For me... I tend to use std picture setting or - contrast setting to get more tonal range depending on situation from the camera settings.
If u want the best picture quality then process the ones u like raw to tiff16. Use the Jpg to determine which ones are worth the extra processing. Spp is probably can be where the speed related issue can reside (sigma raw converter), since none of major players supprt the raw files. Most raw files can be sent to spp as a batch job, luckily 🙂.
It is the occasional special care ones that can slow u down..
I like more punchy Kodachrome like colors, so I tend to punch the colors up compared to Keith, Jon, or Bk1970. I have a couple of Aperture presets for this that work well for tiff16 files.
If u can batch process the raw to tiff and u are able to use some default presets (user defined), then it is actually fairly fast..
My work flow
- use Jpg+raw
- import Jpg/raw into aperture
-- the raw part ends up outside normal aperture database since aperture does now recognize it as even a raw file
- rate and decide which are the good ones
- select raw files to convert to tiff16
-- batch processing for me is about 15-30 seconds per raw depending on med or large raw file
--- ref I have iMac i5 3.6ghz w/ 8gb of memory and raw files are coming off of external fw HD.
- import new tiff16s into aperture
- tune new tiff file accordingly
-- if preset ok - 10 to 15 seconds per file
-- otherwise it depends on what type of special treatment including if I need to redo the raw file manually in spp
about 75-90% of my raw files are processed using the batch spp and aperture preset approach would be my guess. So looking it that way the norm is less than a minute of correction work per image for me. If u don't have presets u can use, then editing time is very dependent on what u normally like to do..
If u are happy w/ results from batch raw processing, then min. Could be 30 seconds per raw file.
Always use the raw to tiff16 files for your keepers. They are going to show the best iq from the sigma.
Hope that helps.
Gary
Ps. I forgot to mention, I like te monochrom from this camera soo much that lol, I tend to take somewhere like 50-70 of my pictures in monochrom mode.