Canon Settings Question

[malenurse]

I'm shooting with a 5D Mark 2 - Just wondering what setting you use when shooting with your canon (Portrait, Landscape, Neutral, Standard, etc.) - or do you set your own custom setting? If so could you please share your custom setting? I've been using the preset ones but I'm looking to step away and start tinkering with something not so contrasty...

 

[Garbz]

If you want to start to tinker then I suggest move away from in-camera settings. Shoot RAW and then use either Canon's RAW processor or Photoshop's Adobe CameraRAW, or Lightroom, or if you have a mac use Aperture.

Eventually you'll find to get the most out of a camera quite as fantastic as the 5DII you'll head down this path anyway, and it'll render all in camera changes obsolete since RAW files have none of these settings applied.

 

[malenurse]

I do shoot in Raw and use lightroom. I was wondering if others use the camera's preset sharpness/contrast or if they try to shoot the picture as flat as possible and do all editing themselves.

 

[Garbz]

Irrelevant. Crank the sharpness all the way up, heck shoot in black and white. When you open the file in Lightroom you will still get an image completely unadulterated by the camera. Lightroom isn't even nice enough to realise you shot with the sharpness cranked, and won't even adjust it's own slider for you. The manufacturer's RAW processor will though, and Nikon Capture NX for instance will realise you shot with the saturation bumped up and then pre-bump the slider up for you.