Dynamic range

Simulator

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What dynamic range is

Dynamic range is the span between the darkest shadow and the brightest highlight that a camera can record with detail, measured in stops. A sunset scene like the demo spans around 16 stops; no single exposure on most cameras can hold all of it.

• Stops of range

  Every stop doubles the brightness. Ten stops means the brightest recordable tone is about a thousand times brighter than the darkest; fifteen stops is over thirty thousand times.

• Highlight clipping

  When a digital sensor's pixels fill up, they all record the same maximum value. Clouds and skies turn into flat white patches, often with a hard edge, and the detail can't be recovered later.

• Shadow noise floor

  At the dark end, the faint signal sinks into the sensor's own electronic noise. Shadows turn grainy and colour-blotchy before going fully black.

• Exposure moves the window

  Exposure doesn't change how much range a camera has; it slides that window up or down the scene. Expose darker to save the sky, brighter to see into shadows. The histogram above shows the window moving.

• Film shoulders and toes

  Film doesn't clip abruptly. Colour negative compresses highlights into a long, soft shoulder and tolerates several stops of overexposure. Slide film has a narrow range and very little latitude either way.

• Log recording

  Cinema cameras store their wide range with a logarithmic curve that looks flat and grey straight out of camera. Colour grading then decides how to fit those stops onto a normal screen.

• ISO moves the window

  On a digital camera ISO is not sensitivity: the sensor always collects the same light. Rating a higher ISO places middle grey lower on the sensor's scale, so stops move out of the shadows and into the highlights. The total stays the same width; you are choosing where it sits. Rate up to hold a bright sky, down to keep shadow detail.

• Dual native ISO

  Many cinema sensors have two gain stages, often ISO 800 and 3200. At either one the shadows are as clean as that sensor gets, so the higher native buys highlight headroom without the noise you would pay for at an ISO in between. The Blackmagic PYXIS 12K is built this way, with about 16 stops available at both.

• Zebras

  Diagonal stripes a camera draws over areas that are at or near clipping, so you can lower exposure before you lose highlight detail.

• False colour

  An exposure tool that replaces the picture with colours by brightness: purple for crushed black, green for mid grey, yellow near clipping and red for clipped. It's standard on cinema monitors.