Dynamic Range Really isn't as important as you are lead to believe.

Everyone talks about the newer cameras having more dynamic range. While that is true how often do you really use that much dynamic range?

Dynamic range only matters when the dynamic range of your scene exceeds what the camera can store and so it clips either the bright sections or the shadows or both.

If you have a camera with a lowly 8 stops of dynamic but your scene has less than 8 stops it won't matter at all. The camera will not clip any of it.

What most people think of when they refer to dynamic range is simulated dynamic range. Where the camera either artificially boosts the shadow exposure or where the camera combines multiple images of different exposures. Those methods can work well to get the image to look like you want it to but they don't really tell you anything about the sensors dynamic range.

If you really want to see dynamic range then photograph Orion's Nebula through a telescope or even better look at it through an eyepiece in a very large telescope. Your eye can see about 20 stops of DR and it will need a lot of that for the core of Orion's Nebula.

Here are two sample images. The first was made up of 6 stacked RAW images from the GH2 at ISO 1600. The second is a stack of 8 ISO 12,800 JPG images shot with the GH3 in HDR mode with +3 and -3 stops of extra Dynamic Range.

I think it is obvious that shooting HDR jpgs in this situation far outweighs shooting RAW. The few extra stops from shooting RAW is no match for the +6 stop HDR mode.



Here is a single GH3 HDR sub. Notice how the core is not blown out like it is in the GH2 RAW image? This is very difficult to do without an HDR mode.



All of these images are composed of approximately 1 minute subs and they were shot through the same 8 inch 800mm F4.0 telescope.

The GH3 is so much better than the GH2 for Astro Photography it isn't even funny. In fact the GH3 is much better than any Canon Rebel camera which has been the goto camera for AP for a number of years.

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GH3, Hacked GH2, and Full Spectrum GF1 Sample movies
http://www.youtube.com/user/mpgxsvcd#play/uploads
GH3 Tips and Tricks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIMdxoGbNXU
GH2 Setup Walk through
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uROQbbiiO2I
http://vimeo.com/user442745
GH3, GH2, GF1 Pictures
http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/4222674355/albums