"nospam" <nos...@nospam.invalid> wrote in message
news:190920191018238452%nos...@nospam.invalid...
> what's even more interesting is that they claim more than 14 stops of
> dynamic range for the nikon d800 and several other nikon slrs, despite
> the hardware being theoretically limited to a maximum of 14 stops, with
> real world results being a little less.
That's one thing where newer cameras do seem to outperform older ones. My
wife's Samsung Galaxy Note 7 (or 8 - I forget) takes better pictures than my
S7 and even than my Nikon D90 SLR. Not in terms of sharpness, noise and
artefacts (where it is worse than the D90), but in terms of dynamic range.
It somehow manages to produce realistic-looking photos (*) which don't have
such noticeable burnt-out highlights or featureless black shadows.
I wonder if we'll ever get to the stage where digital sensors can match film
for tolerance to over-exposure while retaining at least *some* detail in
very over-exposed highlights. Many years ago I took a lot of long-exposure
night-time photos on Ektachrome slide film - lights in city streets, shop
windows etc. And because I hadn't a clue what exposure to use, given
reciprocity failure and the need to use a blue filter to match daylight film
to tungsten light - things that digital doesn't suffer from, I greatly
over-exposed some of them. The slides look almost transparent. But when I
came to scan them with a film scanner more recently, I was amazed at how
much detail could be recovered with suitable brightness and contrast
compensation. But that's a special case. I'm not a film snob by any means:
the ability to see the results of your work immediately (and learn by
mistakes in exposure etc) and the ability to take an infinite number of
photos "for free" (excluding the cost of the camera and of the recharging of
the battery) make digital vastly superior. But I've not seen a digital
camera produce tones that look *quite* as good as an Agfachrome slide. Mind
you, you can wind up the film speed of digital to unheard-of levels with
film, without the flat muddy pictures of high-speed film, or the garish
clipping of highlight and shadow that you get with push-processing slower
film.
One interesting difference between film and digital: with any slide film
(but especially Kodachrome) it was almost impossible to get realistic colour
rendition under (presumably warm-white) fluorescent tubes - no matter what
filter you used, there was always a green cast. Digital doesn't suffer
anywhere nearly as badly - I've had *fairly* similar results under anything
from tungsten, warm-white fluorescent, daylight fluorescent, LEDs (including
a range of colours available with Philips Hue bulbs) simply by
white-balancing off a sheet of white paper. OK, there are some colours like
deep red and violet which reproduce badly under some lights, but generally
digital seems to cope better with weird lighting.
(*) Some HDR techniques produce pictures with good shadow and highlight
detail, but there's something indefinably false about the tonal rendition,
rather like the artificial-looking "colour plates" that you used to get in
books from the 1950s.