How to get the most out of your Camera Sensors Dynamic Range

©Ankit Gajjar - All Rights Reserved

Extracting detail out of a high contrast scene with bright highlights and dark shadows is difficult and usually leads to a lot of noise (grain) or data loss (blown highlights). This is where knowing your cameras dynamic range will help you meter for the scene correctly.

The scene above was shot with a single exposure (not HDR), I set the camera to manual mode and metered for the scene without the tree. Then recomposed the shot with the tree framing the scene. After taking the shot the tree was dark and the background image was perfectly exposed. Now knowing my cameras dynamic range I knew that if I metered 1.5 stops over I would still be able to extract the details in the clouds and the tree would be perfectly exposed. And if I underexposed my shot by 2 stops I would be able to extract shadow detail with minimal noise. So in this case I ended up taking the overexposing route and it worked out pretty well.

How to Determine Your Cameras Dynamic Range:
On a bright sunny day, set your camera on a tripod out doors. Find a concrete side walk or wall (with no paint) with large shadows cutting though. Meter for the scene on manual mode (shooting in RAW format) and take a shot. The shot should have both the concrete (in sun light) and the shadows in it. Now take another shot over exposing the scene by 1/3 of a stop, repeat this increasing the exposure by 1/3 stop at a time up to 3 stops. Repeat this in the opposite direction by underexposing the scene 1/3 stop at a time up to 3 stops.
Import the pictures in a photoediting software (lightroom, aperture, photoshop, etc), for each of the shots taken (19 total), take your time and extract as much detail as possible. If the scene is too blown out that you cannot extract bright details out of it then disregard the shot and move to the next shot in the sequence. Similarly if the shadows are too dark that you cannot extract clean detail out of them, then disregard that shot and move to the next shot. By doing this exercise for all the pictures you will remain with a handful of shots that are acceptable in both the bright and dark areas. Now you know your cameras "extractable" dynamic range for both overexposing and underexposing scenes.