Over on the bottom of my Digital Techniques Typelist there’s a link with a geeky-sounding title: "Calibrate Adobe Camera Raw 3.x." It’s an important calibration to make for a RAW workflow, and it will greatly improve the look of your files. It’s a bit of a fussy procedure, but once you have the calibrations made, it's an easy matter to choose the right one in the "Settings" drop-down.
Basically, what the procedure does is make a "profile" (I’m using the term loosely) that loads pre-determined settings for the "Calibrate" tab in the Adobe Raw Converter program. These settings are specific to camera and lighting conditions. I’ve made calibrations for both my 5D bodies, which show a slight variation in the Green Hue correction. I’ve also made separate settings for direct sunlight and overcast, and I intend to make files for flourescent and tungsten light.
The basic requirements are a MacBeth color chart, and careful exposure technique. I had the best results overexposing a third of a stop, using a gray card. I’ll spare you civilians the details of the procedure; you can click on the link for those. Here are some before and after comparison shots which any of you can make sense of.
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