Canon 10D - Contrast, Sharpness and Saturation settings

Does anyone know of any web sites that talk about the Canon 10D - Contrast,
Sharpness and Saturation settings? The 10D manual does not offer much
information on it and at a photo class this weekend the speaker was not very
fond of the settings in any of the cameras.

Thanks.

Nath Kaplan

nk wrote:

Does anyone know of any web sites that talk about the Canon 10D -
Contrast, Sharpness and Saturation settings? The 10D manual does not
offer much information on it and at a photo class this weekend the
speaker was not very fond of the settings in any of the cameras.


What's your concern? What's the question?

I mean, the controls are obvious and self-evident.

Perhaps less obvious is why you'd use these in-
camera controls rather than apply them later on
in an image editor.

By habit, I'd leave these adjustments set to
neutral, and apply them later, if at all.
I see mostly a lot of risks and disadvantages
to applying these adjustments "early."

Better yet, shoot RAW and forget all these in-
camera adjustments.


rafe b.
http://www.terrapinphot.com

nk wrote:

Does anyone know of any web sites that talk about the Canon 10D -
Contrast,
Sharpness and Saturation settings?

No. The government has outlawed this form of speech.

The 10D manual does not offer much information on it and at a photo
class this weekend the speaker was not very fond of the settings in
any of the cameras.

Check the US PATRIOT Act for details or the equivalent in your country
(all countries have the equivalent). Even posting this question is
borderline illegal now. The black helicopters are real!!!

Now, I've heard that there are some radical crazy people who are trying
these settings in camera and attempting to make their own decisions.
The FBI (or your equivalent -- all countries have an FBI) is slowly but
surely hunting down these proto-terrorists though. Free-thinking,
experimentation, and learning outside official boundaries are no longer
tolerated by the republic. Just sit in front of your TeeVee and await
further instructions, comrade citizen!

Does anyone know of any web sites that talk about the Canon 10D -
Contrast, Sharpness and Saturation settings?

Shoot RAW mode and apply these settings either with the RAW converter
or with an image editing program. The in-camera settings are basically
for jpegs so you don't want to be too aggressive applying them (since
the RAW is thrown away), but if you shoot RAW you can convert multiple
times with different settings.

at a photo class this weekend the speaker was not very
fond of the settings in any of the cameras.

Most likely because he's shooting RAW and doesn't use the in-camera
settings either.

nk wrote:

Does anyone know of any web sites that talk about the Canon 10D -
Contrast, Sharpness and Saturation settings? The 10D manual does not
offer much information on it and at a photo class this weekend the
speaker was not very fond of the settings in any of the cameras.


Do your own experiments. Try a series of the same scene with different
settings and compare them. Then you will really know what's happening. I
doubt anyone has a tutorial with samples to show as well as you could.

As others mentioned, doing these in-camera is a timesaver to avoid later
processing at the cost of limiting later processing capability. With the
D70, (I think) those settings only apply in one of the preset modes
(green, P, sports, etc) not in A, S, or Manual. So that's OK if you
chose one of those modes, you get the quick-n-easy, or you can shoot
more manually & have more latitude or raw for even more. I generally
like max sharpening & some contrast boost but for low light, high ISO,
the sharpening is a no-no & for high contrast scenes, the contrast
should not be increased.

BTW with RAW, you set all those things as a default, then change if it's
a special situation. For most pics in good lighting, the defaults are
great & it could have been processed in-camera. It's the 'difficult'
situations where you should worry about switching to RAW or at least
turning off in-camera adjustments.

In article , says...
Does anyone know of any web sites that talk about the Canon 10D - Contrast,
Sharpness and Saturation settings? The 10D manual does not offer much
information on it and at a photo class this weekend the speaker was not very
fond of the settings in any of the cameras.

Thanks.

Nath Kaplan

As others are saying, try shooting RAW until you are used to the
settings. This allows you to set the sharpness/contrast/saturation
AFTER taking the photo so you can experiment - in JPEG mode you're stuck
with the setting you chose at the time.

By the way, people often regard a setting of 0/0/0 to be 'neutral' or
'flat'. In fact, this setting applies boosted
sharpness/contrast/saturation to the image. If you want as near to an
unprocessed image as possible, use settings of -2/-2/-2 - even with
these values, some sharpening has been done! If you do this, the images
will almost certainly need post-processing but you then have full
control over how it is done rather than relying on fixed preset values.
It's more work, though...

In article ,
net says...
On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 12:56:11 -0000
In message
Graeme Cogger wrote:

As others are saying, try shooting RAW until you are used to the
settings. This allows you to set the sharpness/contrast/saturation
AFTER taking the photo so you can experiment - in JPEG mode you're stuck
with the setting you chose at the time.

By the way, people often regard a setting of 0/0/0 to be 'neutral' or
'flat'. In fact, this setting applies boosted
sharpness/contrast/saturation to the image. If you want as near to an
unprocessed image as possible, use settings of -2/-2/-2 - even with
these values, some sharpening has been done! If you do this, the images
will almost certainly need post-processing but you then have full
control over how it is done rather than relying on fixed preset values.
It's more work, though...

I thought that in RAW mode, the n/n/n settings in the Canon cameras do
not change the raw data, but are only used to build the imbedded (or
additional) jpeg file and are used by converters to initialize default
conversion settings. Am I wrong?

Jeff

You're absolutely correct - sorry if I was causing confusion. The
settings I was talking about are the ones you apply when you process the
RAW file on the PC.
In other words, you can either shoot in JPEG and have to set
sharpness/contrast/saturation before you shoot; or you can shoot in RAW
and experiment with the sharpness/contrast/saturation after the image is
on the computer.

rafeb wrote:
nk wrote:
Does anyone know of any web sites that talk about the Canon 10D -
Contrast, Sharpness and Saturation settings? The 10D manual does
not
offer much information on it and at a photo class this weekend the
speaker was not very fond of the settings in any of the cameras.

By habit, I'd leave these adjustments set to
neutral

Sharpening should not be set at 0, but -2.

Contrast should be set by reviewing the histogram, to get the best
dynamic range for the scene, without clipping highlight and shadow. All
these troubles can be avoided by shooting raw.

Better yet, shoot RAW and forget all these in-
camera adjustments.

Even when shooting raw, these settings still affect the JPEG imbedded
in the raw, which is used to display the review and histogram. So
sharpening still should be set to -2. Contrast should be set to -2 to
make the review JPEG dynamic range close to the raw range.