The truth about dynamic range

[jpm]

Hi,

This is my first post on this forum, and I am only a casual photographer. I mainly shoot outdoors, usually in the mountains.
I have owned a 10D for many years, and was never fully satisfied by IQ. Mainly because of poor dynamic range. I think I did better images with my non-digital eos.

I went to several shops, and they all told me that the 10D was an old gear, that I should spend again 700 et 1000 euros to buy a 40D.
I am a bit upset because I don't want to spend 1000 euros on a body every 5 years or so...

Then I went to DXO mark and did some comparison. I realised there have been simply no progress at all on dynamic range at 100 iso betweeen the 10D and 40D for example. Of course, at highier iso there is a huge gap, but it does not really matter for me because I usually shoot with enough light.

So I am wondering: who is correct here? Shop dealers or DXO mark?
Should I buy another body or a fast prime lens to shoot at 100 iso with my 10D?

JPM

[NikoJorj]

I mainly shoot outdoors, usually in the mountains.
I have owned a 10D for many years, and was never fully satisfied by IQ. Mainly because of poor dynamic range. I think I did better images with my non-digital eos.

I also shoot in the mountains, and I got the same sensor in my good'ol 300d - which I'm also very reluctant to change for marketing reasons.
However, my experience is different : in the past millenia, I shot mainly slides (a bit of negative B&W too though) and digital is a huge improvement in DR for me (and still improvement over negative, at least because I got more control - and more colors too  ).

When you refer to film, you may talk about negative film? If not, I'd say it's clearly a post-processing (treatment) problem.
One should fulfill all these three conditions to exploit the full DR of a DSLR :
- you shoot raw, preferably at base ISO (jpeg hasn't any chance here),
- you expose for the highlights, ie to the right (no important highlight blown, other than specular reflections or the sun itself of course), and yes in the jpeg vignette the shadows are plain black, so let's go to the following,
- you do you best with the right tools while treating the image to extract the hidden information in the shadows - eg in LR/ACR the two Fill Light/Blacks sliders are generally quite efficient. When I need more than 100 Fill Light, the noise in the shadows is generally way too intrusive to have a nice image.

Sorry if this sounds like evidence and trivia to you...
If you're still too limited, then the route is a bit narrower : go for HDR. It doesn't necessarily mean the peculiar aspect found in some over-contrasty images, see eg the very natural-looking results results of Enfuse or ZeroNoise. It's way less practical as you need several captures for one image, and therefore a still subject, and preferably a tripod (not compulsory, but recommended).

[jpm]

Thanks for your advices.
So you are actually telling me that I ought not buy anything and rather spend more time in front of my computer...
As a software developper, this is not really what I wanted to hear but... I guess I need to become more efficient with the tools.

I like your photos, and they make me confident again that one can acheive good results with slightly outdated DSLR gear.
What lenses do you use?

JPM

PS: I live in France (Toulouse) and practice paragliding ( I noticed the paragliding image in your gallery )

I also shoot in the mountains, and I got the same sensor in my good'ol 300d - which I'm also very reluctant to change for marketing reasons.
However, my experience is different : in the past millenia, I shot mainly slides (a bit of negative B&W too though) and digital is a huge improvement in DR for me (and still improvement over negative, at least because I got more control - and more colors too  ).

When you refer to film, you may talk about negative film? If not, I'd say it's clearly a post-processing (treatment) problem.
One should fulfill all these three conditions to exploit the full DR of a DSLR :
- you shoot raw, preferably at base ISO (jpeg hasn't any chance here),
- you expose for the highlights, ie to the right (no important highlight blown, other than specular reflections or the sun itself of course), and yes in the jpeg vignette the shadows are plain black, so let's go to the following,
- you do you best with the right tools while treating the image to extract the hidden information in the shadows - eg in LR/ACR the two Fill Light/Blacks sliders are generally quite efficient. When I need more than 100 Fill Light, the noise in the shadows is generally way too intrusive to have a nice image.

Sorry if this sounds like evidence and trivia to you...
If you're still too limited, then the route is a bit narrower : go for HDR. It doesn't necessarily mean the peculiar aspect found in some over-contrasty images, see eg the very natural-looking results results of Enfuse or ZeroNoise. It's way less practical as you need several captures for one image, and therefore a still subject, and preferably a tripod (not compulsory, but recommended).

[NikoJorj]

So you are actually telling me that I ought not buy anything and rather spend more time in front of my computer...
As a software developper, this is not really what I wanted to hear but... I guess I need to become more efficient with the tools.

If you want to fit a high dynmic range scene (say more than 7-8 stops) into the 5-6 stops of a print, you'll have to compress them, and that very seldom only gives satisfactory results when done by a machine. So you'll have to get out those fingers and make it by yourself.  
For me, I'm glad I can make it in front of a computer, because with slides this compression was really out of my reach (remember those prints with blown highlights AND blocked shadows?   ), and in the darkroom color was gone, repeatability was a guessing game at best, and boy it was dark and it smelled bad!  

And btw, if you want to be efficient, try Lightroom if you haven't already.
It's really lightning fast compared to the old one-image-at-a-time Photoshop method.

I like your photos, and they make me confident again that one can acheive good results with slightly outdated DSLR gear.

Thanks!

What lenses do you use?

Forget about it!   You've just seen reduced images.
Besides that, there aren't really bad lenses out today (at least if you stay away of the dreaded 500-750mm zoom from ebay   ).
If you really want to know, I got a 10-22 for wide vistas (my main lens while ski touring eg), a 50/1.8 for some details and low light, and for tele shots I had a tamron 55-200, replaced last summer by a 55-250IS (stabilisation is a must). All these were chosen mainly for budget and bulk/weight reasons, IQ being third criteria only.

PS: I live in France (Toulouse) and practice paragliding ( I noticed the paragliding image in your gallery )

Le monde est pas si grand, tiens   .
Bons vols!

[DiaAzul]

So you are actually telling me that I ought not buy anything and rather spend more time in front of my computer...
As a software developper, this is not really what I wanted to hear but... I guess I need to become more efficient with the tools.

I started with a 10D, which if you can put up with some of its weaknesses is a good camera.

Weaknesses that made me want to change to a more up to date model:
1/ Wake up time - in order to conserve battery power the camera would be set to go into low power mode. Time taken to wake up and be ready for the next shot was too long.
2/ Recovering highlights in adobe photoshop was difficult as a magenta cast would appear in blown out or near blown out highlights (this may have been solved with more modern software and camera profiles).
3/ In winter the camera was unable to resolve branches and twigs on trees satisfactorily and would often create wierd effects around trees (or other fine detail which was smudged by the anti-aliasing filter). Again, may have been software problem, but at the time it appeared to be the camera.
4/ The on off switch is inconveniently located and I would frequently catch it either switching the camera off or on. Ergonomics of the camera are not the best.

If you can afford a second hand 20D or 40D that may be your best option for an upgrade. Canon seems to do well on the even numbers, not so well on the odd ones.

[JDClements]

Canon seems to do well on the even numbers, not so well on the odd ones.

Just like Star Trek movies. Coincidence?  

[Gordon Buck]

Aren't 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 all even numbers? 1, 5 odd?

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi!

Dealers have an incentive to sell. The DxO results are probably the best data you can get if you are prepared to have a "raw" workflow. If you want to maximize DR you probably need to use "raw", expose to the right, and make generous use of "fill light".

The DxO data indicates that the 10D is on almost on par with the 40D on low ISO. So get a good raw converter to save yourself some money.

Apart from DR I would suggest that the 40D is a much better camera than the 10D, essentially in every sense. But if the 10D is good enough for your needs it should be just fine.

I have seen very good A2 prints from a 10D, by the way, but that's probably quite a stretch.

The best option to increase DR is simply to use low ISO and expose to the right (that is maximize exposure so that highlights are just below being chopped off). To be able to do that you may need a tripod or image stabilized lens. Most lenses need to be stopped down a bit to be really sharp and zooms are quite flexible, so I don't know if I'd recommend a fast lens.

I'm shooting with Sony/Minolta stuff, and those cameras have built in image stabilization, that's a good thing. Sonys seem to suffer in high ISO performance compared to Canon and Nikon and other systems having IS built in seem to have the same limitation. This has nothing to do with sensor based IS per se, but  a lot with internal signal processing. I have a few high class lenses but I tend to used f/8 normally going up to f/2.8 or don to f/16 if I need to, teeth grinding.

Best regards
Erik

Hi,

This is my first post on this forum, and I am only a casual photographer. I mainly shoot outdoors, usually in the mountains.
I have owned a 10D for many years, and was never fully satisfied by IQ. Mainly because of poor dynamic range. I think I did better images with my non-digital eos.

I went to several shops, and they all told me that the 10D was an old gear, that I should spend again 700 et 1000 euros to buy a 40D.
I am a bit upset because I don't want to spend 1000 euros on a body every 5 years or so...

Then I went to DXO mark and did some comparison. I realised there have been simply no progress at all on dynamic range at 100 iso betweeen the 10D and 40D for example. Of course, at highier iso there is a huge gap, but it does not really matter for me because I usually shoot with enough light.

So I am wondering: who is correct here? Shop dealers or DXO mark?
Should I buy another body or a fast prime lens to shoot at 100 iso with my 10D?

JPM

[jpm]

I started with a 10D, which if you can put up with some of its weaknesses is a good camera.

Weaknesses that made me want to change to a more up to date model:
1/ Wake up time - in order to conserve battery power the camera would be set to go into low power mode. Time taken to wake up and be ready for the next shot was too long.
2/ Recovering highlights in adobe photoshop was difficult as a magenta cast would appear in blown out or near blown out highlights (this may have been solved with more modern software and camera profiles).
3/ In winter the camera was unable to resolve branches and twigs on trees satisfactorily and would often create wierd effects around trees (or other fine detail which was smudged by the anti-aliasing filter). Again, may have been software problem, but at the time it appeared to be the camera.
4/ The on off switch is inconveniently located and I would frequently catch it either switching the camera off or on. Ergonomics of the camera are not the best.

If you can afford a second hand 20D or 40D that may be your best option for an upgrade. Canon seems to do well on the even numbers, not so well on the odd ones.

I am indeed seeing some color cast in recovered highlights (in Aperture, blown out sky sometimes goes toward magenta or yelowish).

I also experience a lot of purple fringing with my Sigma 15 fisheye on trees in winter. But I thought that was more of a lens problem. And in many other situations, this lens provides very good images (saturated colors, feeling that the air is "full of light") so I will keep using it anyway.

Not sure that these problems are caused by the camera...

JPM

[jpm]

Hi!

Dealers have an incentive to sell. The DxO results are probably the best data you can get if you are prepared to have a "raw" workflow. If you want to maximize DR you probably need to use "raw", expose to the right, and make generous use of "fill light".

The DxO data indicates that the 10D is on almost on par with the 40D on low ISO. So get a good raw converter to save yourself some money.

Apart from DR I would suggest that the 40D is a much better camera than the 10D, essentially in every sense. But if the 10D is good enough for your needs it should be just fine.

I have seen very good A2 prints from a 10D, by the way, but that's probably quite a stretch.

The best option to increase DR is simply to use low ISO and expose to the right (that is maximize exposure so that highlights are just below being chopped off). To be able to do that you may need a tripod or image stabilized lens. Most lenses need to be stopped down a bit to be really sharp and zooms are quite flexible, so I don't know if I'd recommend a fast lens.

Best regards
Erik

Thanks for the advices. Fortunately I don't print A2, and unfortunately, I don't own a stabilized lens.

I am not against shooting raw, and I do it a lot, but I just often don't have time and patience to stay with this worklow.

What about the Highlight Priority Mode in the 40D and 5D?
Is this mode efficient enough to save me the burden of shooting raw and post-process? Or is it just essentialy a marketing argument?

JPM

[jpm]

What about the Highlight Priority Mode in the 40D and 5D?
Is this mode efficient enough to save me the burden of shooting raw and post-process? Or is it just essentialy a marketing argument?

JPM

Oups! Seems that this is a vexed question.

jpm

[Jeremy Roussak]

I am not against shooting raw, and I do it a lot, but I just often don't have time and patience to stay with this worklow.

As has been previously suggested, give LightRoom a try. You won't even notice you're working with raw images, apart from the improvements in quality.

Jeremy

[thierrylegros396]

I am indeed seeing some color cast in recovered highlights (in Aperture, blown out sky sometimes goes toward magenta or yelowish).
JPM

Try Lightroom, you'll see that it's possible to recover highlights without color cast !

Even the G10 gives good results !!

Thierry

[AndrewKulin]

JPM:

Why not return to one of those camera shops bringing your 10D and lenses and a CF Card, and ask if you could test out a 40D or 50D using your lenses, taking shots of things you have identified as problematic (e.g., tree branches in winter, colour shift of skies, etc.).  Take comparison shots with your 10D and examine the images at home to see for your self how the 10D stacks up against the 40D, and if some of the problems like purple fringing are due to the camera or the lens.  You might even try out some new lenses on both cameras as well to see if the same problems you experience with some of your existing lenses appear when using the different lenses (might help you determine if it is the lens or the camera).

I'm sure a reputable dealer would not have any problem helping you out with this.  

Andrew

[JohnKoerner]

Aren't 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 all even numbers? 1, 5 odd?

Too funny

[eronald]

Too funny

I guess an F:2 lens is a prime, but what about an F:1


Edmund

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

I guess an F:2 lens is a prime, but what about an F:1

Of course not! This reminds me of a paper I read in graduate school, "On a general theory of even primes."

[james_elliot]

I think I could answer in french to a neighbour but that would be rude to our english speaking friends....
I have a 300D (the same sensor you have), a 40D, a 1DsMarkII and a 450D.
The main differences between the 300D and its younger siblings are mainly the resolution, and the noise at high iso.
If you don't need these two things you can very well live with your 300D. But as it has already been said by the other posters, shoot raw and buy a good RAW convertor.
I am personnaly using DxO; it is expensive, but according to me worth the price. You have the list of the supported lenses there:
http://www.dxo.com/fr/photo/dxo_optics_pro.../cameras_lenses

Regarding the so called "highlight mode", it can be usefull but doesn't replace RAW shooting (in fact, it is different; it can be used in RAW mode also).

If you want to buy a new camera, think about the 450D. I am using it regularly when I go hiking in the Pyrénées. Its sensor is better than the one on the 40D, and with a 28mm f/2.8 and a polarizing filter, you will have a wonderful combination of a very light and very good camera+lens system.

Some shots I have made with this system are available there:
http://www.photo-lovers.org/fvenasque.html.fr
http://www.photo-lovers.org/fmontne.html.fr
They have been shot in RAW, but I have made no special effort in converting them (just ordinary batch processing).

If you want to see a full size picture slightly more processed look there:
http://www.photo-lovers.org/portfolio/priv...divers/0259.jpg
It is standing as a 100x70cm poster in my office, just near other posters made with my 1DsMarkII, and the difference is clearly visible, but  is very seldom noticed by people who are not familiar with photography.

I hope it helps in making your decision.

JMA

PS: and a big hello to Edmund if he is still reading this thread. Haven't seen you for a while, guy...

Hi,

This is my first post on this forum, and I am only a casual photographer. I mainly shoot outdoors, usually in the mountains.
I have owned a 10D for many years, and was never fully satisfied by IQ. Mainly because of poor dynamic range. I think I did better images with my non-digital eos.

I went to several shops, and they all told me that the 10D was an old gear, that I should spend again 700 et 1000 euros to buy a 40D.
I am a bit upset because I don't want to spend 1000 euros on a body every 5 years or so...

Then I went to DXO mark and did some comparison. I realised there have been simply no progress at all on dynamic range at 100 iso betweeen the 10D and 40D for example. Of course, at highier iso there is a huge gap, but it does not really matter for me because I usually shoot with enough light.

So I am wondering: who is correct here? Shop dealers or DXO mark?
Should I buy another body or a fast prime lens to shoot at 100 iso with my 10D?

JPM

[Panopeeper]

What about the Highlight Priority Mode in the 40D and 5D?
...
Oups! Seems that this is a vexed question.

Vexed? The feature is often misunderstood.

The effect of HTP is

1. reducing the effective ISO by 1 EV (thus HTP does not work with ISO lower than 200),

2. a. in JPEG: increasing the intensity by 1 EV, except in the highlights, where this adjustment gradually goes back;
b. in raw: recording this fact in metadata.

When processing the raw data by DPP, it does the same as in-camera JPEG. When processing it with ACR: it does increase the intensity by 1 EV, nothing else.

In effect: for raw shooters HTP means an exposure bias by -1 EV.

[eronald]

PS: and a big hello to Edmund if he is still reading this thread. Haven't seen you for a while, guy...

I'm making pix with the D3x. Printing with a camera-attached dyesub postcard printer. Don't ask why

My gallerist just made the first sale of a 44" wide print yesterday from my junk Epson 9600. That image was captured from the Canon G10.

This DR discussion is getting very technical. It used to be that shadows in Jpegs were blocked up, highlights burnt out, and if you wanted unblocked shadows and highlight detail you could move to Raw, play with sliders, and then twiddle curves in PS.

  The more I use the D3x in-camera conversions, the more I like them. My experience is that the D3x really manages to get some very nice highlight and shadow detail into the Jpegs,and my postcards, by means of the conversions in camera. I had trouble getting such DR into prints from my previous cams, even from MF. I use the D3x at 1600 ISO when the sensor itself is not really better than the competition.  So it seems that at this point we already have the hardware, but the software for moving the DR to print will make the difference.


Edmund