[asp1880]

For me, choice of image tone depends on the circumstances I guess. Sometimes I want to enhance the mood and look of the scene, other times I feel like neutralising it. I've been through all the image tones and use them all occasionally.

Dull, foggy days can be emphasized with the Muted setting. Backlit sunlit scenes also work well with muted, esp. with a 10000K white balance setting.

Urban decay and ominous stormy weather work well with bleach bypass.

Lush green summer days work well with the reversal film setting. Happy people, women in white summer dresses, that sort of thing.

Neutral is good for motives where you'd otherwise get oversaturated colours, like vivid parrots in the zoo, maybe even with -2 saturation.

I've been through the bright phase, my neutral period, currently I'm trying out the Vivid setting. That's a fun one esp.
with purple and yellow colours in the scene.

It's all a matter of taste, really. Except perhaps portrait skin tones, where some people seem to have very well formed
opinions of right and wrong.

Regards,
--Anders.

[asp1880]

- AWB with A2 correction for a slightly warmer cast

Me too. Unadjusted AWB is a bit blueish at times.

Regards,
--Anders.

[Crosshair]

@asp1880 thank you for details, I'll take them into consideration.

[stormtech]

I've been shooting raw exclusively for almost a year now. Been experimenting with different raw converters as I go along. I really do like the Pentax Utility as you can easily toggle the various Pentax color profiles, but the GUI has been a little tough for me to work with on a regular basis. I've been using DXO primarily for the one button touch for batch processing my raw files - also use Acdsee Pro 5 on a regular basis. Just now trying out After shot Pro - I'm finding that I really like After shot in that I am easily getting those Pentax colors I want.

With all that, I find I am spending way too much time playing with all the various settings in all this software - to the point of driving myself half nuts. So I've taken to shooting raw+ and getting the camera JPEG settings where I like them. For the past week I've been happy with the jpeg's enough that I've been saving them as is and dumping the raw files after review. I still have the Raw files to work with if I want to, but at this point I am enjoying shooting and trying to get it right in the camera first (remember the film days?).

[JohnBee]

With all that, I find I am spending way too much time playing with all the various settings in all this software - to the point of driving myself half nuts. So I've taken to shooting raw+ and getting the camera JPEG settings where I like them. For the past week I've been happy with the jpeg's enough that I've been saving them as is and dumping the raw files after review. I still have the Raw files to work with if I want to, but at this point I am enjoying shooting and trying to get it right in the camera first (remember the film days?).

What I've done(about a year ago) was recreate the camera profiles in Adobe Camera Raw and Raw Therapee with my own little tweaks in them. This has been working really well for me in terms of time savings, without compromising on the added perks of shooting RAW(detail, color, DR etc.).

[stormtech]

What I've done(about a year ago) was recreate the camera profiles in Adobe Camera Raw and Raw Therapee with my own little tweaks in them. This has been working really well for me in terms of time savings, without compromising on the added perks of shooting RAW(detail, color, DR etc.).

That is exactly what I need to do.

[mirocal]

The interesting thing about picture setting is that it's not easily quantifiable in contrast, brightness, saturation or colour curve adjustments. I spent quite a bit of time trying to replicate the effect of vivid or bright in Capture One and Picture Window Pro, and while I came close I couldn't duplicate it. I suspect this is due to the profile being in fact a colour space remapping, which is a complex transformation hard to decompose in simpler transformations and harder to express in UI, and thus not implemented by any post processing tool (at least to my knowldege).
Coming from K20D I found the out-of-K5-Jpegs remarkably sharp, to the point Capture One rarely extracts more sharpness from the equivalent raw file. Consequently I changed my habits now to shooting raw+, and while I still develop raw in Capture One I keep an eye on the native Jpeg for an alternate look. If it looks better than Capture One's output then I take the raw to Pentax DCU just to get the 16-bit tiff equivalent to jpeg.

[yyyzzz]

I just dial in more contrast and saturation for some of my older Sigma lenses which tend to have duller color and less darkness. I also dial in more contrast for my large aperture lenses. Weather is certainly another factor.

[Crosshair]

well I asked before about High/Low key setting but, is this setting not really important, or does nobody really care about it ? Photographs with -1, -2 low key settings look much better to me. My taste though.

[yyyzzz]

I increase the setting when I shoot human faces in the shade. I rarely decrease the setting. BTW, you can acheive the same in software by "filling light."

[selar]

Surprised no one has mentioned Reversal Film mode yet.

[mirocal]

Reversal Film appears like a steep contrast increase in HSV space, with almost no change in the original colour space. It's very similar to Capture One's "film standard" profile and reminds me of my mainstay in the film heyday - Provia 100F. It is the setting I use most, but occasionally I have to compensate for burnt highlights.

[ndhonghai]

I found that the correct exposure will produce the best photo with any settings :-)

[grahamcoad]

For me it's full size top quality JPG set to Natural, with everything else set on the centre point of the sliders.

Down here in Cornwall UK with sea so close most of the time, in sunny weather everything can be so bright and clear that the "Bright" setting is too over the top and contrasty, so I decided to stick with natural and use my trusty old Photoshop Elements 5 to brighten up images taken in other conditions if needed.

This topic has prodded me though as I find I am regularly giving sharpness a 'little tweak' as the sensor on the K-5 together with my newer lenses seems to be able to resolve so much more than my old K20D. I might set sharpening a pinch higher in the camera...not sure...

[grahamcoad]

I just have to add that the K-5 with Sigma 17-50mm f2.8 and Pentax 50-135mm f2.8 is the best camera and lenses I have ever had.

I think I am getting image quality as good as, or probably better than my best attempts with Pentax film gear and prime lenses in the 1970s.

This does not make me some 'Super Photographer' but it means I can trust my kit and can concentrate on the remaining variable....the dope holding the camera!