From the course: Photography Foundations: Exposure (part 1)
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The dynamic range of your eye
From the course: Photography Foundations: Exposure (part 1)
The dynamic range of your eye
- One of the many amazing things about the human eye is the incredible range of dark to light that you can perceive. When your eyes are completely adjusted to the dark, you can detect a single photon of light, yet in the daytime, you can take those same eyes outside, and see just fine in full-on sunlight. What's even more amazing is the range of light to dark that you can see at one time. That's called the dynamic range of your eye, and like everything else in photography, the range of your eye is measured in stops, or doublings of light. It varies, but most places if you look, you'll find that the human eye clocks in at around 18 to 20 stops worth of dynamic range, that's a contrast ratio of about a billion to one. Your camera, on the other hand, has a contrast range of about 12 to 14 stops, depending on the camera. In other words, your eye can see almost twice the dynamic range that your camera can. Okay, that's all well and good and fascinating, but so what? Well the so what is the…
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