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

clengman wrote:

This really seems like a dumb argument all the way around. You say that there's no benefit to an increase of 0.5 a stop... maybe, but then you point out that between subsequent m43 generations there has a been a gain of about a full stop. So that's one thing. If I upgrade from my e-pl1 to an e-m5, I will get a significant boost in useable DR.

You say that in very high contrast scenes (like dark church bright windows, or high contrast landscape) you may have 20 stops to account for. Fine. I think it's a fallacy to say that if you can't capture the entire range in one photo, that an extra 2 stops is worthless. If the range in the scene is greater than the DR of the sensor then it's true you either clip some highlights, or you lose some shadow detail, but if you have 2 more stops to work with it makes the compromise less painful. No matter how you look at it, a higher DR sensor gives you more information to work with than a lower DR sensor.