RAW, AdobeRGB, sRGB

[shinsui]

I take pictures in RAW w/ my Nikon D90 but sometimes I want RAW+jpeg. I have my colorspace set to AdobeRGB. It may be a really *stupid* question but does it matter what I set in the camera (AdobeRGB or sRGB) if I do my shooting in RAW. Guess not. Raw is raw after all. But just to be sure..;-)

[Gavin Seim]

Adobe RGB has more color of course, but in the case of RAW I'm not positive. I've read that while the R file itself is the same, it will mark your color space as part of metadata and that will be interpreted by the RAW reader. If that's the case it seems a negative to set to SRGB.

This info needs verification. But while I lever use RAW + JPEG, if I did I would prob stick with Adobe RGB to be safe. I want all that color.

If someone has researched this further please chime in.

[TSSP]

If you are shooting RAW, no it shouldnt matter, but I would always have it on the larger color space just in case I am wrong. 

Theoretically RAW is EVERYTHING that the sensor can record.  But that information has to be assigned a color space in order for you to see the image.  In the case of the jpg/preview that you get on the back of the camera, that is srgb.  If the RAW color space is assigned in camera, which I dont believe it is, it matters, or if it is assigned in post when you import it into LR, AA, or ACameraRaw it doesnt matter. 

All the best-

[shinsui]

Thanks for the answers. I've been away some time, thus the late response. It seems there is no real answer. Technically it's uncertain what will happen so I'll stick to AdobeRGB like Gavin suggested.

[shinsui]

Some professional photographer on Flickr tells me this:
@shinshui I can speak for LR3 because that is what I use: For raw files, LR3 uses the ProPhoto RGB color space - I don't believe it's even an option you can change. If you provide LR3 an already rendered image file instead of RAW (eg. JPG, TIFF, etc.) it uses whatever color profile is embedded in it.

Since I shoot RAW it makes no difference whether my camera was set to sRGB or aRGB because LR3 will be using ProPhoto RGB. I also have LR3 set to use the ProPhoto RGB space when I use CS5 as an external editor. When I output a JPG with LR3, I render it using sRGB.