I was reading again the manual of my camera (Canon 50D, but I am sure that each DSLR offer the same kind of functionality, albeit I don't know the exact names adopted) and noticed the issue of Picture styles which I had overlooked in my first reading.
In short I think that they are a collection of various calibration settings (more or less enhanced colours, things like that...). Those that are available on my camera are:
- Standard
- Portrait
- Landscape
- Neutral
- Faithful
- Monochrome
- 3 user definable modes.
These styles are so important to deserve a direct button just under the LCD screen of the camera (I guess this is useful for simplifying the use of the camera in the basic modes as opposed to manual / less automated ones).
And now for the question:
- These settings obviously affect the appearance of the picture "as it comes out of the camera". But given the raw file I assume that they are all equivalent, a style is not applying a destructive transformation to the raw data, isn't it?
- Shooting raw, is there a reason to favor one of these styles (Neutral?) over the other? Up to now I have been using Standard.
As a bonus (don't know if it deserves a separate question, in which case I will ask it again), what is the difference between Neutral and Faithful?
Answer
Styles are indeed an information layer on top of the RAW image data. As you wrote, setting a style is a non destructive operation when you shoot RAW, and the RAW processor (DPP, for example) lets you change styles while developing the image.
If there is a reason to select a style, it is to take out yet another step in the development process. If you know beforehand what style you prefer, setting it on shoot-time will save you changing it in post (same logic applies to the other settable presets, like white balance, etc.).
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