Innholdsfortegnelse for September 14, 2013 i Amateur Photographer

“These photographs are both classic and era-defining Carlos Clarke images gifted to nation, page 7” QX10 and QX100 turn phone into ‘premium camera’ SONY QX GADGETS TO ESCALATE COMPACT WARS A NEW device that hooks up to a smartphone will enable it to double as a ‘premium camera’, claims its maker, Sony. There are two QX devices that Sony describes as ‘lens-style cameras’, featuring a built-in imaging sensor, shutter button, image processor, battery and memory-card slot. The first is called the Cyber-shot DSCQX10, which houses an 18.2-million-pixel, 1/2.3in-type Exmor R CMOS imaging sensor and a 10x Sony G lens designed to produce the 35mm equivalent of a 25-250mm zoom. It will cost around £179. The second is the Cyber-shot DSCQX100 (pictured), priced £399. Aimed at enthusiasts, it features a 1in-type…

A round-up of the latest photography books on the market • INSPIRATION IN PHOTOGRAPHY, by Brooke Shaden, £17.99 The title of this book may be a little vague as to its contents, but there’s a lot to recommend here. Art photographer Brooke Shaden makes a book out of her own creative processes and experiences, and in fact that little personal touch is what makes it more digestible than a lot of the dry guides we see these days. Shaden’s photography is highly stylised, and may not quite be to everyone’s taste, but if you see eye to eye with her artistic vision then this book should prove an excellent read. • LEARNING TO PHOTOGRAPH: VOLUME 1 by Cora and Georg Banek, £30.99 The first part of a two-volume series, this…

MARSEL VAN OOSTEN Marsel van Oosten is a professional nature photographer from the Netherlands. Together with his wife Daniella, he runs specialised nature photography tours and workshops for small groups of all experience levels to spectacular locations worldwide. To see more of Marsel’s images, visit his website at www.squiver.com THIS shot was taken in south-west Libya, in the Sahara Desert. I’m standing at the lowest part of that area of the desert, on the flat, next to my four-wheel-drive vehicle. I am quite a long distance away from the dunes in the picture, so you can tell they’re incredibly high. The little guy you see in the picture is actually walking towards me. I shot him walking in the dunes, walking down the dunes and walking straight towards me with…

CERTAIN names, such as Nichols, Brandenburg and Lanting, are renowned within wildlife photography – so much so, in fact, that they seem inextricably bound up with the genre. Over the years people from all around the world have produced masterful images of nature and wildlife, and now the people behind the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition have set themselves the gargantuan task of selecting the best of the best in a new book called The Masters of Nature Photography. If anyone is up to this selection task it is Rosamund Kidman Cox, masterful overseer of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year portfolios and an established name in the world of wildlife photography. ‘The starting point was that they’ve all been honoured in Wildlife Photographer of the Year,’ says Rosamund.…

STEPHEN Smith (better know to our forum members as Yebisu) is a photographer with a truly distinctive style. Before moving out to Japan in 2005, Stephen worked as a primary teacher in the UK. However, the draw of Japan was too much to resist and he found himself relocating to work as an English language teacher. It was there that he started taking photographs and over time developed a style that, while influenced by the country’s most important photographers, still contained characteristics and quirks that were all his own. Here, we find out how Stephen finds his images and explore how Japanese life has influenced his photographic output. AP Looking through your work, a very distinct style begins to reveal itself. How would you describe your photography to someone who…

Universal Battery Chargers Callum McInerney-Riley looks at a selection of the most efficient, easy-to-use and value for money units on the market Delkin Devices Dual Universal Battery Charger Nikon Bundle Around £25 www.delkin.com Delkin has something different on offer in the field of universal chargers. Unlike the others, the Delkin Devices unit doesn’t adjust to fit a battery. Instead, it uses battery-specific plates that insert into the charging dock. Our review sample is a Nikon Bundle that includes six plates to fit the most popular Nikon batteries. This can be expanded upon with different plates for Canon, Olympus, Casio, Panasonic, Sony and Fujifilm. A charge percentage is indicated by an LED to the left of the battery that shows the charge at 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%. Uniquely, the Delkin…

RRP £986.99 (body only) Sensor 16-million-effective-pixel Live MOS Output size 4592 × 3448 pixels (15.8 million pixels) Focal length mag 2x Lens mount Micro four thirds File format JPEG, RW2 (raw), raw + JPEG, MPO (when attaching 3D lens in micro four thirds-system standard), AVCHD, MPEG-4 Compression 2-stage JPEG Colour space Adobe RGB, sRGB Shutter type Focal-plane shutter Shutter speeds 60-1/8000sec, bulb Max flash sync 1/320sec (internal) 1/250sec (external) ISO 125-25,600 Exposure modes Program, aperture priority, shutter priority, manual, iA+, 25 scene modes Metering system 1,728-zone, multi-pattern sensing system with options for intelligent multiple, centreweighted, spot Exposure comp ±5EV in 1/3 steps White balance Auto, 5 presets, 2 custom, Kelvin, all with fine-tuning White balance bracket 3 frames Drive mode Up to 5.0 fps (with AFS), 4.3fps (with AFC, in…

DIGITAL-FILTER SOFTWARE Q I am looking for some easy-to-use digital-filter software that doesn’t reduce megabytes, megapixels or resolution. Instagram is a great tool for amateur work, but as it reduces the size and resolution of the photograph dramatically it is not an option because I need my photos above 10MB. What do you suggest? Kevin George A I guess that when you say digital-filter software and refer to Instagram you’re looking for something that will give your images a lo-fi, slightly grungy, Polaroid/Lomo/toy camera sort of appearance? That being the case, I have a couple of low-cost, relatively intuitive options you might like to try. First, and one of my favourites, is ToyCamera AnalogColor from www.penta.com. jp/pentacom/toycamera_analogcolor. The program offers a host of preset filter effects, such as toy camera,…

Professor Newman explains... ONE OF the major differences between film cameras and digital cameras is the availability of an electronic viewfinder. Digital compact cameras have had electronic viewfinders from the start, in the form of the rear LCD (which is indeed a viewfinder, if not an eye-level one). The early digital SLRs also have a rear LCD, but this was not used for viewfinding, just for reviewing captured images. It was with the development of live view that the possibility of replacing the optical reflex viewfinder began to gain ground. The advantages of doing away with the reflex viewing system are potentially severalfold. Firstly, the reflex system is a complex precision electro-optical system, and is expensive to make; it accounts in large part for the additional cost of DSLRs over…

THE TERM ‘dynamic range’ is used a lot in camera reviews and features. Along with noise and resolution, it is one of the many considerations of enthusiast photographers when buying a camera, yet there is often little discussion as to what the term actually means and how it can affect the images you take. Put very simply, the dynamic range of a camera is the range of tones that it can record between black and white. The larger the dynamic range, the more of these tones can be recorded and the more detail can be extracted from the highlight and shadow areas of a scene. Dynamic range is usually measured in exposure values, or stops. For example, a camera with a dynamic range of 12EV would be one that could…

THERE are a number of ways to measure dynamic range, and they can each result in different measurements. At AP we have dedicated testing equipment and software, which you can read about along with our testing methodology on page 12. However, there are a few simple tests that you can do yourself that will give you an idea of the capabilities of your camera’s sensor. THE TEST To start, pin a grey card to a wall and make sure that it is evenly lit. Set your camera on a tripod and try to fill as much of the frame with the grey card as possible. Take a custom white-balance reading from the grey card to neutralise any colour casts. Now, set the camera to shoot JPEGs, in manual mode, and…

MOST photographers rely on evaluative metering when shooting, and adjust the exposure compensation should the scene be too bright or too dark. However, as good as contemporary evaluative metering systems are, they are primarily designed to create pleasing photos straight from the camera, rather than images that record as much detail as possible, which can then be exploited using software. This often means that evaluative metering will blow out highlights for the sake of a large, evenly exposed foreground, or will try to protect all the highlights completely, resulting in areas of significant underexposure. Instead of using evaluative metering, switch the camera to spot metering. This will allow for the various highlight and shadow areas of an image to be measured precisely, and enable you to accurately meter the brightness…

NO MATTER how good modern digital imaging sensors are, they are still some way off being able to capture all the tones in a very high-contrast scene. However, if you are faced with a scene that can’t be captured within the dynamic range of your camera’s sensor, there are a few things you can do to help. Some of these involve altering the light, while others are software tricks. HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE IMAGES We couldn’t write a supplement on dynamic range without mentioning HDR images. Uttering the term HDR can often lead to a raised eyebrow or two. Over the past few years HDR has received a bad press, mainly due to the flurry of images with a high local contrast, low overall contrast and high levels of saturation that…

ALMOST every camera sold nowadays comes with some sort of mode designed to extend, or at least optimise, the dynamic range of the images produced by the sensor. These modes cannot actually alter the performance of the camera’s image sensor, but rather they rely on using software trickery to make the most of the available dynamic range. Most cameras typically feature one or two modes: one that will create an HDR image; and one that is meant to preserve highlight details in images while boosting shadow detail. Before you begin to use either mode, it is best to know the advantages and disadvantages of each, and understand a little about how they work.…

WHEN shooting a standard HDR sequence, it is always best to use a tripod. Obviously, all the images you take must be aligned and a tripod is the only precise way to make sure there is no movement between shots, no matter how minimal it may be. Just as when shooting a manually bracketed sequence to create an HDR image, a tripod should also be used when using a camera’s automatic HDR mode. However, some cameras now feature the ability to automatically align images, even if there is slight movement between exposures. One thing that cannot be aligned is the movement of a subject across the frame – for example, a car driving past, or someone walking through the scene. Moving subjects will cause strange artefacts to appear in the…

IT MAY seem like a tiny Sony Alpha SLT camera, but the new Alpha 3000 confusingly uses the Sony E-mount, like the Sony NEX range of compact system cameras. Like the NEX cameras, the Alpha 3000 doesn’t use a mirror; up until now, all Sony Alpha models have had either a reflex or a pellicle mirror. It’s the absence of a mirror that allows the Alpha 3000 its diminutive stature – it’s the smallest and lightest Alpha yet – and affords it the look and feel of an advanced bridge camera, or CSC in the style of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-G6. FEATURES The sensor of the Alpha 3000 is a 20.1-million-pixel CMOS unit, based on that used in the Alpha 58 SLT camera. With no reflex mirror, images are composed…

MEMORIES OF VOIGTLÄNDER Another wonderful article from Ivor in AP 31 August on the subject of Voigtländer – it reminded me of the final days of the lens-production plant… I was involved in the final days of Voigtländer as a manufacturer of cameras/lenses, and initiated the purchase of the contents of the lens-production plant while working as a lens designer (for example, overhead projector triplet lens as delivered to Demolux of Germany and others) for the British Optical Lens Company in Walsall. Termination of Voigtländer camera production was announced in 1972/73. LETTER OF THE WEEK Wins a 20-roll pack of 36-exposure Fujifilm Superia ISO 200 35mm film or a Fujifilm 8GB media card* GET ON AT THE LINE Having read your test of the Pentax K-50, it is worth mentioning…

When it comes to AP Masterclasses, if we’re heading outdoors we do like a bit of blue sky. On the day we met our three readers for this London-based workshop, the day was decidedly wet, grey and miserable – but for our purposes, it was perfect! Using flash outdoors can turn grey and boring photos into bright, colourful and dramatic portraits, as we’ll show you over the next five pages. We started off the day in the AP studio, so that Andrew could see what kit and experience each of our readers had, ranging from no experience using flash to some. Andrew then introduced the model for the day, Sabina from Mission Models. When we’re ready to head out into the rain, Andrew takes us on a tour of the…

IN A PERFECT world, space would permit us to dissect each of the ten photographers and explain at leisure their different styles, subjects and strengths. Rosamund is willing and very much able to talk at length about every photographer in the book – Jim Brandenburg’s work with wolves, David Doubilet’s masterful lighting, Vincent Munier’s minimalist, restrained shots of foxes – but there is one name we return to again and again: Michael ‘Nick’ Nichols. ‘He’s something else,’ Rosamund says. ‘He’s edgy, he’s got energy and he’s always striving to do something new. He knows how to use his camera intimately. He’s trying to get that magic of the real moment in that old school photography way – the “moment”.’ Nichols originally learned photography in the army, and subsequently trained as…

I SHOOT all over Japan but a great number of my shots were captured in Tokyo and my stomping ground, Shizuoka Prefecture. Street photography is great in Tokyo, particularly in the Shinjuku, Shibuya and Ueni districts. Shinjuku is where Daido Moriyama does a lot of his street photography. If you’re looking for great architecture, then again Shinjuku is the place to be, particularly in the west area. You can find more interesting architecture in the Aoyama and Harajuku areas. I live in a town called Mishima, which is about one hour east of Tokyo and just south of Mount Fuji. I shoot a lot in that area too – everything from landscapes to portraits, festivals to everyday life. I’m trying to build up a portrait of the town (or perhaps…

LAUNCHED back in 2009, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1 was the second compact system camera from the brand, but rather than the more traditional DSLR styling of its Lumix DMC-G1 stablemate, the GF1 sported a much more compact form that did away with the viewfinder. With a host of body-mounted controls, interchangeable lenses and DSLR-like image quality, the GF1 caught the attention of enthusiast photographers looking for a lightweight and discreet alternative to their DSLR kit. With the arrival of the more consumerorientated Panasonic Lumix GF2 in 2010, it was not until the GX1 was launched at the end of 2011 that we saw a natural successor to the GF1. While well received, the GX1 soon found itself eclipsed by a host of new competitors, such as the 24.3-million-pixel Sony NEX-7…

PERHAPS the closest rivals to the GX7 are the Olympus OM-D E-M5 and the Fujifilm X-E1. Both cameras fall into the same price range as the GX7, while all three models offer virtually an identical resolution of around 16 million pixels. The Fujifilm X-E1 has the luxury of the larger APS-Csized sensor featuring the firm’s clever X-Trans technology, to deliver some of the best results we’ve seen from a sensor of that size. However, it lacks a tiltable touch-sensitive display and the snappy AF of the GX7. While the Olympus Pen E-P5 may appear to be the more natural competitor for the GX7, its lack of integrated viewfinder means that the flagship Olympus OM-D EM-5 may offer more competition as it delivers a comparable performance.…

AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHER and Pentax have teamed up to offer five readers the chance to spend a day in London shooting with the Pentax Ricoh GR, with the help of AP Editor and photographic tutor Damien Demolder. The day will take place on 25 September 2013. The five lucky winners will each be given a Pentax Ricoh GR for the day, and Damien will be on hand to offer his expert guidance. They will learn skills that will improve their photographic technique and style, and will gain a full understanding of how to get the best from the Pentax Ricoh GR. IDEAL DOCUMENTARY CAMERA In street and documentary photography, size really does matter and, as a general rule, smaller and more discreet is better. The problem with ‘smaller and more discreet’…

AT FIRST sight, there is a big difference between looking for pictures, and letting pictures come to you. Looking for pictures when there doesn’t seem to be much inspiration is difficult. Magazine articles, even books, overflow with advice. Set yourself the target of shooting ten pictures in three hours. Choose an unfamiliar lens. Get close. Shoot from above. Pick a theme and illustrate it. Try selective focus. Go without your camera for a week. Take photographs on the way to work. All this advice, and more, is supposed to break some kind of creative logjam, and so it may. On the other hand, it may simply add to the pressure, the ennui, almost the depression that you already have. Which is why, unless I have to take pictures – for…

EACH pixel in an image represents a single photodiode on the camera’s sensor. The photodiodes collect light photons and turn them into an electrical charge, which is then converted to digital data. The more photons that are collected, the greater the electrical signal and the brighter the pixel in the image will be. If a photodiode does not collect any light photons, then no electrical signal will be created and the representative pixel will be black. However, sensors come in a variety of different sizes and resolutions, and use different technologies that affect the size of photodiodes on each sensor. Typically, mobile phones and compact cameras have very small image sensors compared to a DSLR. This means they also have much smaller photodiodes on the sensor. So, even though both…

IT IS commonly stated that it is possible to recover blown-out highlight detail in raw files that is lost in JPEGs, but this is not technically true. If the photodiodes become full of photons then this detail is lost, regardless of whether you are shooting raw or JPEG files. What is different is how the dynamic range is represented. In a JPEG, the tonal range captured by the sensor is compressed into a smaller number of tones than is available in a raw file, which means that detail in the highlight and shadow areas of a JPEG is also compressed. For example, a 12-bit raw image may have 4,096 different values per colour channel, while an 8-bit image has only 256. If the camera’s processor divides the 4,096 different values…

THERE is an argument that says we should preserve as much highlight detail as possible when we expose an image, and then push the shadow areas and midtones to compensate. However, an opposing argument calls for us to make the image as bright as possible, taking the highlights right to the point of clipping, which results in the shadows and midtones looking too bright. If you have spent any time on camera forums online, you may have come across the acronym ETTR, which means ‘expose to the right’. This refers to exposing your image so that most of the tones are displayed to the right of the image histogram. Doing this simply involves looking at the histogram on the rear of the camera and increasing the exposure until the highlight…

ALTHOUGH creating HDR images requires specific software, such as Photomatix, or the specific HDR features found in Adobe Photoshop, there are ways that you can adjust the contrast of a raw image to reveal highlight and shadow detail that may otherwise look lost. Raw-conversion software has improved greatly over the past few years, so it is worth revisiting older images to see if you can get more out of them than when you originally made the raw conversion. In Lightroom 3 and 4, and Camera Raw 7 and 8, Adobe has created four specific sliders. These are grouped in pairs - Highlight and Shadows, and Black and White – and when combined, they help make the most of the complete tonal range of raw images. However, to get the most…

WITH the increase in popularity of HDR imagery, it was inevitable that manufacturers would add such a mode to their cameras. These modes work on the same premise as normal HDR creation, except that all the image processing takes place in-camera. Just as when creating a manually bracketed HDR image, the camera takes three or more different exposures and blends them together. The first exposure is usually the evaluativemetered exposure the camera would use for the scene. The other two exposures are shot with a darker and lighter exposure to capture more of the highlight and shadow detail. While the basic principle for creating HDR images is the same from camera to camera, the more advanced capabilities can vary, so it is worth taking the time to find out what…

Brassai By Sylvie Aubenas and Quentin Bajac Thames & Hudson, £48, hardback, 312 pages, ISBN 978-0-500-544259 YOU MAY have thought you needed digital kit to properly capture the night photographically, but French photographer Brassaï would prove you wrong. Throughout the 1930s he roamed the streets of Paris after dark, photographing the city’s vibrant night spirit and the unseen world beneath the surface. His gaze is unflinching, and he photographs both the glamour and the grime (and it seems like there’s plenty more of the latter than the former). The reduction of light, and the limitations of cameras of the time to capture it, is perversely enough what gives his images their strength. Often what we don’t see, and what is hinted to us, is more powerful than what we do.…

MY FIRST proper camera was a folding 12-on-120 model with an imprecise optical viewfinder and it was only when I acquired a twin-lens reflex camera that I saw real improvement in my photography. This was down to the viewfinder. Using the reflex, I viewed the whole image on a glass screen about 2.5in sq from a distance of a foot or more, and despite the fact that the image was reversed by the mirror, I learned how to compose and balance the contents; I was seeing the whole rather than a part of the scene. This continued throughout my professional career with Hasselblads. I had a pentaprism for eye-level use, but only needed this for action shots. Most of my work was tripod-based because when I photograph people I want…

THE THEME for the 2013-2014 European Imaging and Sound Association’s Maestro photo competition was Macro/Close-up, and Krzysztof Winnik from Poland has taken first place. He wins e1,500 and the EISA Photo Maestro 2013 trophy. In second place is Ulrich Hopp from Germany, who wins e1,000 and a trophy, while Tony Cooper from the UK finished third and receives e750 and a trophy. All three winners have been invited to Berlin, Germany, for the official EISA Awards ceremony to receive their prizes. The competition was open to photographers from all 17 EISA member countries and the winners’ photographs will be published in all 17 EISA-member photo magazines. Find out what inspired the three prize-winners as we publish their pictures over five pages. For more about EISA, visit www.eisa.eu. 1st Krzysztof Winnik…

Join us on a bespoke photo tour to Canada, accompanied by photo experts and a local guide for an opportunity to view and capture the breathtaking Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, and the Rocky Mountains’ natural wonders. This is a tremendous-value, interest packed, escorted photo tour. First, you’ll fly west to Calgary, gateway to the Rocky Mountains, and spend two nights in Banff. You will have time to capture images and benefit from inspiring advice for achieving amazing photos. There will be optional-extra excursions too! Then, you’ll journey by coach past beautiful Lake Louise and along the Icefields Parkway into Jasper National Park, to stay overnight in Jasper. From here, you’ll journey east to Edmonton, Alberta, the frontier trading city built on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River, then…

Construction worker Stephen Cooper Canon EOS 5D, 24-105mm, 1/160sec at f/6.3, ISO 200 WHEN confronted with this subject, it would be tempting to opt for a long focal length, zooming in or fitting a telephoto lens to produce a tighter crop on the figure, but in this instance I think Stephen’s wider view is spot on. Whether it was choice or simply because the only lens he had to hand was his Canon 24-105mm zoom, the mild telephoto focal length has meant that we get to see far more of the subject’s surroundings, which gives us a very definite sense of scale – the enormity of the work being undertaken is obvious! Whenever you have a small subject in a large field such as this, the placement of the subject…

UNTIL now, G-series CSCs from Panasonic have relied on lens-based image-stabilisation technology to counteract camera shake, with Mega OIS or Power OIS systems found in most Panasonic optics. Now, for the first time on a G-series camera, the GX7 also features a sensor-shift anti-shake system. This offers users of stabilised and non-stabilised lenses the best of both worlds, with photographers using legacy glass or Olympus and Sigma micro four thirds-fit lenses able to benefit from the sensor-shift system. Lenses with built-in IS will automatically override the GX7’s sensor-shift system, but once a non-IS lens is on the camera, the GX7’s built-in antishake system takes over. To ensure the correct level of correction is applied to the mounted third-party optics, shooters can dial in the lens’s focal length between 8mm and…

THERE’S no question that the Panasonic Lumix DMCGX7 is a real leap forward in comparison to its predecessor, the GX1. Every area of the camera has been improved, resulting in one of the best compact system cameras available for serious photographers looking for a highquality camera for travel or documentary photography. While it can’t quite match APS-C-format rivals, the image quality from the GX7 is very good, delivering some of the best results I’ve seen from a micro four thirds sensor. Detail is very good, but for anyone shooting with the GX7, I’d recommend raw capture to ensure detail is retained at higher sensitivities. The plethora of body-mounted controls for quick access combined with the fast AF, touch-sensitive display and excellent viewfinder, make the GX7 a pleasure to shoot with,…

THE ACCEPTED standard for digital printing is that images should have a resolution of at least 300ppi at the size of the print. So, for example, a 6x4in print should be 6x300pixels by 4x300 pixels in size, which is a resolution of 1800x1200 pixels or 2.16 million pixels in total. With the resolutions of most digital cameras far in excess of this figure we’re used to printing much larger print sizes, but what if we want an A3+ image? For a print measuring 13x19in, a 22.23-million-pixel image is required, and an A2 image needs 34,222,500-million-pixels. This is where BenVista PhotoZoom Pro 5 can help. To create the higher resolution needed for large prints, digital images are interpolated to a larger size in imagingediting software or by the printer’s own software.…

Your photo guides will be landscape photography expert Jeremy Walker and What Digital Camera editor Nigel Atherton Join us on a bespoke photo tour to Canada, accompanied by photo experts and a local guide for an opportunity to view and capture the breathtaking Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, and the Rocky Mountains’ natural wonders. This is a tremendous-value, interest packed, escorted photo tour. First, you’ll fly west to Calgary gateway to the Rocky Mountains, and spend two nights in Banff. You will have time to capture images and benefit from inspiring advice for achieving amazing photos. There will be optional-extra excursions too! Then, you’ll journey by coach past beautiful Lake Louise and along the Icefields Parkway into Jasper National Park, to stay overnight in Jasper. From here, you’ll journey east…

BIT DEPTH is closely related to dynamic range and dictates the number of tones that can be shown in an image. Although digital images are full colour, the sensor doesn’t actually record colour, it just records a value for the amount of light. For example, a 1-bit image only contains a simple on or off instruction for each pixel, so in this case there are only two possible outcomes: a black or white pixel. A 2-bit image is made up of four different levels (2x2). If both bits are on the pixel is white, if both are off then it is black, but there is also the possibility to have one on and one off, which creates another two options that in an image equates to two more tones. This…

WHEN photographing a low-contrast scene with perhaps only 3-4EV difference between highlight and shadow, most cameras, regardless of the size of the sensor, should be able to capture the full tonal range. Even with slight under or overexposure, the dynamic range of most sensors should be able to cope with the different levels of brightness across the scene. High-contrast scenes with a dynamic range of 7-8EV or greater are more problematic. If the brightness of the scene extends beyond what can be captured by the dynamic range of the camera’s sensor, then careful metering is required in order to capture as much information as possible. One of the first things to accept when metering a difficult scene is that it may not look perfect straight out of the camera. The…

IN OUR test studio at Amateur Photographer, we are introducing a new method for testing and comparing the dynamic range of digital cameras and their sensors, for inclusion in our regular reviews of new camera launches. The test target for this process consists of 20 grey patches in a circular arrangement, of densities ranging from black to white, and mounted on a hollow-bodied sphere. The interior has a special coating that completely diffuses the reflected light, resulting in extremely accurate and even backlighting of this transparent chart. The advantage of a backlit transparent chart over a reflective one is that a camera’s dynamic range is generally much higher than the contrast of a reflective version, and with our system, contrast levels of 10,000:1 and 100,000:1 are achievable. The light density…

NOWADAYS, the performance of all the major manufacturers’ digital cameras is remarkably consistent. The main distinguishing factor recently has become that of dynamic range, where there can be a significant difference between products. The term dynamic range has been borrowed from signal processing and is in many ways an uneasy fit with photographic practice – in the days of film, the term was rarely used. However, with the advent of cameras based on electronic systems, reviewers soon borrowed the terminology of the electronic engineers who designed the equipment, and dynamic range entered the photographic vernacular, despite the fact that there was no clear agreement over what, in this context, it actually meant. WHAT IS DYNAMIC RANGE? Dynamic range is the ratio of the largest recordable signal to the smallest recordable…

AS WITH HDR modes, dynamic range optimisation (DRO) modes are a common feature in digital cameras. As the name suggests, no additional dynamic range is captured in this mode. Instead, it simply optimises the dynamic range available in the raw file and processes it in-camera. Unlike an HDR image, DRO modes only require a single exposure to be taken, with the image then adjusted to retain more highlight detail and boost the brightness of shadow areas. Manufacturers have different names for their DRO modes. For instance, Sony calls its offering Dynamic Range Optimization or DRO, Nikon’s is Active D-lighting, Canon has Auto Lighting Optimiser, while Fujifilm has christened its version D-Range. Many manufacturers also have highlight and shadow priority modes. The way each process works varies between manufacturers, and on…