I shoot a lot of Performing Arts. That often involves “difficult” lighting: Different light sources, with different color temperatures. And to make matters worse, they are fitted with colored gels most of the time.
While I mostly try to go for “pleasing color”, rather then “neutral skintone” (the lighting was done a specific color for a reason I think), this still poses some challenges every now and then.

Simply setting ‘tungsten’ white balance is an okay starting point, but with certain types or colors of lighting, I need to do quite a bit of tweaking to get the image where I want it.

For that reason, I choose to shoot Raw: Gives me the most flexibility, and allows me to change whitebalance without causing too much harm.

Raw converters

Most of the time, I use Lightroom 2 for editing these images: I prefer the workflow over using the combination of DPP and Photoshop: I can do local edits on the Raw file in LR, and I can save the DNG with all edits included. With DPP/PS, I have to save a layered psd file of each image (which might be about 100Mb or so. With hundreds of images, that eats up HDD space rather fast).
This might not make sense to everybody, but makes sense to me.

DPP offers better noise reduction and sharpening in my opinion, but most of the time LightRoom is good enough for the intended purpose (images for the web).

Sometimes not

Occasionally however, I come across an image that simply will not give decent results in LightRoom. Blue gelled lights often give problems: For one: No way to reduce noise without obliterating all detail on the process. A while back I processed one of those images.

Here’s what it looked like in LightRoom at my default settings (Camera Neutral):
Not the best rendering. Obviously, the purple causes some problems by “blocking up”, and the blue does horrid things as well: Details and sharpness are gone. (notice the faces? A bit further down are the images up close.)

One thing that might help some colors (but not blues in my experience) is switching the camera profile. In this case, “Adobe Standard” didn’t exactly help, and the ACR4.4 profile was so bad I won’t even bother posting the screenshot…

Adjusting white balance and using specific HSL adjustments helped the image quite a bit, but still, the details in the shadow stayed absent.

Time to try a different Raw converter…

DPP

Canon’s own DPP is a very different piece of software then LightRoom: It has no DAM capabilities, and only offers global adjustments. So any local editing must be done in Photoshop. For instance by doing multiple conversions and use masks in PS.
Also, the user interface is very different and seems to be a case of “you love it or you hate it”.
Most importantly however, it rendered this image quite different from LightRoom

DPP “As shot” looks quite “neon”, but it clearly contains more detail:

The lack of detail in LR is not caused by noise reduction: If NR in LR is set to 0, the difference is still apparent. Setting Color NR higher then about 7 does obliterate any detail that was left however. Clearly, LR Color NR is not just targeting color noise… Luminance NR doesn’t help the image, but doesn’t destroy it either.

In comparison, DPP does much different: you can set a fairly high amount of Chroma NR before you start losing detail, and it actually removes color noise. However, setting a Luminance NR of something as low as 2 visibly removes detail: Avoid this like the plague.

Finishing up

Setting a higher color temperature, different color tone, and using “tune” to shift the image toward green/yellowish helps colors in DPP, although some transitions in the beams of light still look quite harsh. LightRoom does better in that respect.

The most striking difference (apart from the loss of detail in LR) is that the smoke appears to be almost gone in DPP!

Sometimes neither works alone

So, this appears to be a case were neither Raw converter gives satisfactory results… DPP gives detail, but no smoke. LightRoom gives smoke, better transitions, yet no detail. RIT handles the image like DPP does, apart from the fact that is seems to do some noise reduction by default, with no (working) option to turn it off. So no sense in going that route: RIT is a bit more constricting then DPP (you can only adjust what you could adjust on the camera) and the user interface is horrid.

I finally decided to open both the LR and DPP conversion in Photoshop, and blend them together, thus getting an image that contained both detail and smoke:

If anyone wants to give this image a try, the Raw file can be downloaded from here.

Please respect my copyright, and only use the image for evaluation purposes.

If you are shooting portraits or architecture, it can be very useful to be able to view the images on a larger screen then that on the back of your camera: You can better judge focus, expression, exposure and composition for instance. Not only because the screen is bigger and of better quality (not to mention calibrated!), but also because the software you use might have some visual aids (clipping warning, grid, 100% view, stuff like that)

What do you need

Obviously a camera and the proper cable: USB for most consumer models and the Eos 1D(s)3, Firewire for the Canon 1D(2) and 1D(s)Mk2(n).
Apart from that, you’ll need some software to connect the camera to the computer and some kind of viewer or raw converter.

The software

There are a few options: Capture One Pro is highly regarded, and does all in one package, but the price is fairly steep.
Then there’s Bibble Pro. Quite a bit cheaper and supports more (older) cameras then C1Pro. Both of these support Nikon and Canon. Bibble also supports other brands. Both are available for Windows and OSX, Bibble also for Linux. Neither allow remote control of the camera, but Capture one allows you to fire the shutter remotely.

Free

Lucky for us that Canon also offers a free solution: Eos Utility. It came on the disk with your camera. If it didn’t, or you lost the disk, you can download it, following the instructions here.
Once installed, you’ll also need a viewer. I prefer to use DPP on my laptop, since that’s a dinosaur an old Powerbook G4 with a 12″ screen. Others prefer to use Lightroom. I’ll explain how to use both:

Step by step

First, start Eos Utility and go to the preferences: (Do this before connecting the camera. On my Mac (OSX 10.4.11) at least, it won’t complete start up, and needs to be force-quit otherwise)
Since I use DPP mostly for tethered shooting, I set up my Folder and filenames to be meaningful here. If you use Lightroom, you can skip this name customization.

The name is pretty self-explanatory I think. I use 3 lines for Year/Month/Date, since the preset “Shooting day” will add a few underscores I don’t want.

Again, pretty obvious naming scheme: My initials, the date and a short description.

Then set DPP as Linked Software.

Now for the shooting

Exit the prefs. That get’s you back to the main window. Choose “Camera Settings / Remote Shooting”

You get this: Note that, unlike other tethering software, Eos Utility gives you complete control over the camera. Very, very nice if the camera is at a position where you can hardly reach it (high on a tripod for instance).

Take a shot. If the “quick preview” window opens, click it away, since you won’t be needing that. It will stay gone as long as you don’t restart Eos Utility.
The image will now automatically open in DPP, in thumbnail view.

That’s not my preferred way of working. So I hit Cmd+A (select all) and Cmd+right arrow (open in edit image window; no shortcut for it on PC). That gives me this:

Cmd+T gets rid of the tools. All consecutive images will open in the edit image window now. At whatever zoom factor you choose.
You’re all set. So shoot away.

Lightroom

In Lightroom it’s a bit more complicated different.
Set everything the same in Eos Utility, except of course the linked software. As said, you also don’t need to worry about folder naming, because that is taken care of in Lightroom:

Then open Lightroom. It will open with the images you last edited / imported. Enable Auto Import, and set up a watched folder like this, in the very logically named “Auto Import Settings”:

Note that your images will get moved (not copied) by LightRoom into the folder you specify here. No way around it, so the whole naming scheme for folders in Eos Utility is kinda redundant in this case. I’d strongly recommend using a meaningful foldername. You can use either LR or Eos Utility to manage the filenames, depending on what you prefer.

Take a shot:

Note the image in the background is still the old image. If after the shot you get “No Photo Selected”, click a thumbnail in LR.
That’s it. Lightroom will now keep an eye on that folder, and import every image that lands in there. A bit slower on my laptop then DPP, but it works okay.

The drawbacks

Tethered shooting causes the battery of your camera to drain faster. With some cameras (the 1D comes to mind) that’s not something you desire…
Obviously, you also need to lug a laptop with you, but IMO that’s well worth it.
Lastly: Eos Utility does not like it when the camera goes to sleep, or is disconnected: It’ll crash. No idea why it’s buggy that way, probably because it’s free.