ISO 50 - Reduced DR on original DP's

PrebenR wrote:

SRT201 wrote:

Interesting. So there's no gain on the imager and it's all just a matter of underexposure and multiplication during the development stage.

There is gain in terms of better IQ. I'm puzzled why people obsess about DR. For the most pleasing photos, people have reduced the DR in post anyway.

Once the shadows are pushed into the mud or the highlights pushed to saturation - they are gone forever. There are plenty of scenes where shadow detail in an area are important as well as highlight detail in a different area. If the sensor's DR is not sufficient to capture both and bracketing is not feasible ( moving vegetation in a landscape, moving water, etc.) then you have to chose which is the most important and expose correspondingly.

If the sensor's DR is capable of capturing both then expose to capture the shadow detail and process to bring out the highlight detail to minimize noise in the shadow. People are often surprised how much dynamic range exist in a natural scene. A one degree digital spot meter is a nice piece of equipment to have since it will tell you.

This scene had a very high DR. I was able to capture it and then print it nicely.

While the lighting is coming over my left shoulder, the reflectivity difference is quite large over the image, even between the shaded and sun lit part of the building.

Now what about landscapes:

This is a film shot which from my records had a 14 stop difference between the wet rock in the left of the image and the sunlit water.  I had to over expose and do a water bath development (hence expanding the DR of the film) to compress the image to capture detail in both.  Had I not done that - this image would have been what Adams use to proclaim - soot and chalk and certainly not a keeper.