RAW overwrite in camer settings?

[antonio_carusone]

I'm shooting with a D200 and was wonder if when set to RAW does it overwrite all

the in-camera settings like sharpen, saturation, WB, etc?

[rainer_t]

Overwritten is not the correct term here ... Settings like white-balance, saturation, sharpening, color-space and so on do not make sense before a certain step in processing is reached. Raw-data is captured directly from the sensor. All settings are therefore "not yet applied" to this data. Nevertheless, these settings are usually recorded and stored along with the raw-data. Some programs processing the raw-data take these settings as a default starting point for postprocessing, others completely ignore those settings.

 

Rainer

[juri_vosu1]

Hi guys. Rainer I have another guestion along the same lines. If I shoot RAW, (directly from the sensor) and JPEG at the same time, will the in-camera settings be applied to the accompanying JPEG?

[mark_sirota1]

Juri, for most cameras (including the original poster's D200) the answer to your question is "yes". You didn't specify what camera, though...

[juri_vosu1]

Thanks Mark. My camera is the D200. In your opinion what in-camera parameters would give the best images:

1. on a shunny day 2. on a shady day 3. etc.

I have heard a few different opinions on this especially on the WB. One always set it for Shady setting when outdoors.

[walterh]

I have no idea why anybody wanted to set WB to a fixed setting for various differing conditions - sounds like complete nonsense. Set it to "Auto" until you find better detailed settings for special conditions you have experience with.

[chris_leck]

How you set your WB is dependent on how important the results are. I never use auto WB because it will give inconsistent results under the same lighting, e.g., take twelve pictures in sunlight and you may get twelve WBs. This is not good for consistent color rendition. [it's no big deal if you shoot raw and plan to batch correct it later. If you shoot JPGEs, your colors will vary from image to image and will be harder to correct.]

 

Auto WB, AFAIK, does not work well below 4000K or so on some Nikon models, so this could be a bad crutch. I know first-hand this was an issue on the D100 and have heard it also is on the D200 (my D200 has never been set to auto WB, so I don't know).

 

There are situations where I know which presets work -- such as incandescent for most stage work and incandescent +3 for much indoor lighting. For most outdoor work, I like the 'Direct Sunlight' setting. There are several reasons why, including that I don't care for the colors produced cloudy or shade settings, it seems to capture the mood best, and I shot E-6 for thirty years and like the 5500K look most of the time. Sunset light looks best orange IMO, whether shooting a sunset or subjects lit by sunset light. How best to preserve that quality easily? 'Direct Sunlight' WB.

 

If accuracy and control are important, shoot custom WB or raw. You can preset WB or correct it afterwards. There are varying tools and methods to do this.