A question about Nikon D3400 DSLR camera regarding beamshots (LED and / or laser)

[DrMario]

I am wondering about the Nikon D3400 DSLR camera's white balance settings regarding the beamshot of either nearly monochromatic LED flashlights and / or lasers; is it best to edit the white balance on the computer via RAW (NEF) file (Darktable on Linux computer - similar to Photoshop), or just mess with white balance settings on the camera itself?

Lastly, is it worth it going with Adobe color rendition or stick with sRGB? (Yeah, I know, I am beating a dead horse on that topic, but I just wanted to be sure so I don't waste my time and precious space on the SD card - faster SD cards aren't cheap, and my camera's apparently fussy about SD speed as far as HD camcorder mode and pure RAW capture are concerned.)

* I have been taking astrophotography for a while - here are a few examples below. However, I usually do RAW file editing on astrophotography images - is it safe to assume that the laser beamshots should be treated the same way as far as ISO and color balance on RAW files are concerned?

 

[Blarg King]

I would stick with adjusting the white balance in RAW. I find it yields better results than trying to get it perfect on the camera, although its good practice to get it pretty close on the camera. As for color space, it really depends on your monitor. Most monitors are still designed around the sRGB color space, but if you have a more expensive monitor it might have the option to use the Adobe RGB colorspace. I've tried switching between sRGB and Adobe RGB to try and spot the difference, but the only time I've really noticed is when using the expensive color grading monitors at my school.

 

[DrMario]

Good point on both. I suppose I will stick with sRGB. (Originally I wanted to use Adobe 1998 RGB space just to give me extra color data to work with. Probably it's a placebo. HDMI supports both color space, apparently but not all TVs have Adobe 1998 color space. I am using Samsung 28" TV as a monitor right now, and Adobe 1998 color's kind of okay on this monitor, not 100% perfect.)

 

[Ears and Eggs]

I am wondering about the Nikon D3400 DSLR camera's white balance settings regarding the beamshot of either nearly monochromatic LED flashlights and / or lasers; is it best to edit the white balance on the computer via RAW (NEF) file (Darktable on Linux computer - similar to Photoshop), or just mess with white balance settings on the camera itself?

Lastly, is it worth it going with Adobe color rendition or stick with sRGB? (Yeah, I know, I am beating a dead horse on that topic, but I just wanted to be sure so I don't waste my time and precious space on the SD card - faster SD cards aren't cheap, and my camera's apparently fussy about SD speed as far as HD camcorder mode and pure RAW capture are concerned.)

* I have been taking astrophotography for a while - here are a few examples below. However, I usually do RAW file editing on astrophotography images - is it safe to assume that the laser beamshots should be treated the same way as far as ISO and color balance on RAW files are concerned?

Very cool pictures, I just got the Nikon D3400 camera myself earlier this year.

 

[Benm]

With things like laser beams you probably want to have the RAW files to work with.

One issue is that JPG uses a higher resolution for brightness information than for color information (chroma subsampling). For most content that's not a big problem, but with laser beam shots you may want to have the complete set of information, such that you get along better when processing the images onwards.

Obviously just using raw is not a universal solution, if you want to get nicely saturated colors it may be a good idea to take your photo's a bit underexposed, -2/3 stop or so. This will add some noise in producing the final image, but can help with color reproduction: the idea is not to overexpose any of the R, G or B channels when taking the shot.

If you have things mounted stably (laser on a tripod, camera on another) you can still dial down the ISO to the lowest setting to reduce noise, as motion blur is not a problem then.