Can the Dynamic Range of a Canon Mark II be expanded?

[sunshine1234]

Can the Dynamic Range of a Canon Mark II be expanded?

If so, how is that done?

Is it a gimmick or can it really help produce higher quality photographs?

[hjulenissen]

The obvious choice would be multi-exposure bracketing/HDR.

I can really help you capture a larger DR than what is natively available on your sensor, given that there is no scene/camera movement in-between shots. As to if this makes your photographs "higher quality", I guess it up to you and your processing.

-h

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Can the Dynamic Range of a Canon Mark II be expanded?

Hi,

Beyond setting your ISO to 'L' (nominal ISO 50), and 'exposing to the right' (maximizing exposure without clipping the highlights), there is only exposure bracketing that can help.

Cheers,
Bart

[sunshine1234]

Thank you for your replies - apologies - I should have specified that I meant without using HDR or bracketing.

[Ben Rubinstein]

Technically using dual iso from magic lantern but I found it useless due to heavy aliasing outdoors though almost perfect indoors, not sure why the difference.

[MatthewCromer]

Sell it and buy a Sony Alpha 7R and metabones EF-mount adaptor

[Doug Peterson]

You can trade it in for a system built exclusively for image quality.

Kidding...

Mostly

[robdickinson]

Hi,

Beyond setting your ISO to 'L' (nominal ISO 50), and 'exposing to the right' (maximizing exposure without clipping the highlights), there is only exposure bracketing that can help.

Cheers,
Bart

'L' will reduce dynamic range. It effectively exposes at 100 and clips.

The options are blending and HDR or use filters.

[jjj]

Depending on what you are shooting fill flash is another option for dealing with large dynamic ranges. Obviously better suited to portraits than landscapes.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

'L' will reduce dynamic range. It effectively exposes at 100 and clips.

Hi Rob,

With my 1Ds Mark II I can maximize DR by setting the ISO (= gain) to ISO 'L', which effectively is approx. ISO 75-80 although the exposure meter assumes ISO 50 (which would overexpose the image). The Raw read noise level is lower (by 10-12%) than at ISO 100, and the saturation level is the same, thus maximum DR (engineering definition) and native sensitivity is ~ISO 80.

On my 1Ds Mark III however, ISO 'L' and ISO 100 both result in virtually identical read noise and saturation levels, so the best DR is at the native sensitivity of ISO 100:

The 1Ds2 has a 12-bit ADC, the 1Ds3 has a 14-bit ADC, so I normalized the Raw ADUs to 16-bits in the above graphs, for easier comparison.

Cheers,
Bart

[robdickinson]

Well thats the 1 series.

But then according to clarkvision I am wrong and iso 50 has a very slight edge over iso 100.
http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/evaluation-canon-5dii/index.html