Probably more than once you’ve read something about dynamic range. It usually appears here and there in any article on exposure, histogram, exposure counters or light in general. But you really know what it is, you know how well, I hope to know how to explain myself well and, at the end of the article, you are a master of dynamics, or at least that you understood and internalized the concept.
As we are always surrounded by photographic words that become entangled in our fingers, darken our minds and confuse us, this time we will leave the definition for later.
- Now think: how many times you watch a beautiful scene.
- You love everything.
- With a magical light.
- Beautiful colors.
- And decide to bring your camera to immortalize this essence.
- This wonderful light.
- This sky full of infinite shadows.
- You frame.
- Expose.
- Shoot and surprise!Photography and scene have nothing to do with each other.
- You get the burnt sky.
- No shadows.
- Or dark earth.
- No textures.
- Nothing to do with the wonderful scene in front of you.
- Hasn’t that happened to you a million times?.
Well, this is mainly due to two factors
DYNAMIC RANGE (or Dynamic Range): Is the ability to capture the details of lights and shadows in the same image, that is, our ideal goal is to achieve near-pure blacks and whites with a lot of intermediate values.
When we talk about dynamic range, we talk about the possibility of capturing the different reflections and shadows in detail in a scene, right?We usually express this difference without diaphragm. The more our camera is able to correctly express the aperture difference diaphragms, the better their dynamic range. In other words, a camera that has a dynamic range of 8 aperture diaphragms will be better able to capture the bright reality of the scene than a camera that has only 5 aperture diaphragms.
And while our cameras work, for example, with 5 to 8 opening steps, our eye is able to process scenes with more than 15 steps of opening difference, so we must always assume that in scenes with a lot of difference between lights and shadows (very contrasted), our camera will not be able to represent what our eyes see.
We talked about the benefits of the histogram on the day, how it can help you see if your image is well exposed or not, but not only that, it can also help you see if your image has rich or poor dynamics. rank, and therefore can help you work on the site to improve it. Let’s see how different types of dynamic range are translated by scene and histogram into different images:
What can be inferred from the following image by observing the histogram with respect to its dynamic range?If you look closely at the histogram, you will see that it contains information throughout the histogram; both in the central area and at the ends (left shadows, highlights on the right), this means that from this scene we manage to get a good dynamic range, because we have information about midtones, light tones and shadows.
What about the next scene?If you look at how the information is distributed throughout the histogram, you’ll see that it contains, like the image above, information in all clear areas, so we’d also say it has a good dynamic range.
Now look at the following image, would you say it has a good dynamic range?Most of the information is concentrated on the right side of the scene, corresponding to whites and reflections, but the area on the left contains virtually no information, there are virtually no shadows or blacks, see?
Finally look at the following image. What do you think of the dynamic range of the image?Have you noticed how the light information is concentrated in the left area of the histogram?In this case, there is virtually no information about the reflections or objectives.
However, keep in mind that if the scene in front of you doesn’t have too strong a difference between lights and shadows, that is, if, for example, your camera supports up to 7 steps of light difference and the scene only has 5, your camera will be perfectly able to represent what’s in front of it. You can do the test by measuring the darkest areas of the scene and then the lightest ones and see how many diaphragms are between them to see if your camera can actually accurately render the scene.
But the key to getting the maximum dynamic range it offers you is to enjoy it, and it is done by simply measuring and displaying your photos correctly, that is, there will be scenes that, of course, something full, or very strong. contrasts, which will leave much of the scene without bright information. Don’t worry, there are images that are like that. Now, of any scene that we want to represent, the important thing is not to fail to measure and exposure the image because if it is well exposed, it will mean that we have reached the highest possible dynamic range in situ and that we can then work on it in the processing to further expand the dynamic range of the scene.
Of course, don’t forget to shoot in RAW every time you plan to retouch your images.
There are such beautiful landscapes that they look like they’re going to have to photograph themselves, don’t they?It is a pity that when we take the photo, the same thing happens to us, that the sky has too much light relative to the ground. and it turns out we’re burned, or the earth is too dark. Now we know it’s the fault of the limited dynamic range of our cameras ;-). Fortunately, we are not alone in danger. Using a neutral density gradient filter, we can help compensate for both exposures, reducing the difference between lights and shadows, and helping to expand the dynamic range of the scene by not having to choose between lights and shadows.
There are different types of forking, although in this case we will focus on the exposure, the exposure bracket involves taking several identical images in a frame, varying only the exposure in each frame, usually three images are taken, one exposed for the lights, one for the shadows and another with the “correct” values provided by the camera. Once we have the images with the different exposure values, we can attach them using Photoshop or another editing program so that all the information overlaps each other, giving us details in all areas of the image. For a better explanation click here?
With our “raw” file and the amount of information about the highlights and shadows it contains, the recovery of the highlights is simple and usually gives good results whenever we start from a good image. Working with basic settings such as shadows, highlights, blacks, whites and even contrasts, they will allow you to expand the dynamic range of your image satisfactorily.
If you doubt between exposing by shadows or lights, do it by shadows, these are harder to recover than lights, because in doing so generate a lot of noise, this is called histogram straightening, or what is the same, that the image tends more towards the highlights than towards the shadows, so that you can finally recover the image with less loss of quality than otherwise.
To faithfully represent what surrounds us, so that an image can transport us to the scene that existed at the time of filming, the closer we get to the original model, the more the viewer of our images can enter at that time. That’s why we never recommend abusing retouching or HDR, too many tweaks give a sense of unreality and take us away from the moment we wanted to represent through our image.
I hope this article was useful to you, that it brought you something and, above all, that it made you go looking for the camera, or open the computer to play and analyze images, histograms, lights and shadows. Practicing? Oh, and don’t forget to share if you think this could be useful to someone else. Thank you and soon.