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40D - shooting RAW - does white balance & picture style matter?

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Jas H

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I am a new 40D owner, and was wondering when shooting RAW, what is the point of adjusting white balance? Also, what is the point of adjusting "picture styles"?

Surely these things will have zero effect on RAW images? After all, I thought these were in camera post-processing items, and RAW images are the raw data from the sensor?

Apologies in advance if it's a stupid question, but this is my first DSLR :)
 
We all have to start learning somewhere.

It's been my experience that it's better to set the white balance even though you are shooting in raw. It means less "tweaking" when you get into your raw converter.

What's nice about raw is if you DON'T set the white balance and wind up with a blue or orange picture, for example, it isn't very hard to fix it in your raw converter.

A good place to start with adjusting the color is to find a white or gray area and click on it with the white balance eyedropper in your raw converter. (I use Adobe Camera Raw.)

Isabel
--

'Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a significant crop' Ansel Adams
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Jas H said:
I am a new 40D owner, and was wondering when shooting RAW, what is
the point of adjusting white balance? Also, what is the point of
adjusting "picture styles"?
Click to expand...
Although theses settings aren't applied to your RAW data, they will be stored as part of the metadata. RAW converters can read them and use it as a starting point. Getting it right while shooting might save you a lot of time in post processing. Some people also shot RAW+JPEG. In that case your settings are used for in camera processing.
Jas H said:
Surely these things will have zero effect on RAW images? After all,
I thought these were in camera post-processing items, and RAW images
are the raw data from the sensor?
Click to expand...
Yes, it's the sensor data.
 
Apart from what the others said I also think that the white balance and picture style settings also influence the histogram.

I heard that when shooting RAW, the camera creates a small jpg no matter what. And from that jpg it gets the histogram.

But - I'm really not sure if that is true. Maybe someone with more knowledge can spend some light here.
Cheers
Roland
 
JAS,
I'm glad to see all the questions being asked around the forum these days.

While most of us know that one can easily work with the RAW file in post-processing, I too am curious whether these settings affect the RAW data in any way. Naively, I would assume that the RAW file is unaffected. Perhaps this is not the case?

Best wishes,

-- Rob
 
Jas H said:
I am a new 40D owner, and was wondering when shooting RAW, what is
the point of adjusting white balance? Also, what is the point of
adjusting "picture styles"?

Surely these things will have zero effect on RAW images? After all,
I thought these were in camera post-processing items, and RAW images
are the raw data from the sensor?

Apologies in advance if it's a stupid question, but this is my first
DSLR :)
Click to expand...
Yes it does effect the RAW file. I had a so-called professional photographer setup my 30D about 18 months ago for a graduation shoot. Now he called himself a Pro. Both RAW & JPG files came out extrremely orange. I fixed the RAW files without a problem. The JPG files were junk, I could not fix them. Lucky for me I shot both formats.

Now that I own the 40D I need to do a test to see if that has changed. I don't think is has.

I never let that So-Called porfecssional touch my camera again.

--
Canon VD, XLD & G-VII / LXX-CCmm 2.8 IS / XXIV-LXXmm 2.8 IS
http://tfarrisphotography.com
http://myspace.com/timfarris_photographer
http://flickr.com/photos/tfarris-photography
 
Thank you everyone :)

This truly is an excellent forum!

It definitely makes sense given the above information to try and set up the shot as well as possible, as if I were shooting JPEG, even when shooting RAW. Saving time and effort in post processing is well worth a tiny bit of adjustment when shooting :)

I've only been shooting RAW for 1 day, but already see the benefit and intend to always use it in the creative zone modes :)
 
My logic would say that WB, tone, sharpness and ISO have zero effect on the RAW image.
Is this correct?
 
Yachty said:
My logic would say that WB, tone, sharpness and ISO have zero effect
on the RAW image.
Is this correct?
Click to expand...
no, yes, yes and no.
  • WB has zero effect on RAW image, but it is stored and used by the RAW convertor as a default setting. If WB setting is correct, you won't have to fix it in PP
  • tone is not applicable
  • sharpness is not applied to the image, but I think it's applied to the thumbnail (which is used in preview). At least that's what it used to be, I may be wrong for 40d.
  • ISO has as much affect on RAW image as it does on JPEG, the only difference is that noise reduction is not applied in RAW (except, I believe, long exposure NR, which is an entirely different processing).
--
Roman
http://barshay.us/photo
http://public.fotki.com/rbarshay
 
I was under the impression that WB is absolutely inifluent on the actual IMAGE data taken as RAW. I agree that the WB setting is stored in the metadata and can be honoured by your image viewing program to render the picture.

But do this experiment. Shoot the same picture in RAW with the WB set at two very different settings.

Load that image in Photoshop (I am mentioning PS only since it's the one I know) and manually set the light temperature levels say to 4500 K. Compare the two images and I expect you will not have ANY difference.

Bob
--
Bob Alexander
My photoalbum: http://foton.zenfolio.com
40D, EF-S 10-22, EF 50 f/1.4, EF 100 f/2.8 macro, 580EX
 
Sorry Roman,

you just said the same thing. And yes I also agree on the ISO relevance. Pixelwise an ISO3200 and an ISO100 of the same picture will be a lot different for two reasons, first is different the amount of noise, second is that given a scene the different ISO will need a different speed or aperture, rendering the pics very different.
Bob
--
Bob Alexander
My photoalbum: http://foton.zenfolio.com
40D, EF-S 10-22, EF 50 f/1.4, EF 100 f/2.8 macro, 580EX
 
See above. The PS is just stored as metadata and might be used by SOME software during the rendering of the image. In other words PS will not influence your stored image data.
--
Bob Alexander
My photoalbum: http://foton.zenfolio.com
40D, EF-S 10-22, EF 50 f/1.4, EF 100 f/2.8 macro, 580EX
 
If I am not mistaken, the only parameters that directly affect RAW files are the exposure ones, i.e. ISO, shutter speed and aperture. The WB and PS(contrast, tone, sharpness, saturation) do affect the metadata for RAW (used by the RAW processing software as a starting point, but you can change it to whatever you want) and JPEG file (if shooting RAW+JPEG) as above posters suggested.

----------------------------------------------------------

Duri

http://www.flickr.com/photos/durih
 
Yachty said:
My logic would say that WB, tone, sharpness and ISO have zero effect
on the RAW image.
Is this correct?
Click to expand...
The RAW image is only affected by the Av, Tv, and ISO settings.

EDIT: Oh, and a new thing for some cameras; highlight tone priority.

--
John

 
RawDogg said:
Jas H said:
I am a new 40D owner, and was wondering when shooting RAW, what is
the point of adjusting white balance? Also, what is the point of
adjusting "picture styles"?

Surely these things will have zero effect on RAW images? After all,
I thought these were in camera post-processing items, and RAW images
are the raw data from the sensor?

Apologies in advance if it's a stupid question, but this is my first
DSLR :)
Click to expand...
Yes it does effect the RAW file. I had a so-called professional
photographer setup my 30D about 18 months ago for a graduation shoot.
Now he called himself a Pro. Both RAW & JPG files came out extrremely
orange. I fixed the RAW files without a problem. The JPG files were
junk, I could not fix them. Lucky for me I shot both formats.

Now that I own the 40D I need to do a test to see if that has
changed. I don't think is has.

I never let that So-Called porfecssional touch my camera again.
Click to expand...
Thats because the 'orange' you speak of is not already baked into the RAW. So no, it DOESNT affect the RAW file.
RawDogg said:
--
Canon VD, XLD & G-VII / LXX-CCmm 2.8 IS / XXIV-LXXmm 2.8 IS
http://tfarrisphotography.com
http://myspace.com/timfarris_photographer
http://flickr.com/photos/tfarris-photography
Click to expand...
 
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