From the course: Photography Foundations: Composition

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Dynamic range

Dynamic range

From the course: Photography Foundations: Composition

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Dynamic range

In photography dynamic range is the measure of the darkest thing to lightest thing that you can represent. A camera has a particular dynamic range, and so does a printer. Even different printer papers have different dynamic ranges. Your eyes also have a dynamic range, and their dynamic range is larger than what any current photographic technology can offer. This means that very often your camera will capture very different detail in the light and dark parts of your scene than what you actually saw with your eye while you were there shooting. Take a look at this. This is pretty close to what I could see, in terms of dynamic range, while I was standing at this scene. I could see detail in the very bright parts of the scene and detail in the shadowy parts of the scene. If I point a camera at that same scene though, I most likely will get something like this. Here I can see detail in the highlights but not in the shadows. I could choose to dial in some overexposure and then I get a shot…

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