That Pen-F look

Olympus has had this special camera, the Pen-F (talking/writing about the digital one here, not the original half frame film version from days long ago). And that digital Pen-F was special because no other camera did black & white as good as that one, in my humble opinion. They really should consider their decision not to continue it, it was simply brilliant, and lots of people loved it (at least those who bought and owned it).

Now a fellow photographer who has both the Pen-F as well as the OM-D E-M10 Mk2 (which I also have) has managed to get pretty close to the look of black and white images from the Pen-F when using his E-M10 Mk2. So here’s Rob explaining how he did that:

How to Get That Olympus PenF Monochrome Look On your OM-D ep.210

Of course I immediately had to try that, and I used the Mono-2 without grain settings to try. I also noticed that indeed applying a -0.3EV compensation helps with keeping a bit more infos in the highlights. Look:

7e4p2172047-zuleikha
Zuleikha, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2020

That’s really very close to Kodak Tri-X if you ask me. And although this was at ISO 1250 it’s still much cleaner than film ever was – if you want to apply grain you can still do so with a few mouse clicks.

Cool. Thanks Rob, your tips help a lot. Really appreciated!