[wim]

That's what I really call the nonsense. Because prints or monitor views are not displaying more than 6 or 8 stops, you guys declare more than 10 are useless. HDR is one thing, displaying pictures with a very wide gammut the other. But tone mapping definitely benefits from every huge scale of tonality captured before.


Why on Earth somebody would say, oh no, today my loudspeakers don't give out more than 4000 Hz, starting from 300, so 20 Hz to 15 kHz is useless? Overkill? Or looking at the first Daguerrotypies which might display something like 3 to 4 stops - and defclare that as enough for all times? I welcome every effort of camera / sensor manufacturer to give us higher DR. It doesn't mean it has to stay this way. Our eyes still have more dynamic range. Just not in one single look, but we can adapt.


And if there will be a technique to show more by tone mapping, I rather prefer to be able to review some of my pictures lateron but catch more details and tonal range today. I also rather prefer to have a big reserve available to get things out of the shadows into life or get some clouds back in the skies. A picture never will be the real thing, it will always be an interpretation of a moment and itself another thing. The more information I can catch, the more free I will be lateron to make the final picture. Why give away or attack this possibilities? That's not about being able or not to expose correctly, because working with only 10 stops DR will either lead to white skies or muddy shadows. Even with 12 or 14 there will be a moment when this happens. But that moment will be more rare, and that's all what DR is about.


Talking about grayscales on print paper is not helpful. The grayscale doesn't represent the situation at the moment the picture was taken. Confusing input and output doesn't help to value what benefits come from DR.

 

It may be nonsense to you, but it simply isn't for me. I have worked with the "limited" tone range of B&W photography for 30+ years, and I still expose stuff the same way in digital, or rather, similarly, taking highlight blow-outs into account. It works for me.

 

It is not nonsense, I guess we just have different approaches, and that is all there is to it.

 

Kind regards, Wim