The new Creative Dial on the front of the Olympus Pen F has certainly generated some controversy. For those who haven’t read about the camera, it is designed to select different creative modes including Art filters and the new Creative profiles. However some users feel the dial could have been used for other settings like ISO sensitivity for example.
The new Creative profiles allow you to customize the colors or the monochrome look of your images. In the case of colours, you change the saturation level (+-5 steps) with 12 different colours. For Monochrome, you can choose between 8 filters (Red, Orange, Yellow, Yellow-green, Green, Cyan, Blue, Magenta) with 3 levels of intensity. You can also add grain and vignetting.
In his most recent article, Robin Wong goes in-depth about the different possibilities the monochrome profile offers by showing lots of example and side-by-side images. He doesn’t go in-depth about the colour profile control because he simply doesn’t like to alter the original colour balance of his images.
Interestingly, Robin doesn’t see these new colour and monochrome profiles as art filters. To quote the article:
I see them as an EXTENSION of in-camera customization of how you want your images to look and feel.
Robin explains all the settings you can customise including highlights, shadows and vignetting. He shares his own personal settings and as usual, some excellent images that serve as examples. You can find the full article here.
Remember that these creative profiles will only work in JPG mode!
