in-camera post-processing

[jli]

The Canon Rebel XS/1000D has "Picture Styles" like Standard, Portrait, Landscape, Neutral, and Faithful. These have adjustable settings for sharpness, contrast, saturation, and color tone. I assume these are just post-processing steps the camera does as it records each photo (essentially equivalent to applying an unsharp mask, an s-curve, etc.)?

I've been using neutral lately because it seems like doing the in-camera post-processing as well as post-processing on a computer would result in lower quality images. Is this true?

I hoped that it might reduce delay, but I guess the on-board processor is optimized or otherwise fast enough that I haven't noticed. I also hope it might increase battery life, though I don't have a good enough way to measure that.

Also, there's an "auto lighting optimizer" option in the custom functions, which automatically adjusts brightness and contrast. I've disabled this as well, for the same reasons.

Do most people also shoot with no in-camera post-processing? I haven't gotten obsessive/good enough to shoot in raw, though hopefully I'll be good enough to care soon .

[OsmosisStudios]

The picture styles are designed to be set before the picture is taken. they dictate how the camera processes the image.

If youre worried about image quality, shoot in RAW and process it on a computer after the fact.

No processing here in-camera.

The camera is not smarter than me.

~Eric

[Doug Pardee]

Originally Posted by jli

The Canon Rebel XS/1000D has "Picture Styles" like Standard, Portrait, Landscape, Neutral, and Faithful. These have adjustable settings for sharpness, contrast, saturation, and color tone. I assume these are just post-processing steps the camera does as it records each photo (essentially equivalent to applying an unsharp mask, an s-curve, etc.)?

Sharpness is. The rest aren't. Which is why the sharpness value means the same thing in all picture styles, but nothing else does.

Except for Sharpness, the Canon picture styles determine the way that the demosaicing process interprets Raw sensor data and generates the pixels of an RGB image. Basically, the picture styles specify the tone curve and the interpretation of color. White Balance, WB Shift, and Color Space are also involved.

I've been using neutral lately because it seems like doing the in-camera post-processing as well as post-processing on a computer would result in lower quality images. Is this true?

Probably, on paper. Whether you could actually see the difference or not is a different question, and one that many people consider to be irrelevant.

I hoped that it might reduce delay

It won't, because the demosaicing process has to occur regardless. Even if you shoot Raw, the camera still produces a JPEG "preview" image that gets embedded into the Raw file.

Most of the delay that you see is mechanical: flipping mirrors, adjusting lens apertures, and operating shutter curtains.

Most of the electronic delay that you see is writing to the memory card. At the very high-end cameras (the ones with just one digit before the D), the number of megapixels and the number of shots per second that they can take when machine-gunning is a big enough issue that Canon fits them with two Digic chips to keep the processing moving along.

I also hope it might increase battery life

Battery life is mainly determined by how much you use the LCD display. If you use the built-in pop-up flash a lot, that'll eat your battery charge pretty quickly. Otherwise, the battery is mainly used for running the motors that flip mirrors and run shutter curtains.

Photo processing is trivial in terms of power.

Also, there's an "auto lighting optimizer" option in the custom functions, which automatically adjusts brightness and contrast. I've disabled this as well, for the same reasons.

Again, that won't make any difference in terms of speed or battery usage.

The one thing that will kill your processing speed on a Canon DSLR is High ISO Noise Reduction, and your XS/1000D doesn't have that.

Do most people also shoot with no in-camera post-processing?

There is no such thing as "no in-camera post-processing" except for Raw. Even then, the post-processing still occurs, to produce that JPEG preview image. It just doesn't affect the Raw sensor data.

[jli]

Originally Posted by Doug Pardee

Thanks, Doug! That was extremely helpful!

Originally Posted by Doug Pardee

The one thing that will kill your processing speed on a Canon DSLR is High ISO Noise Reduction, and your XS/1000D doesn't have that.

It actually does (as well as long exposure noise reduction) in the custom functions, both defaulting to off. I left them off because I assume there's no perceptible difference between the camera's noise reduction algorithm and what I can run on my computer.


Is there any benefit to adjusting contrast, hue, or saturation during demosaicing, other than to potentially save a bit of time in post?

[Algernonep]

I always shoot RAW and then post process after.

[Doug Pardee]

Originally Posted by jli

Is there any benefit to adjusting contrast, hue, or saturation during demosaicing, other than to potentially save a bit of time in post?

The closer you get the camera to producing what you want, the less damage you'll do to the JPEG adjusting it in post-processing. Little tweaks are much better than major adjustments.

But it's kind of like The Price is Right. If you over-do in the camera, you'll lose some data that you can't recover. So you want to get as much contrast as you think you'll want without getting more than you want. The same for saturation.

Really, though, if you're worried about this stuff, you absolutely should be shooting Raw. Then you can put this off until post-processing time, and you can experiment with different settings and change your mind all you want without doing any damage at all to your data.

[spencer28n]

Usually you want to only increase sharpness in camera. Everything else (picture styles, saturation, etc.) effecitvely "bakes" into the image. What I mean by this is, it makes it harder to change the image in post processing. I'd rather increase saturation in Photoshop than in camera. Then again I shoot RAW so it matters nothin.