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

Started 4 months ago | Discussion thread
clengman
Senior MemberPosts: 1,198
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Re: Dynamic Range Really isn't as important as you are lead to believe.
In reply to mpgxsvcd, 4 months ago

mpgxsvcd wrote:

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.

I guess the difference is that I consider a clipped image to be bad. It sounds like you consider a clipped image with less of an area clipped to be acceptable. Just a difference in opinion.

Sometimes I don't care if the sky is clipped, I will compose so that there's not a lot of clipped sky in the photo. Sometimes I want no clipping and I'm willing to give up some shadow detail. Sometimes I want something somewhere in between. Sometimes I turn 90 degrees and take a picture that works a little better with the light that I've got to work with. Sometimes (though not often) I think it's worth the time to try multiple exposures to fit everything in.

Regardless of how I approach a particular photograph, I'd be happy to have two more stops of DR two work with. It makes all of the situations above easier to handle.

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