Creative Style

Try out Creative Style to get enjoy your camera even more, finishing up your photograph with the atmosphere you want. Simply learning to use Creative Style will widely enhance your photographic expression.

What is Creative Style?

Creative Style is a function that provides image styles preset in the camera, to help you achieve your photographic and artistic visions. Depending on the model, 6 to 13 styles, such as Landscape and Sunset, are available and can be used in the P/A/S/M-modes.
With digital images, you can create different impressions of the same subject by controlling various parameters of the camera, such as tones and depth of color, brightness, contrast, and sharpness.
Creative Style allows you to easily finish up the image just the way you want, by maintaining the optimal balance among these various parameters.
Just select the style suitable for the theme or scene you want to convey, and the flexibility of your photographic expression will be greatly expanded. Furthermore, this special function even lets you incorporate your own artistic intentions based on the selected style.

[1] Creative Style: Vivid [2] Creative Style: Sunset

Photograph [1], shot with the Vivid style, has a crisp finish with more vivid colors and impact. In photograph [2], shot with the Sunset style, the red tint of the sunset scene is rendered more impressively.
Creative Style is one way that the camera incorporates the photographer's wishes into shots. When you are having difficulty getting the desired atmosphere in your shots, try different styles in Creative Style. If you find a favorite style, using it as the standard style of your camera may be interesting, giving its own characteristic to the camera.

How is it different from Scene Selection?

Creative Style is a function that adjusts the finish of the image according to your preferences. Scene Selection, meanwhile, is the auto shooting mode that automatically determines the optimal parameters, such as the aperture and shutter speed suitable for the selected scene, as well as the way the image is processed. Because Scene Selection is an auto shooting mode, you cannot change the Creative Style settings.

The differences between Creative Style and Scene Selection are as follows.

Scene Selection (shooting mode):

The camera automatically controls the most settings, including the aperture and shutter speed. Because the settings are based on the selected scene, you can easily take beautiful photographs just by leaving everything to the camera.

Creative Style function:

This function allows you to control the finish of the image according to the scene or your intention. It is available in the P/A/S/M-modes, and it is completely independent of the aperture, shutter speed, and white balance control. You can select image styles that suit your artistic intentions and the scenes you are shooting. In addition, you can adjust the parameters for the finish of the image according to your preferences.

Examples and comparison of Creative Style

The following shows the image styles available in Creative Style and their features. Although the styles preset in the camera vary by model, the following 6 styles are the most basic ones.

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  Standard

  This is the standard image style of α. The settings, such as color tones, color depth (saturation), and contrast, are adjusted to suit the wide range of subjects and scenes. It is useful for snapshots, shooting various subjects quickly and casually.

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  Vivid

  With the higher saturation and contrast settings, you can obtain a crisper finish with more impact compared to the Standard style. This style is useful for capturing a stronger impression of colorful subjects and scenes. In addition, it can render colors more vividly even when the image looks too pale in high key photography, or when the subject looks dull in a cloudy situation.

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  Portrait

  This style reproduces the natural skin tones of women and children. Moreover, it reproduces the skin texture more softly and smoothly by using the contrast and sharpness settings suitable for portraits.

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  Landscape

  This style captures a blue sky and green trees with more impressive tones. Also, with the higher sharpness setting, it renders both near and distant scenery clearly. Because the contrast and saturation are also high, it gives a crisp feel to the entire image. It is suitable for nature photographs, such as a blue sky, sea, and mountains, as well as subjects with a blue sky as the background.

• 

  Sunset

  This style reproduces scenes with a red tint, such as sunsets and sunrises, more impressively. Because the red tint is kept with the white balance control, the color tones and atmosphere remain extremely natural. It also uses the higher sharpness setting to render distant scenery clearly. In addition, using this style to shoot people illuminated by the sunset, will create a mood different from the Portrait style.

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  Black & White

  With this style, you can enjoy the appeal of monochrome, making the subject stand out dramatically by eliminating color information. Rich gradation from highlight to shadow is beautifully created with the contrast and other settings suitable for monotone. This style is also recommended when you want to give a documentary feel to certain scenes, such as news photographs.

Fine-Tuning

In Creative Style, you can fine-tune the preset styles. Three parameters, Sharpness, Contrast, and Saturation, can be changed with ± 3 steps. Use this feature to make final adjustments to finish up your photographs.

[1] [2]

Photograph [1] was shot with Creative Style set to Landscape. Based on this, Contrast and Saturation were adjusted to the + side in photograph [2]. This photograph was finished up more vividly with strong impact. Take care not to adjust too much, though, which may result in an unnatural finish.