Sony has just released a new App for their cameras (not to be confused with a smartphone app) that’s likely to be getting a lot of attention and deservedly so. The app is called Digital Filter and essentially lets you to divide the screen/sensor into 2 or 3 areas and allow you to optimize exposure and white balance for each section. What that translates to, is being able to capture a scene with a wide variance in dynamic range so the image looks as it does through your eyes – no more struggling with bright backgrounds and dark foregrounds. It accomplishes the affect you would normally have tried to achieve using various ND and color filters, or through various post post-processing methods, but all in-camera. It looks brilliant.
How many time have you looked out at a vista, any scene where one area is much brighter than the other and you just knew you’d not be able to capture how magnificent it really is with a single frame? That was rhetorical because it’s too many to count. It’s the frequency of scenarios like this why we have things like graduated filters in real and in post, and why we develop HDR phone apps, and do image bracketing and stacking and so on, but this just seems better.
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With the new app you are able to angle the filters, set the exposure and white balance for up to 3 filters in one image, adjust the feathering of the filter, and then make your own presets if you like and the ones provided aren’t all you need. Once you’ve done that and you’re all set, you click the shutter, and each section is capture on its own and the camera blends it all together for you.
The Digital Filter app is available for the following cameras:
Sony A7, A7R, A7II, A7RII, A7S, A7SII
Sony RX1R MK II
Sony a6000, a6300, a6500
Sony RX100 M3, RX100 M4, RX100 M5
Sony RX10 M2, RX10 M3
The Digital Filter app is different in use, functionality, and image quality than the Sky HDR app, and it costs $30. Whilst there will be and has been some outcry that price is what it is, it probably warrants considering that a single graduated filter of any value would cost this or more, and you’d need filter threads and so on. This actually appears to be a great deal, and if you already have Sky HDR, you can get this Digital Filter app at a discount price of $19.99.
Check it out in action below, and find it here.
