Argentière beach at La Londe les Maures. Same day than this one but a few hours before.
While commenting on my previous post, Mark Alan Meader gave me the link to this dpreview article about dynamic range. It made me think to a few things :
- It reminds me this other dpreview post about the Ricoh CX1. During the past years, camera makers were mostly communicating about the high number of pixels they put in their cameras. For compact cameras i'm not sure that increasing the mega pixels was always a good thing. It seems that now they're looking at other aspects of image quality and i think that's nice.
- About the Iridix technologie :
I don't use the D-Lighting option in any of my Nikon cameras but i'm pleased to know how it works. In fact that's very similar to what we do when we use masks to apply different curve settings to different parts of the image. I tend to prefer this manual craft work instead of an automatic one but that's certainly because i'm an old time photographer who prefers to decide himself instead of giving the decision to an electronic chip :)
Of course in camera D-Lighting can be interesting on a consumer camera or when shooting jpeg.This kind of work about dynamic range certainly gives the best of what can be captured by the camera sensor but it's not HDR photography. When the contrast of the scene exceeds the sensor capabilities you can't catch it all in a single shot and no algorithm will reveal the uncaught details.
3 comments :
I love this image...
I am still discovering the power of Camera RAW! :-) My camera has always been a tool for another purpose, but, I am getting to think that the better the image, the more fun I can have painting. I am learning a lot from watching pros like you!
I think you're right.. camera manufacturers are changing their focus:) to quality over quantity, since they seem to have hit the wall so to speak in the megapixel war. Dynamic range seems to be the new holy grail... to get digital sensors up to where film was, or beyond. I hope that bodes well for equipment in the next few years.
I still do my processing the "old" way too, with layer masks and curves/levels/contrast, mostly. That still seems pretty easy compared to the "real old days" of going into the darkroom for an afternoon with a box of paper and negs and trying to get a perfect print!
Automated programs like D-lighting can make casual snappers look pretty good, though.
oooohhhhh.....I have to buy this one next time!!!!
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