- Aug 23, 2007
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I have a Sony HX1, which Sony decided not to give RAW support to, only overcompressed JPEG (9 megapixels down to <4mb files).
The HX1 has 3 settings to adjust color, Color Mode, Color Saturation, and Color Filter (don't care about that one). CM lets you pick between normal, vivid, real, sepia, and b&w. CS lets you pick between -, standard, +.
Within a few days of getting it I switched to the "vivid" color setting, which increases saturation and contrast. I knew it was just the camera doing post processing but I liked the high contrast effect especially in bright direct sunlight. It made processing unnecessary or minimal on most pics.
But... then I noticed I was reducing contrast more and more to undo some of the camera's processing. I switched down to the "standard" settings. I figured it's the right thing to do anyway and using settings to make the pics look better was just a guilty indulgence. Now of course all my pictures require a lot of processing just to match reality, and then a little more to "pop".
Well I'd always assumed default settings is the *best* because the JPEG saved is as close as possible to what the sensor captures. But then I realized that any kind of post-processing reduces the amount of information stored in the photo, the more processing the more information is lost, and therefore shooting "standard" might not be the way to go. I tried some pictures in saturation+ and colors are usually much closer to reality and what I want the photos to look like.
Is it immoral and unethical and sinful to shoot JPEGs with saturation+? I feel like it makes sense when it gets you closer to the final result, as the camera is processing its raw sensor data and and capturing more information as JPEG than I do when I process the "default" JPEG. It's apparent mainly with blue skies. Upping saturation and reducing luminosity of blue pixels seems to always highlight JPEG artifacting, the bigger the change the more artifacting.
I use Lightroom for my postprocessing by the way.
The HX1 has 3 settings to adjust color, Color Mode, Color Saturation, and Color Filter (don't care about that one). CM lets you pick between normal, vivid, real, sepia, and b&w. CS lets you pick between -, standard, +.
Within a few days of getting it I switched to the "vivid" color setting, which increases saturation and contrast. I knew it was just the camera doing post processing but I liked the high contrast effect especially in bright direct sunlight. It made processing unnecessary or minimal on most pics.
But... then I noticed I was reducing contrast more and more to undo some of the camera's processing. I switched down to the "standard" settings. I figured it's the right thing to do anyway and using settings to make the pics look better was just a guilty indulgence. Now of course all my pictures require a lot of processing just to match reality, and then a little more to "pop".
Well I'd always assumed default settings is the *best* because the JPEG saved is as close as possible to what the sensor captures. But then I realized that any kind of post-processing reduces the amount of information stored in the photo, the more processing the more information is lost, and therefore shooting "standard" might not be the way to go. I tried some pictures in saturation+ and colors are usually much closer to reality and what I want the photos to look like.
Is it immoral and unethical and sinful to shoot JPEGs with saturation+? I feel like it makes sense when it gets you closer to the final result, as the camera is processing its raw sensor data and and capturing more information as JPEG than I do when I process the "default" JPEG. It's apparent mainly with blue skies. Upping saturation and reducing luminosity of blue pixels seems to always highlight JPEG artifacting, the bigger the change the more artifacting.
I use Lightroom for my postprocessing by the way.
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