You would do well to get a grey card and get the white balance and exposure correct first. Most of the pro level cameras I use expect you to edit the image later. They can all use some sharpening in my experience. Most cameras have settings to give a more saturated look(landscape) or a less saturated look(portrait) or various settings in between. I usually set mine to give me a fairly neutral image and then pump up the color, contrast, and sharpness in Aperture.

This reminds me of a great story about how Fujifilm's Velvia came about. Kodak had run a survey to see what kind of color people wanted and they overwhelmingly replied they wanted a neutral, true to life color in their photos. So Kodak made a film as neutral as they could. Fuji also did a survey, but in their survey they showed people a landscape photo. Then they showed them swatches of colors and asked them to pick the ones that matched the blue of the sky, the green of the grass, etc. After they processed the results they determined that people really wanted/remembered more saturated colors than reality, so they came up with Velvia. Probably one of the greatest landscape films ever and it was very saturated compared to other films or even reality.

See these links for setting white balance and exposure. There are many different ways to do it, but I prefer grey cards. Almost all cameras allow you to do it this way. Read your camera manual.

Grey Card Nikon

Canon White Balance

Youtube search results


Ted Wilson
Dum inter homines sumus, colamus humanitatem.
BTW - Winter is Coming.