There’s a new trend going around: the retro digital trend! That’s where folks are buying up all the older compact cameras and embracing the look they deliver. But why? It’s because newer cameras deliver a look that’s way too clean and manicured. Folks are searching for something that looks and feels a lot more real. And thankfully, if you’ve got a newer camera, there’s a way to embrace that look. By far though, the best camera options to do this with are those offered by LUMIX. Why? Because they offer the most versatile looks in-camera of anything else. Here’s how to turn your camera into a chameleon and embrace the retro digital look.
This article is presented in partnership with LUMIX. Check out the LUMIX S5II and S9 if you’re into photography.
Why LUMIX is the Best Camera System For This
There are a few reasons why LUMIX is the best camera system to do this. First off, it has to do with keeping it simple. You don’t need to spend a ton on higher end lenses the way we did back in the early digital days. Instead, you can embrace their f1.8 lineup of lenses or their variable aperture lenses. Specifically, we’ll tell you not to reach for the LUMIX S Pro lenses because they’ll have too modern of a look.
After you’ve turned off noise reduction, any HDR modes, and embrace using the AF-S mode to shoot images, you then need to check out one of the single best things that makes LUMIX so unique. Of course, we’re talking about Real Time LUT.
LUTs are essentially what the video works calls presets. Over time, LUMIX has made their cameras more adaptable to handle different kinds of LUT files and embrace them with looks built into the camera. Plus, you can always combine LUTS to get the looks that you want.
Choosing the Right LUT for the Retro Digital Look
When you load up the LUMIX lab app, you’ll see that there are LUTs you can download to your camera. Each LUT also comes with example images to show you what’s possible. Our favorite options are the Himalyas-N Lut and the Luminous City LUT. Specifically, these LUTS embrace the looks that photographers went for back then.
Grain/Saturation/Clarity
In the early digital days, post-production was pretty simple. All we tended to do was the basic adjustments that you’d find in nearly any post-production software. It was only later on that we all started to mess around with color channels and see what we’d get if we weren’t working in Photoshop. Most of the time, we’d work with saturation, clarity, contrast, and noise.
Lots of folks tended to almost max out these editing sliders — that was especially the case for the older LUMIX cameras from the Four Thirds era. If you’re using the Himalayas-N or Luminous City LUTs, we recommend that you do the following:
- Set the white balance to auto and warm
- Set the ISO to 400; we typically never went above that back in the day.
- Set the saturation to between halfway and max
- Crank the clarity to halfway
- Adjust any sharpness settings offered to halfway
- Ensure that the camera you’re using has Noise reduction turned off
- Add around half to 75% of the grain options to the image
Even looking back at some of our older photographs, we still see that in our images to this day.