D800 LR Profile

Tom Foster

Anyone have any luck with a camera profile that actually looks like the back of the camera ones for the D800? I know that Lightroom has the "Camera Vivid", "Camera Landscape" ones, etc. but they don't look nearly as good as in camera! I know also that I could convert to TIFF with Capture NX and then import into LR but the fewer steps (and large files) in the workflow the better I guess!

I've tried making custom profiles to get it to match the back of the camera shot but can never get anything consistent unfortunately! Anyone have anything they're willing to share?

Gary752

Check out https://youtube.com/watch?v=mW8vELDb9Eo Hope this helps.

Ferguson

I use custom profiles for each sport venue I shoot under artificial lights, with the goal of making the colors more realistic. It works great. Here's a site that has LED lights that are really quite good, but it still helps:

Notice on the left (Camera Standard) the skin is a bit greenish, the floor is too yellow, and the blues are over-saturated (especially the lighter blue on the player in white's jersey). On the right the floor now looks the right color, the green tinge is out of his face and arms (and the ceiling a bit). There was no white balance change between these two.

But... the LCD on the back is an awful screen in terms of color accuracy (to be fair, as LCD's on cameras go it is very nice, but the best are pretty bad). I can't imagine why I would want to make it match the LCD. I want it to match reality.

I keep a Colorchecker passport in my bag. If I shoot at a new venue, I take a few shots of it on the main floor, and build a new profile after the fact. Takes only a few minutes. I use their "Export" plugin in Lightroom to do all the work (though I rename the file it produces to include the camera name -- never put the camera name in the profile name, if you have multiple bodies, as then you can't apply the profile across bodies).

Gary752

There's a setting in LR that also uses the serial # of the camera. This allows you to create multiple profile for different cameras of the same model.

Ferguson

@Gary752 said:
There's a setting in LR that also uses the serial # of the camera. This allows you to create multiple profile for different cameras of the same model.

Yes, though then you do need to have different profile names (not just file names) if I recall. Lightroom, if anything, has too many options for where defaults are set. I often forget exactly where a particular setting is coming from, even though I purpose set it that way (perhaps years ago).

Gary752

When you create the profile in LR, you need to give the profile a name, What I'd do if I had to create multiple profiles for several cameras of the same model would be to name them by model number a dash and the shooters initials. If I had 2 of the same, I'd add a number 2 after my initials for the backup camera. When enabling the serial # option, it's supposed to look in the profiles for a given model and select the one with the correct serial # for the camera used to take that photo. The serial # for each camera gets embedded automatically into the profile when creating it.

Ferguson

I get what you are saying, but you are moving the selection into the serial specific development settings. That works fine, I'm not knocking it, I am just doing something different which works in presets. If you want to build a preset, so far as I know, you can specify a calibration profile only by name. If you name them all the same (e.g. "My Venue") then Lightroom will pick the one relevant to that camera from among those of the same name. If you name them "My Venue D5" and "My Venue D4" then it cannot pick the but one of those (say the D5 one) then if you apply that develop preset to a D4 shot, it cannot use the "My Venue D4" profile, and reverts to some default value. But if they are both named the same, it will pick the right one when applying the preset. I'm not sure if this will carry down to serial number specificity as I have not tried it. I also think this applies to sync and copy operations -- if I try to copy a profile named "My Venue D5" and copy it into a D4 image, it either does nothing or reverts to the default. But by naming the profiles (internally) the same name, it will copy the profile but switch to the one of the same name but for the D4.

The reason I recommend it is that it removes the need to pay attention to which camera I have when applying presets and copying profiles. For example, when I come back from shooting basketball I always use the same preset on import, which has a "standard" profile. I then change one image to the profile for that venue, and (if needed) make some other general tweaks, such as for a venue with heavier shadows on the court pump up shadows), then copy that develop setting to all other images and it auto-magically applies the correct venue specific profile.

I haven't explored the effect of SN differences as all my bodies are different models.

I do understand and agree what you are suggesting is a good way, probably more "normal Adobe". I just offer the alternative.