Creative JPG Shooting Modes

I’m a longtime raw shooter. Perfect WB. Perfect Exposure. Perfect tonal range. Perfect everything. Perfect for corporate photography. But perfect can sometimes be boring.

Then I got my Lumix GH3 camera, and soon discovered the Creative Control mode.

I started playing (did you notice I said playing) with the built in creative presets. Things like:

Expressive
Retro
High key
Low key
Sepia – most cameras have this
Dynamic monochrome
Impressive art – my current fave
High dynamic
Cross process
Toy effect
Miniature effect
Soft focus
Star filter
One point color

Set things up right

In this creative mode, you need to set up file size and quality, ISO, and white balance just like you usually do. But ….. you also need to shoot jpgs (or jpg + raw together).

This part is important!

If you have your camera set up to capture raw files only, you’ll see the preview and then when you open that raw file, the effects disappear into thin air, and you’ll be left with your perfectly boring raw file. You can’t easily recreate these effects from your raw file unless you like to spend an awful lot of time in Photoshop or Snapseed. And really who wants to do that!

And here’s another cool thing I discovered

You can use those same creative presets for video!!

Wow, my Canon 5D Mark 2 can’t do that. There are no creative controls on that camera, even in jpg mode.

What about other dSLRs? Some dSLRs have scene modes, sepia and black and white, but I’m not sure I’ve seen any with these highly stylized artistic settings. (If you know of any, let me know in the comments.)

Get the same look for stills and video

So now when I create my hybrid eProducts I can shoot stills and video using those same funky artistic settings, and that means that I don’t have to do anything to match the files when I’m building my eProduct. They easily blend together with the same artistic look.

In the video I show a hybrid example where I used the Impressive Art preset on a recent shoot. I think it fits the subject as it’s kind of got that grungy style. This kind of look probably won’t appeal to the purists out there, but I kind of wanted to have fun pushing boundaries.

Conclusion

So that’s how my Lumix GH3 turned me into a jpg shooter.

If you have a mirrorless camera, or even a point and shoot camera, have a look inside your menus and see if you have any of these creative controls.