Hi. Got my first DSLR camera - the 5D mark ii - about a week ago. While reading through the manual and learning about it, some questions came up. I was hoping that maybe someone here who is familiar with the camera might be able to help me better understand a few things.
My questions:
1. PICTURE STYLE - I'm not sure what to make of the Picture Style options that the camera has. My instinct tells me that I should just set it to the most neutral and flat setting, leaving all processing to Photoshop, or other post software. So is my gut feeling correct? or am I overlooking a great and useful feature of the 5D mark ii? Assuming the former, I'm a bit confused as to which Picture Style setting would give me the most neutral image to work with - Standard? Neutral? or Faithful?
2. COLOR SPACE - I'm assuming that the choice of selecting sRGB or Adobe RGB is for jpeg files only. Correct? So if I am recording both RAW and JPG, the RAW file will not be affected in any way by my selection in the camera menu between sRGB and Adobe RGB. Am I right here?
3. AF MODES - I understand the difference in functionality between One-Shot AF, AI Focus AF and AI Servo AF. Yet, since AI Servo seems to cover both other two options - in what case would someone choose to select an AF mode other than AI Servo? I'm sure there is a reason for the other two options, I just can't think of it. Even for someone like myself who normally photographs objects which are not moving - is there a downside I am overlooking to have my camera always set to AI Servo?
These are my questions (so far...). I'd really appreciate your explanations and advice. Thanks in advance.
Maybe more questions coming later... <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='  ' />
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1 - if you shoot raw, it doesn't matter. I assume most wont attempt major edits on jpeg.
2 - pass
3 - with one shot, you can focus then recompose, or apply further focus correction with full time manual lenses.
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[quote name='adifrank' date='10 July 2010 - 01:56 PM' timestamp='1278762993' post='937']
Hi. Got my first DSLR camera - the 5D mark ii - about a week ago. While reading through the manual and learning about it, some questions came up. I was hoping that maybe someone here who is familiar with the camera might be able to help me better understand a few things.
My questions:
1. PICTURE STYLE - I'm not sure what to make of the Picture Style options that the camera has. My instinct tells me that I should just set it to the most neutral and flat setting, leaving all processing to Photoshop, or other post software. So is my gut feeling correct? or am I overlooking a great and useful feature of the 5D mark ii? Assuming the former, I'm a bit confused as to which Picture Style setting would give me the most neutral image to work with - Standard? Neutral? or Faithful?
2. COLOR SPACE - I'm assuming that the choice of selecting sRGB or Adobe RGB is for jpeg files only. Correct? So if I am recording both RAW and JPG, the RAW file will not be affected in any way by my selection in the camera menu between sRGB and Adobe RGB. Am I right here?
[/quote]
1) If you shoot RAW (as 2 implies), the picture style only affects the preview that's shown on the camera - including highlight warnings. So you may want to experiment with setting particularly contrast such that the warnings match how far into the highlights you feel you can press the RAW.
2) I believe so.
-Lars
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07-10-2010, 02:08 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-10-2010, 02:10 PM by Brightcolours.)
[quote name='adifrank' date='10 July 2010 - 12:56 PM' timestamp='1278762993' post='937']
Hi. Got my first DSLR camera - the 5D mark ii - about a week ago. While reading through the manual and learning about it, some questions came up. I was hoping that maybe someone here who is familiar with the camera might be able to help me better understand a few things.
My questions:
1. PICTURE STYLE - I'm not sure what to make of the Picture Style options that the camera has. My instinct tells me that I should just set it to the most neutral and flat setting, leaving all processing to Photoshop, or other post software. So is my gut feeling correct? or am I overlooking a great and useful feature of the 5D mark ii? Assuming the former, I'm a bit confused as to which Picture Style setting would give me the most neutral image to work with - Standard? Neutral? or Faithful?[/quote]
Picture styles CAN come in handy, when you have figured them out. Using DPP, it can save you a lot of tinkering in post processing to get a lot of photos look right. Of course, just like all other features, it is up to you to decide whether to use it.
Just like your whitebalance settings, your sharpening and so on, with shooting in RAW, DPP will take the camera settings as default settings for the image for the conversion. Making picture styles yourself is very difficult, as the way to model them is different than what most are used to. That is probably also why not so many are to be found online.
You can upload custom picture styles to your camera and use them within DPP.
[quote name='adifrank' date='10 July 2010 - 12:56 PM' timestamp='1278762993' post='937']
2. COLOR SPACE - I'm assuming that the choice of selecting sRGB or Adobe RGB is for jpeg files only. Correct? So if I am recording both RAW and JPG, the RAW file will not be affected in any way by my selection in the camera menu between sRGB and Adobe RGB. Am I right here?[/quote]
You are right, the colour space gets determined during the conversion of the RAW file within (for instance) DPP. The in-camera setting is mostly for JPEG. Of course, the JPEG preview embedded into the RAW file is affected (it goes through the normal JPEG processing line, so all settings that impact JPEG images will also impact the preview image).
[quote name='adifrank' date='10 July 2010 - 12:56 PM' timestamp='1278762993' post='937']
3. AF MODES - I understand the difference in functionality between One-Shot AF, AI Focus AF and AI Servo AF. Yet, since AI Servo seems to cover both other two options - in what case would someone choose to select an AF mode other than AI Servo? I'm sure there is a reason for the other two options, I just can't think of it. Even for someone like myself who normally photographs objects which are not moving - is there a downside I am overlooking to have my camera always set to AI Servo?[/quote]
Wrong.
One shot AF focusses and then locks the focus. With normal and more or less static subjects, this is the preferred mode. It enables you to focus and recompose normally, and once focus is locked nothing will make it jump out of focus all of a sudden. You can only make a shot when focus lock is reached.
AI-Servo keeps on focussing. You have to separate focus and shutter (move focus from the shutter button) in order to be able to focus and recompose. You will never get focus confirmation, and you can take a shot without focus having been reached.
AI focus AF is a mix of both. It will focus and give focus confirmation, but will start to refocus when a significant shift in focus has occurred. It can be temperamental and usually does NOT behave exactly how you wish it would behave. That is why it is the least favorite AF mode for most people, most people use one shot AF and/or AI servo.
[quote name='adifrank' date='10 July 2010 - 12:56 PM' timestamp='1278762993' post='937']
These are my questions (so far...). I'd really appreciate your explanations and advice. Thanks in advance.
Maybe more questions coming later... <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' />
[/quote]
[quote name='adifrank' date='10 July 2010 - 01:56 PM' timestamp='1278762993' post='937']
Hi. Got my first DSLR camera - the 5D mark ii - about a week ago. While reading through the manual and learning about it, some questions came up. I was hoping that maybe someone here who is familiar with the camera might be able to help me better understand a few things.
My questions:
1. PICTURE STYLE - I'm not sure what to make of the Picture Style options that the camera has. My instinct tells me that I should just set it to the most neutral and flat setting, leaving all processing to Photoshop, or other post software. So is my gut feeling correct? or am I overlooking a great and useful feature of the 5D mark ii? Assuming the former, I'm a bit confused as to which Picture Style setting would give me the most neutral image to work with - Standard? Neutral? or Faithful?
2. COLOR SPACE - I'm assuming that the choice of selecting sRGB or Adobe RGB is for jpeg files only. Correct? So if I am recording both RAW and JPG, the RAW file will not be affected in any way by my selection in the camera menu between sRGB and Adobe RGB. Am I right here?
3. AF MODES - I understand the difference in functionality between One-Shot AF, AI Focus AF and AI Servo AF. Yet, since AI Servo seems to cover both other two options - in what case would someone choose to select an AF mode other than AI Servo? I'm sure there is a reason for the other two options, I just can't think of it. Even for someone like myself who normally photographs objects which are not moving - is there a downside I am overlooking to have my camera always set to AI Servo?
These are my questions (so far...). I'd really appreciate your explanations and advice. Thanks in advance.
Maybe more questions coming later... <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' />
[/quote]
Some complements :
1-As other mentioned, it's a metadata used by Canon DPP to apply its curve & toning. But, in the event you would like them, even though Lightroom and pretty much every other software will ignore Picture Styles, Adobe has developed camera profiles for Lightroom to mimic Canon 5 standard picture styles. I haven't shot Canon in a while but in early Lightroom stages (early... up to 2.x !) , these profiles came as a relief as Lightroom & ACR were pretty much unable to render the reds correctly (at least subjectively to me). IMHO, they were absolutely necessary. Not sure if ACR engine has evolved and if you still need these profiles.
That's an illustration of a possible trade-off one can encounter when using third-party RAW engines.
2-My intuition is that it's also a RAW parameter this time, something to check. AdobeRGB colour space needs to be carefully approached in a calibrated environment and represents a lot of efforts for a comparatively low gain, in my limited experience.
3-If shooting still subjects, I would rather use Single AF than Servo. Servo expects your subject to be in movement and is based on predictive algorithms as to allow proper tracking of depth changes of your subject (wrt. focus plane). In practice, you'll notice when aiming at a static subject that the smallest movement will have the camera change its focus over and over again. I don't know how well it works with the current state of technology but on a 40D, this instability was already great enough to fail a lot of shots. I hear the 5D mkII hasn't evolved much since 5D mk I so I would avoid it too. Wim, I'm sure, will add details later <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' />
Greetings,
S.
You are correct about color spaces. For raw that doesn't matter at all, it saves all the data and you choose color space when you export from raw (at least in Adobe Camera Raw).
And for picture styles, that really doesn't matter for raw either. Maybe they set certain settings to something so the image looks a certain way when you open the raw file, but all the data is still there and you can change it however you want still.
I'm not a Canon user, so I don't know about the AI-servo setting. But if it's an automatic setting, I'd be careful before I had tested it properly.
Edit: I see now that there are several answers here, I somehow overlooked that, so you probably have all your answers <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' />
Thanks for all the replies! They made things clear for me. So as far as I'm concerned, this thread can be considered solved.
<img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' />
If more questions come up, I'll post them in a new thread.
Thanks again!
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SInce Sylvain expects me to add a few comments, I guess i better do, as I don't want to disappoint Sylvain <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' />.
1) Picture styles are extemely useful if you shoot both Raw and jpeg. I do this if I have to provide someone with images fast. By default I use a User Defined setting, where I adjust everything to Nikon (<img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' />) standards: sharpness 1 right from the default setting, so 4, contrast, saturation, and color tone 2 ticks to the right from the centre position. That generally provides me with a standard processing standard that most people actually do like. Yes, I know it isn't neutral, but people other than photographers often don't like neutral. At least, that is my experience, YMMV.
2) Color space: Adobe RGB, because it is a wider gamut. It does seem to effect the Raw file, but I haven't done any scientific tests on it, so it may just be my imagination. However, it saves one from overriding the color space when doing postprocessing the Raw, unless you'd want to process in an even larger colour space, or completely different colour space.
3) AF modes.
Unless you shoot moving objects, or relatively fast moving objects, I'd suggest you use One-shot AF. For anything else, Ai-Servo (sports, BIF, anything moving you'd want to capture in focus). As others mentioned, Ai Servo and AI Focus AF expect movement, and will create some if it isn't there, which IOW means you'll end up with OOF subjects.
However, do realize that even in AI Servo, the 5D II AF system, although improved a little over the 5D Classic AF, it isn't the fastest thing in the world, will only work nicely with center AF for fast moving objects, and can't really keep up with anything moving beyond approximately 30 mph, unless it is a very steady movement in one direction. I had a hard time photographing water skiers with the 5D II, trying to follow their movements, especially in not too great weather.
And AI Focus AF is almost a guarantee for unsharp photographs ... <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='  ' />
Kind regards, Wim
Gear: Canon EOS R with 3 primes and 2 zooms, 4 EF-R adapters, Canon EOS 5 (analog), 9 Canon EF primes, a lone Canon EF zoom, 2 extenders, 2 converters, tubes; Olympus OM-D 1 Mk II & Pen F with 12 primes, 6 zooms, and 3 Metabones EF-MFT adapters ....
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[quote name='wim' date='11 July 2010 - 02:11 AM' timestamp='1278810664' post='951']
2) Color space: Adobe RGB, because it is a wider gamut. It does seem to effect the Raw file, but I haven't done any scientific tests on it, so it may just be my imagination.
[/quote]
It most certainly does not impact RAW. So, yes, it is just your imagination.
It does affect the RAW file because this information is stored in the "maker notes"-section inside EXIF and Digital Photo Professional applies this setting to the photo shown on the screen.
Software like LR, CS (=Camera RAW) doesn't use the maker notes, this setting isn't processed.
Ergo: depends! ;-)
Ciao, Walter
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