[asd]

Just wondering what settings people have set in the parameter menu as you can set sharpness, saturation etc to +2.Is it best leave them on 0 and sharpen in photoshop after instead...ps whats the difference between standard RGB and Adobe RGB setting(on 10D in my case), and whats it best to have it on.

thanks scott

[Gary Bagshawe]

I would personaly do any sharpening on the pc rather than in camera

[Dave]

Always better to leave everything std raw from camera & then tweak in PhotoShop. You have so many more tools / processes to play with, which are a lot more effective, plus you can always back out any changes.

Saying that, for the person who wants to print straight from their memory card you still might use the Camera options.

[Dave]

Ref RGB the advice I have seen is to use Adobe RGB to give you the maximum compatibilty for other software, printing etc. Note though if saving images for the web you need to convert to sRGB, otherwise you'll notice your photos look somehast desaturated,

I've nicked this from Steves posts on another thread :-

Originally Posted by Steve

I work in RGB and them the final step before I am ready for saving the file for web use I go to edit > Convert to profile it then opens a new dialoge in which I select...
sRGB IEC61966-2.1" as the destination space
Adobe ACE as the conversion engine
relative colourmetric as the intent
I also have Black point compensation and use dither ticked as well.

Then when I save for web my colours appear identical to what I was using in PS.

I only do this for my web size photos, I always work in RGB for the rest of my workflow and printing

[silkstone]

Dave - that's right I guess if you're using Photoshop or other Adobe products, but sRGB is the standard non-proprietary colorspace for non-Adobe applications as well as the web. I think you have to be careful to stick to one or the other throughout, or you can get some strange effects.

[Sonsey]

Originally Posted by Dave

Ref RGB the advice I have seen is to use Adobe RGB to give you the maximum compatibilty for other software, printing etc.

I was told that if you were getting prints done from others (e.g Photobox, high street printers) then it was best to use sRGB as this is what their machines use, can anyone else confim this?

[asd]

thanks chaps,

I will leave it in sRGB and sharpen afterwards, cheers. Silkstone how is the new 30D you have? and can you give me some advice on a next lens purchase please,a have a 17-40L and just bought 50mm 1.8 II yesterday which i have not tried properly yet.I am only a novice but family and friends are starting to ask me to do some portraits of their kids pets etc,which the 50 should be hopefully good for, but i will be attempting to photograph some live bands playing( and backstage/ after gig party) in a couple of months but confused on what focal lengths will be most useful without swapping lenses as much as possible.

I'm looking at 24-105mmL 24 24-70mm 2.8L .70-300mm IS and 70-200mm 2.8L (no IS) which is going £460 new. Is the IS invaluable silkstone?, i notice you have the 70-300 with IS or should i look at the sigma range(how do sigma's Ex DG range compare to Canon lenses, sorry for bending your ear...

cheers scott

[Dabhand16]

My vote goes for capturing images 'as they are', and doing any corrections afterwards. If the originally captured image, for some reason is not right, and there is some in camera modification on it, I think it is more difficult to make corrections. Of course, this may be because I'm not very good at editing

I think it is better to have an unmodified baseline you can always revert to if necessary.

[Dabhand16]

Just seen your last post regarding portraits. I always thought that the ideal portrait lens was 85 - 105mm (35mm eqivalent).

[Sonsey]

Originally Posted by asd

i will be attempting to photograph some live bands playing( and backstage/ after gig party) in a couple of months but confused on what focal lengths will be most useful without swapping lenses as much as possible.

I'm looking at 24-105mmL 24 24-70mm 2.8L .70-300mm IS and 70-200mm 2.8L (no IS) which is going £460 new. Is the IS invaluable silkstone?, i notice you have the 70-300 with IS or should i look at the sigma range(how do sigma's Ex DG range compare to Canon lenses

If you going to be in dark club conditions the you'll need a pretty fast lens, I'd definately take the 50 1.8 you just purchased but alot will depend on how close you can get, will you be stage side, or will the crowd be in the way?

Backstage you may want to have something wide in your kit for group shots and full length portraits etc, so something like the 24-70mm f/2.8 would be usefull here I would say, both Sigma and Tamron both make good sharp f/2.8 lenses in this range with the Sigma having better build quality and the Tamron being a bit lighter in weight, both are considerably cheaper in price compaired to the Canon version

Maybe you could give us an idea of your budget along with the situation at the venue's for the bands so we could advise you better?

[silkstone]

Scott - Hehe! You're on the slippery "what lens next?" slope now!

For low-light shots without flash a fast lens is a good idea. As has been said already, the 50mm f/1.8 is superb as long as that focal length suits what you're doing. The new Canon 17-55 f/2.8 is very tempting indeed. If I hadn't already got the 17-40L this would be top of my list because I think it's a more useful lens. TBH I wouldn't bother about the 24-105L - that's really aimed at the 5D and 1Ds MkII as a standard zoom for full-frame. Another one to consider is the Tamron 28-75 f/2.8 which is 'L-series' quality at half the price. I believe that Steve has or had one of these.

The 70-200L is a very good lens (so I hear - I don't have one). The New 70-300 IS is excellent and far better than the previous 75-300, but it isn't very fast.

IS is extremely useful for hand-held shots of static subjects, but it only compensates for your movement, not for that of the subject.

HTH!

[Steve]

This is an interesting thread…I’ll try to keep this answer short and sweet as with a thread covering such a wide area it could easily become a small essay

RGB vs sRGB … If you are not used to working in a colour controlled and matched environment then the latter will give you the most consistent and expected results. sRGB is also the preferred colour space for the majority of high street and online printers. Unless you are going the pro-printer route, in which case RGB will be expected, then for the majority of people sRGB is usually more than good enough.

On the camera lcd, RGB will look less saturated and duller than sRGB as well but in fact RGB has a wider colour gamut and when printed correctly will return the better results.

No matter which colour space you chose I would suggest if you have RAW then you should use it. It gives you more latitude and can sometimes make the difference between a lost photo and a keeper.

As far as sharpening is concerned, then for the best results leave it to your image editing software but if you are working in a time critical area or just can’t be bothered processing the shots afterwards then allowing the camera to ‘process’ the shots as you take them can be a life saver. In those circumstances I usually use +2 for sharpening, +1 saturation and defaults for everything else. Here again I would use large format .jpg for ultimate speed although with the advances in batch processing of RAW files now available through software like RawShooter, shooting in Raw is still a big advantage and the extra stage of processing is usually a good safety net vs time compromise. In an Ideal world every shot would be perfect and we would not need to process them, but reality has shown us a different picture

Lastly, yes the Tamron 28-75 f/2.8 is an absolute gem of a lens, I bought it with my 10D and is still in my bag and used daily despite all my other lenses being of the ‘L’ variety (50mm excepted). I also own the 70-200L and find that to be worth its weight in gold too

Hope that helps.

[asd]

thanks again for the detailed response, this photo community at pixalo is great and really friendly, and i think i have picked all of steves brains by now. just had 2 litres of magners cider watching the footy, so off to bed..ps steve i have a few more questions regarding lenses which i hope you can help me with sometime
cheers scott

[Steve]

I am glad to have been of help, any more questions just post away, that's what we are here for