I keep finding things I want to understand better so I can use my equipment
more knowledgeably and effectively. So I've heard a bit of discussion on the
list and maybe even the slightest occasional disagreement, about the effective
exposure range of DCs vs film. So I had a good opportunity to try out the range
of a DSLR with my D300. A surprise gladiola came up late in an odd location. In
the afternoon, it was lit from behind by direct sun, while the background was
mostly in fairly deep shade.
I exposed "to the right" to preserve the highlights. I took the shot mostly for
the flowers and wanted to retain tonal detail in the subtle detail of the
petals. In the RAW conversion, I lowered the exposure setting until no
highlights appeared to be lost. Worked very nicely, too, and really threw
everything else in the dark, for a very dramatic image.
Now, a couple of days later, I got curious and I tried to see how much detail
was there in the shadows. I reconverted from RAW, this time increasing the
exposure setting to retain as much of the shadow detail as possible. This time,
the flowers were completely blown to white outlines. I then treated it as I had
done the first one, LCE, curves and sharpening. Although shot at 200 iso, which
has almost no noise at middle and high levels, the low exposure levels have a
fair amount of noise, but it's amazing how much detail and color is there to be
found. The blue is detail of the railing of my front porch.
I then did a very quick and dirty combination of the 2 images into 1 to put the
whole brightness range into one image. It definitely looks a bit fake, as I
took no trouble to merge the edges, but that's not the point, anyway. Nor do I
think it is a particularly attractive image, odd tonal juxtapositions, but it
demonstrates what I want to show.
So I don't know what the whole range is in stops, but it's certainly much
greater than any slide film I've ever used
<http://moosemystic.net/Gallery/CRW_0195x3.jpg>.
Moose
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