I was experimenting with the 5D Mk2 today to see how it handles picture styles. I was particularly interested in how it handles contrast, so I went out the front door and shot some frames. The top frame is the -4 setting (lowest available) and the bottom frame is the +4 setting (highest available). You can see there is quite a difference. I would say that if I were going to shoot jpegs, I would certainly tone down the contrast and adjust in post processing. For just snapping around, the middle setting ( 0 ) would probably suffice.
I showed these to Ginny. Her initial comment was that she didn't like the composition. Well, no duh! I shot them to look at contrast. Composition in an artistic sense was not on my mind at all; I wanted shadows and direct sunlight, and that was it.
Mary Beth - I don't think I would ever use the +4. You can see that it is quite severe. The bricks on the house are lost in the shadows in the lower one. There are also some blown highlights. The -4 setting would be good if I was planning to do some post processing. Those images have a "washed out" appearance which a little tweak of the tone curve corrects. Ginny liked the bottom one. So do I because of the contrast, but details are sacrificed.
Wingy
13-Apr-2009 02:11
can you please give an example of when the two extremes would be best to use? Thanks
