11/06 Canon Picture Styles
One benefit of shooting film was the palette of color you got with film choice. For many of us that was Fuji Velvia — a high resolution, vivid color, contrasty film that became the standard for color landscape photography in the '90's. One psychiatrist film shooter called it the "Prozac" of film. Or, as Galen Rowell put it, loading Velvia into the camera was "like getting behind the wheel of a new sports car". It was also, I thought, a reason to stick with film.
Picture Style: Standard
Dog Beach, Lee County, FL.
Enter Picture Styles, introduced when Canon introduced the Canon 5D dSLR (9/05). You use the Styles like you would in selecting film: each Style a different palette, for differing applications. The Style types are Standard, Portrait, Neutral, Landscape, Faithful and Monochrome; a little more descriptive then film names like Astia, Velvia, Provia, Scala. When I first applied the Landscape Style in Canon's Digital Photo Professional (DPP) software, I had a Galen Rowell moment, a "Wow, that's Velvia!" — mesmerizing blues and greens and reds so saturated they often need to be muted. Like Velvia, Landscape Picture Style pretty much ruins flesh-tones.
Picture Style: Landscape
Dog Beach, Lee County, FL
Canon Picture Styles can be chosen in camera with newer model dSLR's — the 5D, 1D MarkIIN, 30D or Rebel xTi/400D. If you don't have one of these cameras, you can apply the Styles after the fact to RAW files in DPP, which is generally my approach anyway. You can apply Styles in-camera to JPG or RAW files, or to RAW files later on in processing. Shoot RAW for flexibility in case you want to make a change later. Canon also allows User-defined Styles. I use one where I take the Landscape Style and remove the sharpening, preferring to sharpen in Photoshop after sizing the image for the purpose needed.
The images here were shot at Dog Beach (Lover's Key State Park), on a photo shoot for Lee County, FL. The client wanted blue skies, and we had a series of days of flatish light, and strong winds churned the water to a pale brown. Landscape Picture Styles produced a look they wanted. I’m now using this Style, with little modification, for bird photography, landscapes and kayaking shots as long as the people's faces are small in the frame. Try it out, you may find yourself driving that Ferrari.
Gary
Also see FAQ for on-the-water advice.