Helpful Hints/D.I.Y.: Olympus Art Settings

I’m going to give you an example of why I love the Art presets built into Olympus cameras - - - it has to do with expediency for the most part.

Heading to a party with friends recently, I carried my compact Olympus E-PL5 in my shorts pocket - so that it would be discretely hidden as my wife and I walked through the dark nighttime streets of the city of Leon, Nicaragua. While we don’t consider Nicaragua a particularly dangerous place to live or travel - it is always best to not expose electronics or other valuables to the peering eyes of the community.

So obviously I wanted to travel light, not carry my shoulder bag or force my wife to take her purse so I’d have a place to store my camera when not in use. I wanted to have fun - eat - sit and talk - dance - - - all of the things that work best when not holding a camera or keeping track of where I set my camera bag.

OK - so far nothing to do with Art Settings right? Well kind of, in that the way I wanted to document the evening (a going away party for friends) was to present final images in a square format, using black and white processing - - - and out of necessity as a result of the terrible quality and amount of light, noise or grain would be part of the look I was after.

So my camera would be in my pocket and from time to time I would pull it out to grab some story images during the evening - while I and all of the others were enjoying themselves.

I’m getting there …

This is how I started - with the small flash that comes with the E-PL5 attached and raised so that action would be frozen. Also my initial intentions were to shoot everything in Colour and then convert after in Lightroom.

After a dozen shots or so, I decided that for my purpose of using these images, I might as well switch the camera settings from Colour to Monotone - to save me some processing time after. As well I switched the shooting format from the normal 4:3, to 1:1 Square for two reasons - firstly to save having to crop every final image manually - and as well to force me to frame in camera, exactly how I wanted the final image to be presented.

Much of the night was documented in this manner. However I remembered my shooting a previous event using the Grainy Black and White Art filter setting - and the appealing results. Also, after all the years of being aware of the filter, I had no idea until that night that by pressing the paddle to the right, that a whole new set of options were available to customize the Black and White look.

Most interesting to me was the Frame. I have become accustomed to using Nik SilverEfex and Color Efex plugin (within LIghtroom), to apply interesting post processing and a Frame around this images. This Olympus one looked pretty good.

So late into the evening, I took my flash off of my camera, set the Art setting to Grainy Black and White with the Frame, and set my ISO to 8,000 - - - for some of the most beautiful and interesting images of the night. Blur - movement - action - - - would all be part of the experience as shown in the set of images below, taken at these settings.

So - I have a preset that I have made in Nic Silver Efex Pro that provides a filmic look as well as some contrast and structure adjustment - and a Film Frame to my colour and monotone images from the camera. It works fine and would have been satisfactory …

• Firstly though, it does not look as good (shall we say cool) as the images taken with the Olympus Grainy Black and White Art Filters
• Secondly, these ones took absolutely no extra time on my part to process - whereas even with a fast post-processing editing from Lightroom into Nik and applying the preset and returning to Lightroom - - - took probably 40 to 60 seconds for each image.

NOW - I ended up shooting a total of 685 frames throughout the evening. Of course I didn’t process them all - but could not reduce my selection to nothing under 140 frames to include in the video slideshow.

If I had to process each those 140 frames so that I had the unified Black and White look that I desired - - - at say 60 seconds each, would demand 140 minutes or 2 hours and 20 minutes, just for the post-processing.

Thankfully I included around 50 of those final images from the files processed in-camera, and I probably was a little quicker than 60 seconds per each of the rest of the files. But it took a long time to process the remaining 90 images.

All said and done - how I wished that I had simply shot all of the files for the evening with the processing in camera. I mean…

• where are these images being used?
• who’s seeing them?
• what is the final output?
• is there really a need to reprocess them at a future time?
• am I getting the results I want and am I satisfied with that? YES

If you switch the art mode on and shoot jpeg+raw, you will get all images processed in jpeg format and all images unprocessed in raw format. In this way, you get the benefit of B&W preview, all images processed out of the camera and still have the possibility to try an alternative process on selected raw pictures.
It uses a bit more space on your sd card. As a side note, I noticed last week that reasonably fast SD cards cost 20€ a piece in 64 GB capacity.

Jerome Marot said:

If you switch the art mode on and shoot jpeg+raw, you will get all images processed in jpeg format and all images unprocessed in raw format. In this way, you get the benefit of B&W preview, all images processed out of the camera and still have the possibility to try an alternative process on selected raw pictures.
It uses a bit more space on your sd card. As a side note, I noticed last week that reasonably fast SD cards cost 20€ a piece in 64 GB capacity.

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Jerome,

I wonder whether this is on the Sony A7 series too? such features I generally ignore, but this seems fabulous, especially if, as you suggest on keeps the RAW image too.

Asher

So late into the evening, I took my flash off of my camera, set the Art setting to Grainy Black and White with the Frame, and set my ISO to 8,000 - - - for some of the most beautiful and interesting images of the night. Blur - movement - action - - - would all be part of the experience as shown in the set of images below, taken at these settings.



Rob,

These are simply adorable. The square format is very effective with your framing technique. Now I presume that the viewfinder shows a square box for this?

I judge the earlier evening images to be far too smooth and clinical to be anything beyond casual snaps. Your in camera, grainy, high ISO B&W gives the experience of seeing the folk caught momentarily in light as if to reveal some inner truth. Color is a special luxury in photography. It actually can distract.

But looking at your "film strip" above, I see no bracketing. If one is going to remove extra needs for processing, wouldn't it be best to add the options of +/- 0.3 stops at least?

Asher

Jerome Marot said:

If you switch the art mode on and shoot jpeg+raw, you will get all images processed in jpeg format and all images unprocessed in raw format. In this way, you get the benefit of B&W preview, all images processed out of the camera and still have the possibility to try an alternative process on selected raw pictures.
It uses a bit more space on your sd card. As a side note, I noticed last week that reasonably fast SD cards cost 20€ a piece in 64 GB capacity.

Click to expand...

Yes I am well aware of that ability Jerome - - - the question is WHY. As I mentioned above, I never reprocess my images. Why would I. I have already expressed the creative vision that I want in the photograph. Any time spent processing, will be on new work. But for those who are unsure of their needs or abilities - - - shooting jpeg and raw together may be of value.

All Colour and Black and White images were converted to have a look that somewhat matched the frames from the in-camera ART FILTER GRAINY BLACK AND WHITE processing - - - even with the hour and a half spent converting all that required Lightoom and Nik processing, they did not match the wonderful quality that Olympus has built into their cameras as far as I am concerned. As well, I really like the Film Frame from the Olympus camera.

Here is one of the frames that was shot with my E-PL5 set to Monotone. It was taken in 1:1 square format, without flash at 1000ISO and 1/10'th second wide open. Underneath is my attempt (without spending a lot of time) at providing a close-enough look so that all 140 final images match somewhat:

Robert Watcher said:

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A composite like this, is really designed to be printed for wall viewing. I have sold such prints to my clients in the past.

The nice thing I like about this collection, is the way that each image is framed - - - all straight from the camera. I just selected 25 images, created a large enough canvas, and snapped each one beside the other in Photoshop.

So an advantage is the overall size that can be printed without interpolation. The file dimensions of the grid of 25 smaller images, is 17,280 pixels by 17,280 pixels - - - - - so if choosing to print at 360dpi (which I virtually never do), it would print to a size of 48" x 48". If printing at 250dpi, would result in a 69" x 69" print. If 150 dpi works for the image, the print uninterpolated, would come in at just under 10 feet.

Series of closely related images, are wonderful viewing on a wall. I can image how cool this series would be for the people involved.

Robert Watcher said:

Yes I am well aware of that ability Jerome - - - the question is WHY. As I mentioned above, I never reprocess my images. Why would I. I have already expressed the creative vision that I want in the photograph. Any time spent processing, will be on new work. But for those who are unsure of their needs or abilities - - - shooting jpeg and raw together may be of value.

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Because the effect of grain is dependent on print size. If all I want are small prints or web images, the built-in filter is fine. If I want to print larger, I use the raw data and reprocess in the same style but with a lighter touch to end up to a final image that will give the same impression.

Asher Kelman said:

I wonder whether this is on the Sony A7 series too?

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Presumably yes. But you are the one with an A7 camera so please try it and report!

Jerome Marot said:

Because the effect of grain is dependent on print size. If all I want are small prints or web images, the built-in filter is fine. If I want to print larger, I use the raw data and reprocess in the same style but with a lighter touch to end up to a final image that will give the same impression.

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To each, their own of course. There is nothing wrong with that method if one is unsure of what they want in the end - - - I am simply presenting a different case that is based on image results that are hard to exactly achieve in post-processing and that saves me a lot of time when having to process several images at a time.

As for the effect of grain and print size - - - in my film days, there was only one size and look of the grain on any particular black and white negative. The size of grain obviously wasn't adjusted depending on how small I made the print or how much I enlarged it. The grain will obviously be tighter in a smaller print and clumpier in a large wall size print.

So in a way I am using this mode on my camera as if it were a specific film stock. I won't be second guessing myself and changing the way I want to process the image that I have created. Mind you, this filter does have a low contrast setting, and different colour filter settings to bring out features in the frame like I did in my film days by placing a colour filter over the lens - - - so I came change to those settings before taking the shot, based on my experience using other settings.

I'm not sure if you have ever used this filter from an Olympus camera and if so, if you have printed such a file in larger sizes - I have, and the final print works for me.

Thanks for your thoughts Jerome.

Originally Posted by Asher Kelman View Post
I wonder whether this is on the Sony A7 series too?

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While the Sony a7 does have a Black & White jpeg shooting mode (like Monotone on Olympus) and I suppose that you could set to a high ISO setting to get some noise into the frame - - - I can't see that there is an Art setting feature built into the camera, like the Olympus Grainy Black and White that allows the gritty, grainy, contrasty look at all ISO settings. Perhaps it will end up being a part of the PlayMemories Camera Apps. I don't see anything there now, but maybe that is the way Sony is going with adding with effects - - - there are a couple such apps on their store: http://discover.store.sony.com/playmemoriesapps/#overview

Robert Watcher said:

To each, their own of course. There is nothing wrong with that method if one is unsure of what they want in the end

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In the example above, I was pretty sure of what I wanted in the end: small web images for all prints and larger paper prints with a grain adapted to the larger sized prints. It may happen that one needs two different output sizes for the same picture.

I'm not sure if you have ever used this filter from an Olympus camera

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Yes, an Olympus EP-1 at the time.