how do you handle the limited latitude of digital?

[andy_piper2]

The irony of this post, and many others like it, is that I find "latitude" or "dynamic range"

to often be significantly BETTER with a good digital camera than with film scans -

especially those from the fine-grain films that can compete with digital for resolution and

edge sharpness.

 

Here are a couple of shots, coincidentally with a Sony R1, processed from RAW. Feel free to

point out any areas where your feel the latitude is lacking. Neither are processed for

"artistic" qualities, just for the maximum amount of tonal range.

 

The color shot has little red labels for the Photoshop levels of certain areas. If anything, to

me, it has an almost artificial look because the shadows are so "open" compared to the

highlights. The only areas hitting pure white are the direct centers of the sunburst

reflections (even digital has trouble capturing unfiltered thermonuclear reactions).

 

The B&W image has the histogram included in the corner - the tones do not hit pure white

or pure black (i.e. there is detail everywhere), even though the illumination range is from

white walls directly under a skylight to a windowless museum gallery in the background.

 

These are single exposures, not HDR fake jobs, and no fill flash was used. Although, like

Jean, I set the exposure compensation to -0.3 or -0.7 stops unless there is a lot of white

being metered.<div></div>

[andy_piper2]

Now the B&W:<div></div>

[nzdavid]

I still use film mainly, apart from a compact digital with no RAW setting. Other low-tech

ways of evening up the light imbalance would be reflectors, ND filters or just waiting for

more subdued lighting. If possible. Fill-in flash, maybe. But I think there are some scenes

you can't capture well no matter what you use -- digital or film, they're just too damn

contrasty.

 

I agree RAW does seem to result in better capture of highight and shadow detail with

digital, judging from published pictures I have seen. I would love for someone with more

technical knowledge to explain the reason in detail, but it seems the difference is that RAW

employs 12 bit colour. JPEG uses 8 bit -- so some scene information is lost. But does this

mean RAW is always better, as there are very good JPEGs around? And how about slides

that are scanned to JPEGs?

 

It's all part of complexity of the digital world!

[roger_smith4]

Oh dear, you all have given away the secrets of exposure.

[don_e]

"Subject: how do you handle the limited latitude of digital?"

 

High-resolution TTL electronic viewfinder (EVF)

 

 

--

 

Don E

[Allen Herbert]

Apparently digital camera makers are afraid of the dark.

 

Me, too. I always rush home when it's dark. When it is really dark i sometimes hide under my bed.

 

blown-out highlights.

 

Of course with film you never get blown out highlights,do you. How about metering your cam correctly.

[jean_.]

Thanks to all for your responses, and my apology for coming back so late, but I've been

travelling and had no access to the web..

 

OK, what I get from it is that sooting RAW will certainly help. I admit that I shot jpeg until

now, and have only fiddled with the jpeg settings the camera offers, like that auto-

contrast-thingy that actually is very useful to gain a bit of tonality.

 

Fill flash: Has occured to me of course, but is not helpful for landscapes, and for people -

let me put it that way: the silence of the R1 is one of the main reasons I bought the

camera. Not because I take pics sneaky and secretly, but because the noise of a DSLR (and

certainly a flash going off) is killing any nice mood that people are having. I do not want to

become the center of interest when taking a pic, and I don't want the people starting to

"act" and become camera conscious. The leica, or the R1, just take pics, and everybody

forgets about it fast and igbnore me handling the camera. BTW, flash also kills any nice

lighting..

 

Metering certainly helps, I'm aware of that, thanks for reminding me.

 

Correcting exposure until the zebra pattern goes away certainly rescues the highlights, but

I often end up with the shadows being really noisy when I lighten them up. I'll try RAW and

the expose to the right method.

 

@ Andy: thanks for posting the pictures, I was actually hoping for something like that. I

will try RAW.

 

After all, it may be in part my expectation, after using mostly b/w film and using mainly an

incident light meter, I almost never encountered any blown out highlights or other

exposure problem, save for the frames lost because of me forgetting to set the shutter

speed back from 1sec ack to something more useful in bright sunlight ;-) I see that those

using slides are used to deal with it.

[pavel_olavich]

Allen, with film, one can in fact blow highlights. Of course!

 

As for someone mentioning the use of a light meter when shooting digital...this is a big fat waste of time, and money. Why do that when in the time it takes to use one of those film era thingies, one can just shot off a test shot and view the histogram....the histogram is the last word on exposure, so to use a light meter is in digital captue is most peculiar, to be sure.

[mike dixon]

With an incident meter, you can measure the light falling on your subject and quickly know how to optimize the exposure for that subject (letting the highlights and shadows for the (less important) rest of the scene fall where they may. Histograms are very useful, but there are some situations (for example, a strongly-backlit subject; or the usual suspects that throw off reflective meter, subjects significantly lighter or darker than middle grey, subjects that include specular reflections, etc.), where an incident reading will give you what you need much more quickly.