Get R now, wait, pass, or switch?

Great Bustard wrote:

sssanti wrote:

Great Bustard wrote:

sssanti wrote:

Great Bustard wrote:

sssanti wrote:

Great Bustard wrote:

Truth be told, what I want *far* more than a sensor with more DR is a camera that takes two or more exposures within user-defined constraints and merges them in RAW.

For example, let's say I took a photo of a scene at 24mm f/8 1/200 ISO 100. I'd like the camera to, say, take a photo at 1/50, 1/100, 1/200, 1/400, and 1/800 and merge them all into a single RAW HDR file. Should be easily doable handheld if the lens has IS or the body has IBIS.

Lightroom can do this. It merges multiple raw files you can take with current Canon cameras into a single HDR dng file. Why do you think it is so important to have this done in camera?

Will LR automatically let me take a burst of photos as described in the paragraph I highlighted in bold above?

LR will always let you, but you have to manually set the camera do it

If a camera could do this automatically, I would want to have the individual raw files for each of the exposures. There are very few photos without something moving. Most landscapes have some wind, moving clouds or water that give you ghosting artifacts. Even with IS, you can get motion blur for the longer exposures. I typically take 5 frames for HDR, but often use only 3 or 4 to get the best balance between ghosting and shadow noise.

OK, sure -- just having the camera automatically take the pre-programmed exposures in burst would be enough.

Ideally, what I would want is to set the relative aperture and exposure time, and the camera automatically work out a spread of exposures that would maximize the DR when merged that fit within those constraints, and then take all the exposures with a single press of the shutter.

Shoot, even that stacks multiple higher ISO settings would be great. For example, I set 1/200 ISO 100 and the camera takes and stacks as many photos at ISO 1600 as it can in the 1/200 time interval. Why? Because the higher ISO setting has way less electronic noise which would extend the low end of the DR considerably.

With high DR sensors, I think that it would be more useful to have a metering mode that would expose to the right preventing highlight clipping in the raw file.

With mirrorless reading the exposure on the sensor before taking the photo, the camera could tell you what proportion of the photo is blown, and you could use a mode where you select the maximum proportion that you'll accept as blown and the camera would maximize the exposure for that.

The point is that there are, and have been, firmware solutions that will *greatly* enhance DR, but no one is implementing them. And Canon, having the lowest DR of the lot, should be leading the way with such firmware, but they don't seem to think DR is important enough even for that.

Phone cameras are leading in software and they are meeting what most people want with few customization options and small sensors.

For a fact.

I think that the new iPhones automatically take multiple exposures to increase dynamic range.

They do.

It is unlikely that any camera company will implement features like that with the level of customization we would like.

Doesn't seem likely, does it?

The best approach would be to allow users and third party software developers adding code to customize camera functions. We could imagine FF cameras running future versions of iOS or Android with different apps available to fit the desires of different users. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to implemented anytime soon.

It's a shame that there is a way to substantially increase DR that is being ignored by the camera manufacturers. In their minds, DR is either unimportant or what they currently offer is good enough as to not be worth the time and money required to implement a software solution.

Even if camera offerings are frustrating, I see the glass more than half full. The 5D4 sensor is not the best, but has DR that coming from a 5D2, I still find amazing. We also enjoy plenty of options for post-processing, some of then for free. It does take time to adjust exposure compensation to expose to the right, to select how many bracketed exposures you want, to take multiple exposures to reduce noise, to set a focus point where you want it, to manually bracket focusing, etc. We know software could make things easier in camera, but we can find workarounds. Compared to using manual focus film cameras and a dark room, we are doing pretty well.