06-02-2014, 10:52 AM
Colour film does not reach 11 stops. BW film might, there are contrasty (low DR) BW films and low contrast (high DR) BW films. The high DR films look super bland. Positive slide film reaches 5-6 stops.
You can't have lifted shadows that look black, if they look black you have not lifted them.
You can only look ate a 14 stops DR image by compressing the 14 stops into the stops your medium allows. Lets say 8 stops. What would be black in normal 8 stop tonal curve now is a grey, what would be white with a normal tonal curve also is a grey. The white and black points have shifted.
This is what 14 stops of DR looks like, compressed into a 8 stop space:
![[Image: aws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20140602T105029Z...528ae2c6cc]](https://s3.amazonaws.com/masters.galleries.dpreview.com/2709599.jpg?X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAJ7ICBHXPIPPMTNCQ/20140602/us-east-1/s3/aws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20140602T105029Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=7fc4520d7f6b9f9dc70698b6c081fa6f607f45e56b6db1d965c7d8528ae2c6cc)
On the left a normal contrasty tonal curve, on the right a similar curve but stretched out to cover 14 stops of DR.
You can't have lifted shadows that look black, if they look black you have not lifted them.
You can only look ate a 14 stops DR image by compressing the 14 stops into the stops your medium allows. Lets say 8 stops. What would be black in normal 8 stop tonal curve now is a grey, what would be white with a normal tonal curve also is a grey. The white and black points have shifted.
This is what 14 stops of DR looks like, compressed into a 8 stop space:
On the left a normal contrasty tonal curve, on the right a similar curve but stretched out to cover 14 stops of DR.