to taste.

    Sam

    Thanks once again Sam I only shoot raw.
    Cheers
    Bob
  • arodneyarodney Registered Users Posts: 2,005 Major grins
    edited May 14, 2012
    canon400d wrote: »
    Thanks once again Sam I only shoot raw.

    You can attempt to mimic those picture styles with raw by creating or editing existing DNG profiles.

    http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/DNG_Profiles
    Andrew Rodney
    Author "Color Management for Photographers"
    http://www.digitaldog.net/
  • rsquaredrsquared Registered Users Posts: 306 Major grins
    edited May 14, 2012
    Like Sam mentioned, if you're shooting raw, picture styles mostly don't matter. There are 2 exceptions to this though...

    First, if you are using your camera manufacturer's raw processing software it will read the profile from the raw and apply that automatically. You can also set the profiles manually, so this doesn't make a huge difference, but if you know ahead of time which one you want to use it may save some time to set it in camera before the shoot.

    The second exception is that even if you're shooting raw only, the camera creates a jpg that gets embedded in the raw for preview purposes. This jpg is what gets displayed on the back of your camera and what is used to build the histogram. If you use a profile that increases the contrast or saturation, this will be reflected in the histogram. Because of this some photographers like to use a profile with a flat or even reduced contrast setting, knowing that it can be bumped back up easily in their raw processing software.
    Rob Rogers -- R Squared Photography (Nikon D90)
  • canon400dcanon400d Banned Posts: 2,826 Major grins
    edited May 17, 2012
    rsquared wrote: »
    Like Sam mentioned, if you're shooting raw, picture styles mostly don't matter. There are 2 exceptions to this though...

    First, if you are using your camera manufacturer's raw processing software it will read the profile from the raw and apply that automatically. You can also set the profiles manually, so this doesn't make a huge difference, but if you know ahead of time which one you want to use it may save some time to set it in camera before the shoot.

    The second exception is that even if you're shooting raw only, the camera creates a jpg that gets embedded in the raw for preview purposes. This jpg is what gets displayed on the back of your camera and what is used to build the histogram. If you use a profile that increases the contrast or saturation, this will be reflected in the histogram. Because of this some photographers like to use a profile with a flat or even reduced contrast setting, knowing that it can be bumped back up easily in their raw processing software.

    Thanks ever so much Andrew and Rob for replying and sharing your knowledge. Very helpful indeed.
    Cheers
    Bob
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