There are 13 creative styles:
- Standard – the ‘standard’ and my favorite
- Vivid
- Neutral – desaturated slightly, but pleasant
- Clear
- Deep
- Light
- Portrait
- Landscape
- Sunset
- Night
- Autumn
- B&W
- Sepia
The tests
I did two tests. First of the standard test scene, and second of skin tones.
Test Scene
Here’s a quick comparison of each creative style, including my personal settings for Standard (shot on the a7S II):
Standard – my settings (-3, 0, +3):
The objective was to raise the blacks and add more sharpness.
Standard:
Vivid:
Neutral:
Clear:
Deep:
Light:
Raised mid tones.
Portrait:
Landscape:
Saturated colors and crushed blacks.
Sunset:
Blows out highlights.
Night:
Autumn:
B&W:
Sepia:
Skin tones
Standard:
Vivid:
Notice how Vivid also blows out the highlights a bit, and has less shadow information.
Neutral:
Clear:
Notice how Clear also blows out the highlights a bit, and has less shadow information.
Deep:
Light:
Light boosts up the mid tones while blowing highlights.
Portrait:
Notice the raised shadows, but highlights are preserved.
Landscape:
Crushed black and more saturation.
Sunset:
Useful for weddings?
Night:
Actually not a bad look!
Autumn:
Black and White:
Looks good!
Sepia:
Sepia, no thank you.
When to use which?
It doesn’t work like that. The sane way to do this is find one or three creative styles closest to what you want, tweak it, and then be set. Most people end up with something like this:
- One for portraits – skin tones
- One for general use – overall pleasing colors
- One for landscape – greens and blues pop more
I wouldn’t advise you start with any of these: Sepia, B&W and Sunset. Forget them.
Start with Standard, Sony’s engineers have spent countless hours trying to figure out what pleases the most people. Chances are you’ll find it acceptable, even with a few tweaks as I’ve shown you how in the next lesson.
If Standard doesn’t work for you, ask yourself:
- Do you want more saturated colors, more pop? Try Vivid and Landscape. Vivid blows out the highlights, while landscape crushes the blacks.
- Do you want different skin tones? Try Neutral, Light or Portrait.
- Do you want to manipulate your images later in post? Shoot Neutral (This is also advised by Sony officially).
- If none of this works try Night, Deep (preserves dynamic range), Autumn and Clear (blows highlights) – in that order.
- After that point shoot RAW, or get a different camera.
Whatever you choose, don’t forget, you can slightly tweak the contrast, saturation and sharpness just the way you prefer it. You get six additional slots in the Creative Style menu to save your settings. Commit them to one of the custom or Function menus and you’re good to go.