Picture styles/profiles story (FYI)

<p>Picture styles/profiles may alleviate many issues with contrast, color rendition, DR, etc. encountered in everyday shooting. Take a peek at <a href="http://philipbloom.net/2011/09/18/pictureprofiles">http://philipbloom.net/2011/09/18/pictureprofiles</a> if you are interested what's out there. Good read!</p>

<p>Useful if you shoot jpeg or convert in DPP.</p>

<p>The article isn't really about "everyday" situations though - it's about profiles in a DSLR video context.</p>

<p>> video context<br>

Yep, but most, if not all, of these settings translate very nicely into still photography: IMO picture styles are the least understod and used feature of Canon DSLRs which might result from a misguided belief that "everything can, and should, be fixed in post."  Yeah, one can fiddle in post ad infinitum but why..?  Not to mention that sometimes one must deliver print-ready JPEGs because of speed of publication, and/or quantity of shots. (A basketball game at 10 fps anyone..?)</p>

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<p>everything can, and should, be fixed in post</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Back in the day, I enjoyed working in my B&W darkroom as much or more than shooting. Liked matting and framing too. As I saw my images appear in the trays, it was almost magical. And I'd usually reprint a dozen times and mess with contrast, burn 'n dodge, etc., and each interpretation was unique. While we strive to get the best composition and optimal exposure, there is always plenty of things you can do to make it even better and that's half the fun. No matter how good the image is, you can spend hours tweaking images for web galleries and print display and that's half the fun. Photography would be boring if the fun stopped after pressing the shutter button.</p>

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<p>Yeah, one can fiddle in post ad infinitum but why..? </p>

</blockquote>

<p>So that one can achieve the maximum quality possible from one's equipment and present the best print one can make beyond what the camera's internal processor can render. Some photographers just capture and that is the end of it, for others it is just the beginning.</p>

<p>> Some photographers just capture<br>

Obviously :-)<br>

In many areas of photography sometimes all one does is capture... The luxury of personal post processing is not accessible to many photogs who have to (as in "100% must", or no job) deliver the best publishable results straight out of camera. Yeah, often one can afford to shoot JPEG + RAW (and tweak the RAW files in post) but not always: just look at the buffer max out with JPEGs and RAW on any camera...</p>

<p>> Back in the day, I enjoyed working in my B&W darkroom as much or more than shooting<br>

Even though I've spent 50% of my life in a darkroom doing some serious "post processing", I always wanted to have the best possible starting material, i.e. a negative or a slide. Yeah, the wet process involved much more - and much more difficult than digital - "post processing" than even the most outrageous digital manipulations (mostly because the end result was not only fickle and difficult to repeat, but also often delayed, sometimes by weeks) but what's wrong with getting the best possible starting point..? And picture styles/profiles are a great start in digital.</p>

<p>What Trey said.</p>

<p>Might as well just shoot jpeg otherwise...</p>

<p>Keith, try this: download the technicolor pic style/profile to your camera, shoot some RAW frames with it and the same frames with your everyday pic style. Use DPP - so it can read the tags - to play with both files and see whether maybe, just maybe, you can get something extra from the picture shot with the technicolor profile...<br>

Then, of course, there is the Canon's own picture style editor, a very, very useful piece of software.</p>