Kelly,

With all my cameras the first thing I do is turn down the saturation, sharpening and contrast. This results in softer, more washed-out and less saturated pictures, but it makes sure that more data is recorded. If the saturation is turned up too high, color channels start clipping sooner. And if contrast is turned up, shadow and highlight detail is lost sooner. Mind you, this mostly applies to JPG, RAW files don't face these issues. After the shoot I process the JPGs to look the way I want them to look.