Sony A7R V RAW Files: Picture Profile *does* Change the RAW File — Unprecedented
Related: botched design, imcompetence crisis, please fix this, please fix this camera, please fix this Sony, Sony, Sony A7R, Sony A7R II, Sony A7R III, Sony A7R IV, Sony A7R V, Sony mirrorless, video picture profile
re: botched design
re: Picture Profile
Kudos to Gerald Undone in pointing out that setting your camera for video production can whack your still captures in RAW. Though Gerald doesn’t say it that way, that’s the practical nasty surprise you can get. So if you are shooting video and using a Picture Profile, keep that in mind when shooting stills on the same camera.
Basically, Sony Picture Profile is a feature for video capture that affect still image capture in RAW and presumably JPEG/HEIF also. Seems like a bug more than anything else. So why does Sony allow this? Maybe there is some obscure case for still capture in which you want to modify video-centric things like gamma and knee and much more? Perhaps.
Leave Picture Profile off unless you are fully aware of the implications:
As per the Sony web page:
There is also a function called “Creative Style” or “Creative Look,” which is similar to Picture Profile. Either function can be used for both shooting movies and still images, but Picture Profile is designed to be used for shooting movies and “Creative Style” or ”Creative Look” is mainly for shooting still images. For details on “Creative Style” or ”Creative Look,” refer to the Help Guide for your camera model.
What’s weird here is that Creative Look does NOT apply to still images in RAW. But video-centric features of Picture Profile *do* apply. If there is logic there, I don’t understand it.
In general and forever until now, camera settings for still images have no effect on RAW, but now I have to modify that to:
RAW is not affected by camera settings, unless on Sony cameras you mis-use the settings intended for video production.
(!) Be careful to NOT use Picture Profile unless you really know what you are doing.
Is this a bug, or an obscure feature Sony thinks might be useful? Such as dealing with very high contrast captures?
Adobe Camera RAW surely does not deal with non-standard RAW files using a Picture Profile different than the usual one; Gerald’s video shows that.
