Color calibrating your camera

[melandkeifspics]

<p>Recently watched a CreativeLive workshop regarding workflow and one of the first things before editing a wedding that they did was ensure that properly adjusted the camera calibration in Lightroom (especially when editing shots from more than one camera (ie Nikon shooter and Canon shooter). What do you guys think of that? Do you select a profile and adjust the sliders in anyway? Do you use any form of software to ensure proper color correction? How important is such a thing to you?</p>

[ellis_vener_photography]

I do it religiously when I get a new camera, which because I review cameras for a magazine as do commercial and

professional work is more often than most people do.

 

It only has to be done once,and not before every shoot. The best way to use these tools is to create a "Dual illuminant"

profile: shoot the target under daylight or electronic flash illumination and again under tungsten (2800~3200K illuminationI

for a target I use the 24 patch ColorChecker in ths XRite ColorChecker Passport target set and process with either the

ColorChecker Passport software (free) or the Adobe DNG Profile Editor software. It takes maybe 5-10 minutes total per

camera.

 

This is not the same thing as White Balance by the way, it is more akin to a mason using a level to lay a row of bricks.

 

Now when I am processing if I think that the calibration is not giving me the base line I want to work from, I will try the

other color calibration presets, but I never, never, ever touch the sliders in the camera calibration pane in Lightroom or

ACR.

[shawn_mertz]

<p>I have set the calibration saturation levels, tone curve and noise reduction for each camera and iso to settings i generally like as lightroom defaults for each camera at each iso. it gets me to where i have to do no adjustments between import and proof more often.</p>