Filters, Anyone?

Who likes using filters in their photos? Digital filters are basically just effects applied to a photo, with the intention either to emulate the colors, contrast and tones of certain film formats or to add some new artsy effect.


It was one not so busy afternoon in my workplace and I happened to have my camera in hand. It's not often that I use the other modes in the camera dial so I thought I'd try it out.

The original shot. Dull, depressing and boring. At least for me.

Adding some Pop Art effect makes it more colorful than it really is.

I can't really put my finger on it, but there's something about the
Grainy Film effect that I find appealing. Maybe it's the simplicity and contrast.
Or maybe that's just me.

Pinhole Effect. This adds some vignetting and makes the picture resemble something that comes out from Holga or Lomo or other toy cameras. This is actually among my favorite effects.

Miniature Effect adds additional blurs to the parts you're not focused on. This effectively makes it look and feel like (you guessed it) an image of a miniature model.

Cross Process effect actually makes the colors look all weird. But it still has a toy camera appeal to it. Cross processing came to be when folks started processing films using chemicals intended to a different type of film. A better explanation can be found here.

Sepia effect isn't entirely that impressive, but its appeal is timeless.

This effect is something that I found common among Olympus mirrorless cameras. It's called Dramatic Effect. It does look fairly dramatic with added blacks on the outlines. But sometimes, it just doesn't look appropriate the shot. Like this one for example.

I'm rather thankful that my camera has Filter Bracketing. it allows me to make multiple filtered outputs from just one shot... Because half the time I can't make up my mind which filter to use. (And I don't like spending to much time post-processing my images. That's just me.)