Testing the “Instant Film” Art Filters on My OM-3
OM System didn’t have recipes the way Panasonics have their LUTS, Fujifilm have their Film Simulations or Nikon has with their Imaging Cloud, but they have recently come up with this new thing – Creative Profiles to give OM shooters like me (only on OM-3 and OM Pen though at the time of writing) ready profiles to load up and shoot, much like recipes do. OM system has come up with a how-to for that on their page so do check them out!
From what I’ve seen it looks easy enough – Connect to the camera via the app OI.Share and load/save your profiles to your camera using your phone. The problem is, I think it saves to the camera’s custom profiles bank, and the ease to which you switch between profiles depend on the how many slots you have in the camera’s bank.
ART FILTERS
Whatever the case is, the popularity of recipes is a reflection of how photographers have slowly evolved in their image-making process. Less common are the shooters of yore, who are content with having to load up their cameras with their favourite film to shoot, skip the chimping and then wait for your film roll to process in the darkroom. And Digital shooters? Less of us are becoming patient enough for careful edits back home through our computer screens or even to take our memory cards out from the camera! For myself, I like as little post-process as possible, and if I do have to edit them (I’m starting to lack the patience to tolerate the hassle of having to open up my laptop) I just do them through my phone especially if batch processing and more precise outputs are not critical, because…. errr…… of soc-med emergencies like when INSTA NEEDS DA PICTURES NOW!!!!!
Now that’s where Art Filters come into play. OM System cameras already have a good reputation for great Jpeg outputs that are already worthy for publishing straight out of the camera, but the benefit of Art filters (at least the idea behind it) is that it gives the shooter/artist the ability and the option to put the post-process to precede taking the image itself, that is if you can pardon the irony of calling what is now a pre-process as ‘post-processing’ in the first place, lol. Haha get it? No? Never mind…
Are the filters good enough though? Well, Yes and No. I find most filters are a wee bit tacky, but there are a few of those that come up with good potential. The OM-3 gives me 16 Art filters, and one that instantly caught my eye, is none other than filter no.16 – Instant Film. It’s supposed to mimic the effect of instant film like Polaroids and it really does so in a way, sneaking in those weird greenish magenta hues reminiscent of those in instant films of yesteryears for whatever the reason was. The good thing with modern cameras is that we have a preview of the shot before we even take them, so if you think the colour is getting a little too funky for your liking, then just give the white balance settings a tweak in-camera to otherwise settle for colours that may suit your taste.
I like this Instant Film filter, but having said that, if you give it a go do exercise a bit of care on choosing how/when to use it and I trust that you’ll find it to indeed be charming as filters come!
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