What Custom Picture Styles Are You Using On Your 400D?

I have a friend with a Nikon D80. He uses Ken Rockwell's suggested contrast,

sharpness, saturation settings. Photo's look great right out of his camera.

 

I shoot RAW with my 400D \ XTi & tweak my shots after the fact so I've never

fooled with the camera's custom styles.

 

A friend is borrowing my 400D to shoot his son's graduation. He asked me what I

would recommend he use for both indoor shots with the 430EX & outdoors possibly

using the 430EX for fill.

 

I've got him practicing using my DSLR -- he's shooting like mad!

 

Lenses will be the 17-40L & the 70-200 F4L IS although he may use a 28-135 IS &

50 F1.4 instead of the 17-40L.

 

Any suggestions would be really welcome as he is about to record one of the high

points of both his & his son's life.

 

Thanks in advance!

If you shoot RAW it's a moot point.

 

I don't use any of the custom setting but, If I were to use one, it would probably be FAITHFUL.

If you like to keep your colors accurate and attractive, choose Standard style with +1 saturation. Increase the sharpness to 6/7. You can experiment with going to +2 saturation, I sometime like +2 saturation (only if the subject is not saturated, increasing saturation with colorful saturated subjects, may actually cause color bleeding or channel clipping).

 

If the photos are expected to include a lot of skin (faces, etc..), changing to portrait style will create a little more glimmer in skin tone (with a slight touch of red).

 

Leave the contrast at zero and do not play with color tone.

 

If you want flashy, unrelasitic colors (like Ken Rockwell does!) then you can play with Landscape mode or bump up saturation in Standard mode.

 

I have ruined many a pictures by taking liberties with Canon picture style. Now I shoot mostly in Raw for this very reason.

BTW, Faithful and Neutral are two options which you can use but they render a little dull colors.

Also, Nikon cameras prior to D300 do not give users much latitude to change the color style, so you can not shoot yourself in foot.

 

However D300/D3 have picture styles similar to Canons allowing you to make a killer photograph or kill the photographer!

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1031&message=27689145

If you go here:

 

http://www.canon.co.jp/imaging/picturestyle/file/index.html

 

You can download more styles as well as learn about how it works.

Guys -- these suggestions are GREAT!

 

Thanks.