pre trip question to yellowstone

Mostly looking for advice and if my questions sound silly sorry

1.within the picture style user def...could any of you recommend some custom settings such as contrast saturation and color tone for whn taking pictures of the colorfull pools at Yellowstone

Shoot RAW and adjust in post.

Yep shoot RAW adjust in post, much the best answer. One of the advantages to this, if you use Canon's DPP software to convert the files is that you can actually change the picture styles after the shot if you would like to try something different. Also with DPP the default RAW conversion is identical to the in camera processing, so you can make as much or as little change as you like when it comes to processing.

Alan

tulsatom wrote in post #16940321
Mostly looking for advice and if my questions sound silly sorry

1.within the picture style user def...could any of you recommend some custom settings such as contrast saturation and color tone for whn taking pictures of the colorfull pools at Yellowstone

Hi again.

No, your question doesn't sound silly. I can't recommend settings though, partly because, like most people in these fora, I shoot raw and do all the editing myself, so have no experience of using the picture styles, and partly because the best settings will depend on what you are shooting.

The picture styles are essentially the basic post processing of the image. Yes, you can do some more later, but the changes made in the in camera processing are baked in to the jpeg and cannot be reversed. As such, the settings need to be appropriate to what you are shooting. If you are shooting a low contrast scene you probably want the contrast setting turned up a fair bit to stop the image looking too flat. Leave the setting there though and the next shot is in harsh sunlight, with pale coloured rock formations, then the contrast is already high and the extra boost is potentially going to push your highlights and shadows off the edges, maybe even blowing out the pale rocks reflecting the sun. That will then be baked into the jpeg and unrecoverable later.

The same goes for saturation, a well lit scene with bright reds is going to irreversibly blow out the reds if the setting is too high, but that high setting may be ideal in a differently lit setting with dull colours.

Sharpening too, different subjects require different levels. Birds often cannot take too much sharpening as the fine feather detail can create heavy artefacts, but other subjects may want more sharpening. Again, if you oversharpen it cannot be reversed later, the artefacting is baked into the jpeg.

I would, personally, never shoot and leave the processing up to the camera with some estimated settings in the picture styles which will hopefully be about right, with the camera throwing away the original data and replacing it with a much smaller set with modifications applied and locked in. I want access to ALL the data from the original shot, which I can then process in real time, as I view the changes I make, and set everything where it looks best. That is why I only ever shoot raw.

If you shoot raw, you can simply open it in DPP later and then click through all the different picture styles and pick one you like, or just play with all the sliders yourself. You have all the control, and all the data, to create the best possible version of each image. And, so long as you don't delete the original raw file, if you want to make changes in the future (perhaps as your editing skills improve) then the original data is still available in untouched form.

Speaking of scenic photos, here is an interesting thread that has been active, discussing how to deal with blue skies when processing.

As has been mentioned, I also am a Raw shooter. An I process in Lightroom (not DPP), and so the final "look" of the photo is up to me, not to the in-camera settings. In fact, a lot of us Raw shooters set the camera to use the Neutral Picture Style, and then a lot of us go further in in the camera settings, we'll dial the Contrast and Saturation way back, so that the resulting jpeg image in the LCD and the histogram will more accurately show what you get with the Raw file!

But as I said, this is for shooting Raw. If you want to shoot jpegs (or have no experience with Raw or Raw processing), sure, you want to get the camera settings right! The "Standard" Picture Style is by design good for "generic" shots, but you can also check out the others accordingly, like "Landscape" for landscape scenes!