Category Archives: Digital Darkroom

RGB?

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Adobe or sRGB? You may have wondered how to set up your camera in this regard. Look through its menus and the choice of colour space will come  up.

This question means “how shall I translate the colours to bits when making a JPG file”.

So what determines your choice?

  • AdobeRGB has more colours but can look very bad on a PC, on the web, or when printed on a cheap printer.
  • sRGB has fewer colours but is optimised to look good on  a computer screen, cheap printer, etc.
  • See above: “…when making a JPG file”.  It is only important when you are shooting JPG.

So the answer is:

  • When shooting JPG, use sRGB
  • Only change to AdobeRGB if the publication you are shooting for says you should use that colour space.
  • When shooting RAW the choice is irrelevant (so set it to sRGB too).

Simple. Like so many things.

And this also represents one of the many advantages of shooting RAW: not ahving to worry about such things as colour space, as they are set later, when the JPG is generated.

Eyeball it

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You shoot RAW, perhaps (at least I hope you do). That means you need not worry about setting white balance while shooting.

So how do you set white balance in post-production?

Ideally, you include a grey card and use the dropper tool in Lightroom (if that is what you are using) to take a neutral reading off this. But if you do not have a grey card in the photo?

Look at a student who kindly agreed to be the subject of a test picture. One: the original photo

Two: after I take a white balance off the eyeballs:

Three: as a personal preference, since I like warmer light I then always drag the colour temperature slider to a slightly higher temperature (a slightly warmer light):

And hey presto – done.

This is quicker than doing it on the camera, and more accurate, and you do not waste your subject’s time.

We're gonna need a bigger drive

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Actually, you need two (one to store your images, and one as a backup). And perhaps a third for off-site storage.

And here’s why. We are seeing four trends in photography, all increasing at the same time.

  • Pictures get bigger (more megapixels).
  • You’ll take more of them.
  • You’ll re-use them more, so will want fast access.
  • You’ll store them all in the same place.

As “digital” took over my life, the number of pictures in the last five years in my Lightroom catalog increased as follows:

  • 2004 :    1,080
  • 2005 :    2,999
  • 2006 :    5,052
  • 2007 :    5,617
  • 2008 :  13,599
  • 2009 :  26,785

I stored more in Lightroom, I took more pictures, I kept more, and they also became bigger, so 2009 is disproportionally larger than previous years.

Can you see that my images appear to be increasing at more than Moore’s law rate?

Of course I expect them to top off this year – they may already have maximized – as I do more training, and more quality shooting rather than volume shooting – but who knows. Even then, larger files will make tyour storage top out. So get ready for more storage, and be agrressive.

How aggressive? The images above filla a 1TB drive (and two backup 1TB drives).

Fortunately, storage is also becoming cheaper, and by 2011 we will have 1 TB SD cards.

What memory cards do I need?

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This is a frequently asked question. Like many such questions, it has some suggestions rather than one definitive answer. And those suggestions are:

  1. Buy brand name cards. Lexar and Sandisk are the main brands, and they are very good electronically. They have anti-aging mechanisms built in that some cheaper cards do not.
  2. Get a lot of them. Often, I would rather have two 8GB cards or even four 4GB cards than one 16GB card. This spreads your risk. Memory cards die, get lost, get stolen, and so on.
  3. Speed is less important unless you shoot sports (many repeated shots) or video. For video, the sustained throughput (the small 1-9 number surrounded by a circle) is very important. But if you do not shoot video or constant shutter mode shots such as in sports, speed only affects the read/write time from buffer to card and from card to computer, (not the quality) and you may well prefer a $30 “slow” card ran a $150 “Super Generation 6 Extra Extreme Screaming Speed Pus Pro” card.
  4. That said, I think everyone should have one very fast card – for when you shoot repeated large images.
  5. Do not open the camera when the LED at the back, that indicates “wait, I am writing to the card” turns off.
  6. Format your card every time you re-insert it into the camera – but only after you have copied all you images to the computer and made a backup.
  7. Use a CF/SD card reader for connecting to the computer. Many people find this more convenient than connecting the camera. The choice is yours, though.

I hope that is useful – and remember, shoot a lot and fill those cards, especially this season.

Tethering

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So I worked out a somewhat workable method to connect my Canon 1- and 7-series bodies to my Mac for tethered operation.

First:

  • Install Canon EOS Utility
  • Install Canon Imagebrowser
  • Then connect the camera to the USB port on the computer.
  • Before turning it on, run Image Capture app and tell it that this camera, when connected, should start up Canon EOS Utility.
  • Now start, and set up, EOS Utility. Tell it to save captures to, for instance, “Pictures”. Tell it that its action upon connection of a camera should be to start Imagebrowser.

Now you can turn on your camera. Take a shot. The first time, because imagebrower is not yet running, the EOS viewer starts, but this is not “updating live” so it is not the browser we want. Close it.

It will not start again. Instead every subsequent image you take now pops up in Imagebrowser. You get a live image as soon as you take it on the camera. Clicking on any image, and using left and right arrows, allows you to scroll through images taken and set zoom levels.

Not ideal and a lot of work, but it does work well enough for me to use for tomorrow’s Santa shoot.

There are better ways, I know it!

AdobeRGB or sRGB?

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Reader Yannick asks:

My friend and I have a lot of conversation about cameras and there’s something I wanted to bring up. He said you’d be the perfect person to answer this question. My friend shoots using adobe RBG colour space and I was telling him how sRBG has a slight advantage cause it’s the most commonly used settings and I believe you require some programs to make full use of adobe RBG. I’m not sure if I’m making any sense. But some clarification from your part would be greatly appreciated.

OK, thanks for the trust. Here’s my take on this important question.

If you shoot JPG, you need to decide what colour space to use: you set it in the camera.

  • The good: AdobeRGB is best for high-end print publications, while sRGB looks best on low- and medium-end printers and especially on computer screens.
  • The downsides: sRGB has fewer colours; Adobe looks very dull on computers.

So you decide based on your purpose. What is the colour space of the device or publication you are making the pictures for.

adobeRGB

If you do not know, then my recommendation is: shoot sRBG for general purpose use. That way your pictures look great on computers, in emails and on web sites, and printed at home. The very slight loss of colour space is not a problem there. Shooting in AdobeRGB and getting horrible flat colour on web browsers etc that do not handle that colour space well is much worse.

But the best thing to do by far is to shoot in RAW. That way you need only decide later, on your computer, when you produce your JPG. Until that time you keep all colours – and freedom.

 

A Better Battery Charger

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When you use AA or AAA batteries, like those in your flash, use rechargeables. But they lose 10% of their charge on day 1 and 2% each subsequent day. Worse, your batteries are NiMH so they have a “memory effect”.

The solution:

  • Only use conditioning chargers, like the Lacrosse. They discharge your NiMH batteries before recharging. Worth every penny.
  • Use low-discharge batteries, like the Eneloop batteries. They keep their charge.

Problem solved!

I have three of these Lacrosse chargers.

More Black and White tips

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I love black and white, so I thought you might too – in which case you might be interested in the following Quick Tips:

  1. Use B&W when the image is too grainy. In B&W pictures, grain can add, rather than detract – or at least it is less distracting.
  2. Set your camera to B&W – even if you shoot RAW. It will not have any effect on the RAW image (at least, no permanent effect), but you will see what you are getting on your LCD display.
  3. If you shot JPG, shoot in Adobe colour, and convert to B&W later.
  4. Use Lightroom rather than other software to convert. Use the Lightroom Develop module’s HSL/Color/Grayscale tool.
  5. In this tool clock on Grayscale and adjust. Lightroom has a great way of doing the standard conversion.
  6. And now, still in that tool, adjust to taste. Add to the “red” and “orange” slider in order to make skin better. Use other controls as needed to add contrast between your subject and the background.

As an illustration, here is an image converted automatically:

IMG_1080

Here, I have butchered it (and me – ouch) by dragging ‘orange’ and ‘yellow’ down:

IMG_1080-2

Here, I have done more of an appropriate conversion:

IMG_1080-3

See what I mean? This is equivalent to the old red-yellow-green filters. Except much more interactive and much simpler.

Picture Styles: useful?

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BKKphotographer asks:

“Are Canon’s Picture Styles important in your workflow? Do you, for example, create your own and download them to your cameras? I started to get interested in them, until I started using Lightroom. LR does not understand them per se but it attempts to approximate the standard Canon styles with its Camera Calibration Profiles.

If I make my own Picture Style and use it on my camera it gets lost when I import to Lightroom. I think they are only useful in a workflow that is based on Canon Digital Photo Professional.

I find that whole subject very confusing – for example how those profiles relate to LR’s Develop Presets.

I think this area is a prime candidate for your clear concise explanatory skills!”

Well, I’ll do my best. Although In fact I think you are doing very well yourself, in the explanation above.

What are Picture Styles?

Camera Picture Styles are ways to handle (a.k.a. edit) the information that comes from your sensor. You can set these styles on your camera. Contrast, sharpening, colour balance, saturation, even curves are all part of such a style. If, for example, you set your in-camera style to “Landscape”, you get sharper images, with a tad more contrast and ever so slightly enhanced blues and greens. Portrait Style means less sharpness (who wants to emphasise wrinkles!). In a sense, these Picture Styles are like choosing a particular film.

picstyles

What happens to you image in camera?

If you shoot JPG, your chosen Picture Styles settings are applied to the sensor information, and the resulting JPG has them incorporated (e.g. it has enhanced blues and greens, and is sharpened).

But if on the other hand you shoot RAW, the style settings are not “applied” – instead, they are “attached”. (The RAW file contains a field that says “oh, and the user set the camera to Landscape Style when he took this picture). It is then up to the software you use at the other end (on your PC or Mac) to apply the settings.

What happens afterward?

If you use Canon DPP (Digital Photo Professional), it knows the camera’s built-in Picture Styles. So if it sees a RAW image with style “landscape” set in the attached info, it knows exactly how to apply that style. And it automatically does that, so the RAW image looks the way it looks on the back of the camera.

If on the other hand you use Lightroom, or Photoshop, or some other software, it does not know the exact meaning of Canon’s “Landscape Style”. Your camera maker, of course, in its usual controlling manner, does not share this information. (Hey – why would you share stuff that would make your photos better and hence your cameras more popular!)

So now what?

So now you have to do it yourself in software. Take the unaltered file, then enhance the sharpness, apply the right contrast, and so on. This is inconvenient. So Lightroom attempts to do it for you. Adobe has built in (for RAW files for some, but not all, cameras) its own camera-specific develop settings. When I import an image from my 1D, for instance, I can now set it to “Camera Landscape”. That approximates the in-camera setting very well.

But when you have made your own Picture Styles and uploaded those to the camera, as indeed you can, then these are not known at all to Lightroom, so you have to make your own develop settings in Lightroom to mimic your self-developer camera Picture Styles. You can – but is it worth it? It would take a lot of time.

So what does Michael think?

I think Picture Styles are only really worth it if you stick to DPP. I also think that if you shoot RAW,  the main advantage of these Styles is “how you see the image on the back of your LCD” and “how quickly you get to an OK-looking JPG later”. Other than that, why not just do it on  your computer? The Lightroom styles are a good approximation of the Canon styles, I feel.

Important note: I do think it is very important when importing into Lightroom to use the “Camera Normal” (or if you wish, “Camera Landscape”, etc) develop setting (you can do that automatically upon import, or set it later in the Develop Module), and not ACR (the Adobe Camera Raw profile, which does not look as good). When I show photographers this, and the resulting significantly better colours, they usually say “wow!”

So if you ask me “are Picture Styles important to you” I would say “yes – I only set them, or an approximation to them, in software later”. I can do it while shooting but find I might as well save myself the time and do it later.

I could of course write my own, as you have and upload those to the camera, and then approximate them in Lightroom as well. I commend anyone who does – but I have insufficient time to do it myself.

Does that help?