I thought everyone knew this. And I'm still puzzled as to why no-one's bothered implementing it, when it's really just a firmware update.
Do you know of any way to set a custom curve as the 'default' in-camera jpeg shooting mode? Because, if you could set a linear curve going from the noise floor to full well saturation, that would give you a RAW histogram anyway.
Being used to shooting with MF/LF film bodies, any digital setup is an improvement.
Looking through your photos, I suspect the reason you need to blend much less often than me comes down to where and when we shoot. The photos on your website are almost exclusively above 35 degrees from the equator, mostly greater than 40 degrees. Here, even direct sunlight is much less strong and produces less contrast than at locations closer to the equator. Also, you seem to shoot a fair bit in ovecast conditions. Looking through my collection, the majority of my shots were taken between 30 degrees south and 30 degrees north of the equator; virtually all the photos that didn't require blending or filters (not counting night-time shots) were taken at higher latitudes, such as Mongolia, Patagonia or parts of New Zealand.
My photos are mostly from my workshop locations in Italy from Sicily to the Dolomites. There is definitely strong sunlight in these areas and clear air in the mountains. I shot all kinds of angles to the sun from directly towards the sun, side lighting and the sun behind me. I like side lighting a lot as it gives structure to the landscapes. I shoot much less strong sun against me with deep shadows. Sometimes there can be great photos like this but mostly uninteresting.
Not many of my photos are in overcast situations. Many have clouds but with sun light. Besides Italy I have been shooting in Peru, South West USA, India, China, Israel, South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Spain, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, France and not any of these location have changed much from what I generally experience in Italy in terms of dynamic range. I do look for what I find to be interesting landscapes and mostly they need to be lit in some way. I seriously doubt that I would find a difference even close to the equator where I was recently on the Seychelles Islands. So I don't buy into your theory
![Smiley :)](https://forum.luminous-landscape.com/Smileys/default/smiley.gif)
Unless you show me some of your galleries I don't think can get any closer to a reason for the vast difference in needs for blending of shots from a Canon camera.