
Originally Posted by
Dave Taylor
I'm not sure how experienced you are, so let me know if this is info you are already familiar with. There is a good chance that I'm being too basic here. It really depends on your workflow & priorities. Canon cameras can shoot in either sRGB or Adobe RGB - these "color spaces" are like boxes of crayons. sRGB is a smaller box of crayons, and Adobe RGB is a much larger box of crayons with the same colors that sRGB has, but with a whole bunch of shades in between. I always choose to shoot in Adobe RGB (in camera) because I'm guaranteeing that I'm capturing the most data with the current technology. But it's important to know that the color space is NOT assigned until imported into a processing program - Like ACR or Lightroom. A RAW file is just that, no adjustments or assignments have been made - other than ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed.
I also only shoot in RAW only and never shoot RAW+jpeg. It's a personal choice, I choose to make my jpegs from within LR2.
Once I import the RAW files into LR2, I assign the ProPhoto RGB color space because it holds even more crayons than Adobe RGB. I don't want the chance to clip anything, unless I have to. Everytime an image goes to Photoshop CS3/4 I keep it in ProPhoto RGB, until I export it for a purpose - CMYK printing, web use, etc.
So, I'd recommend shooting RAW, if you aren't already. Don't worry about the color space or "faithful, camera neutral, saturation, sharpness" settings in your camera - because in RAW, none of those matter anyways. Why leave it up to the camera, when you can do a much better job yourself.
Hope this helps.