After setting my Christmas Birth of Jesus last weekend:
(http://www.guillermoluijk.com/misc/nacimiento2.jpg)
I felt curious about the DR of a candle, i.e. the difference in stops between its brightest and least bright part. I have made a HDR composite with 5 shots 3 stops apart (just a couple of shots would have sufficed looking at the results) with Zero Noise (http://www.guillermoluijk.com/tutorial/zeronoise/index.htm) for the linear merge, and I have plotted the Zone System of the RAW R channel (the one that achieved the highest RAW values) obtaining up to 11 stops of DR:
This was the candle and the resulting zone system (each gray level represents one stop interval):
(http://www.guillermoluijk.com/misc/candle.jpg)(http://www.guillermoluijk.com/misc/candle.png)
Not very useful in practice since we all allow light sources to get blown, but I find it interesting. It's quite a huge light gradient in such a small physical distance.
Regards