Polar pro camera settings

[pilot ss]

I know that there are already quite a few threads regarding camera settings but I haven't used my P3 in a while and have lost the settings that I was using to shoot with on my advanced. I have the 3 pack polar pro lenses. I am shooting mainly in sunny days, plenty of blue sky, hopefully mostly over water. I am able to post process the photos in Photoshop and play around a bit with them. So my question is what are people using for filters over water eg ND8 and what are their camera settings to get the best results? i hope to possibly tomorrow get some shoots of the ocean and would appreciate settings that are working for people.

Thanks.


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[jephoto]

Stills? Video?
NDs won't help stills at all. And on bright sunny days over water an ND 8 doesn't sound like enough to slow your shutter to 1/60 sec- which ultimately is the purpose of using NDs for video on a fixed aperture lens.
Or as close as possible anyway.
But I'm mainly a stills guy. Interested in what you video people have to say on this.

 

[Flipsonic]

Video - For bright sunny days (no clouds) I always use ND16. Never failed me. Settings are whatever everyone is using in this forum.


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[jephoto]

Are you doing any post processing? Or just using the video as is out of the camera?
If you can and want to do post, then you may want to lower your contrast, saturation & sharpness a bit and set color style to "D-log".
This will give you more info to work with in post and more control. Almost like shooting raw vs. jpgs on stills.
But if you don't intend to do that if leave setting on the defaults.
You can always ADD sharpening , saturation and contrast later, but it's much harder to take away if overdone in camera.

 

[pilot ss]

Will mainly be doing stills. I can and am happy to post process both stills and videos in order to get the best end result. what settings are people running for stills?

Cheers


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[jephoto]

Well then- for stills shoot raw or raw +jpg. I only use the raw myself. And your settings for stills should just be left on defaults. You will do the real settings on the raw files yourself in Photoshop , lightroom whatever you use.
I did find that if I set up the color style settings for best video- reduced contrast, sat & sharpness, the jpgs from camera looked like crap. Freaked me out first time it happened since I often download a jpg or two between batteries to check my images and thought my camera was totally screwed. Until I remembered the changed settings. Once back to defaults they looked fine.

 

[jephoto]

This is what's possible from a raw file...

With some love in Photoshop...
No filters...

 

[jephoto]

One more thing to add to still shooting- don't do Auto anything. Pull up the Histogram to keep in view while shooting. Base your exposure on getting a good range in the histogram- be sure not to blow out highlights.

Set iso at 100 and keep it there- this camera sensor just isn't that great so there's noise even at 100. Or lest say it's amazing for what it is- but it's really tiny...

Set your white balance manually rather than auto or you'll get changing WB every time you point in a different direction. Also (for me) auto offer goes too warm. But mainly for consistent WB in a given set of files. Makes your workflow easier to deal with. I like around 5700~ for sunny. But that's very subjective.