Al Beatty Loc: Boise, Idaho

Hi group,

I seem to remember reading several years ago the following regarding stops of light (dynamic range) for:

1. Human eye = 20
2. DSLR = 13 - 15
3. Better quality monitor = 9
4. 4-color inkjet printer = 7

I've completed several Google/Wikipedia searches and have not found confirmation. Do any of you have a website that could provide this information? Maybe I'm just miss-remembering the stops-of-light information. That happens too often today as I get older. <G>Take care & ...

PeterBergh

DXOMark publish dynamic ranges for many digital cameras.

Steve DeMott Loc: St. Louis, Missouri (Oakville area)

Here's a couple of sites on DR
Dynamic Range of Eye
https://wolfcrow.com/blog/notes-by-dr-optoglass-dynamic-range-of-the-human-eye/
Camera DR
https://www.camerastuffreview.com/en/camera-guide/review-dynamic-range-of-60-camera-s
Printer DR
https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/1715/how-do-i-generate-high-quality-prints-with-an-ink-jet-printer?rq=1
Moniter DR
http://lcdtech.info/en/tests/dynamic.range.htm

Hope this helps

Strodav Loc: Houston, Tx

Cambridge in Color is probably the best website out there for the understanding of the science behind human vision and photography. Here are two articles that can answer your questions.

https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/cameras-vs-human-eye.htm
https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/dynamic-range.htm

Human vision is tricky to describe because of local adaptation. If the pupil stays the same size, like looking at a srgb calibrated computer screen indoors, then the dynamic range is about 12 stops (2^12 = 4096:1 contrast ratio). If your eyes are young, its more, it they are old like mine, a little less. If the pupil opens and closes then the dynamic range is about 24 stops (2^24 = 16,777,216:1 contrast ratio). You can see this by going from indoors to outdoors on a bright day. At first it is very bright, then your pupil closes down and you can handle the light. A good dslr is not too bad a match to the eye under controlled lighting conditions. The same thing goes for looking at a monitor and print. You eye will adapt to the highlights and shadows.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

👍👍 Exactly. I think the DSLR DR is a bit optimistic. 11-12 stops (at base ISO) is probably more realistic for the best.

Al Beatty Loc: Boise, Idaho

My thanks to all of you who offered your ideas. The reason I mention this complicated subject: While laying awake at 3:00 am pondering things I had a wild thought about digital cameras and the medium we use to observe their output. I've reviewed all of the links shared by UHH members in this thread (and several others) and have concluded (rightly or wrongly) that on the average a digital camera's picture can have a dynamic range (DR) of about 1/2 of what a human eye can see. AND the screens or printed medium we view those pictures on usually have less dynamic range than do the eye or the camera. I think the only way to expand the perceived DR is by assembling several photos using HDR software of some type. Oh well, I'm over thinking the subject and will get back to work editing some pictures in PS. Thanks again for your responses. Take care & ...

Strodav Loc: Houston, Tx

The human eye has less dynamic range than the world around us, but with local adaptation we can see into darkness, even to a point where color disappears, and the very brightly lit, like snow on a bright clear day, just not at the same time. The camera does the same thing. If you are shooting a dark scene, raise the ISO, open the aperture and slow down the shutter. If its a bright scene, do the opposite. You are sliding the dynamic range of the camera up and down to fit, to "see", the part of the scene you want the camera to capture. No different than the human visual system. When you go to display you are mapping the brightest part of the captured image to the bright part of the display and the darkest part of the image to the darkest part of the display. The stuff in the middle gets mapped (compressed) to fit. Same thing when you print, but local adaptation is more important because the more light you put on a reflective print the brighter it gets, the less light the darker. This idea of sliding the camera settings up and down the dynamic range of the scene and compressing for output is something we do without thinking about it.

chrisg-optical Loc: New York, NY

Film has a claimed DR of 13...(Kodak)... interesting.

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

Personally, I would have rated the human eye higher.

CaptainBobBrown

Yeah, I've been thinking for years that the next big break through in photography will have to be cameras with the dynamic range of the human eye/brain combo. Maybe instead of a physical 'camera' it will be a brain implant which can transfer the eye's visual signals to an external receiver, i.e. a photo transducer, but as sensor technologies evolve towards nano pixel sized sensors we may get closer to human scale dynamic range. Meanwhile I'll keep underestimating exposure requirements for BIFs so all birds appear black against the sky even though I can clearly see their colors with my unaided eyes.

xt2 Loc: British Columbia, Canada

No surprise God does a better job than Canon, Nikon, Fuji, et al....

imagemeister Loc: mid east Florida

Or, thousands of years of evolution ...

Strodav Loc: Houston, Tx

If you are interested in evolution, this is well worth the read: https://phys.org/news/2018-05-gene-survey-reveals-facets-evolution.html

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Regarding evolution, if you lock a thousand monkeys in a room with typewriters for thousands of years, will they ever produce war and peace? (“Welcome to the Monkey house”). Always provocative to read Vonnegut right after reading on “On the Origin of the Species” when considering if a designer was ever involved.

Strodav Loc: Houston, Tx

As a practical statistician the answer to the question is that it is possible they will reproduce war and peace, or the bible, or little red riding hood... Now to be more precise, the probability of producing War and Peace is not zero. In general, the known universe is a infinite number of random variables and the vast majority follow a bell shaped curve, a normal distribution. The bell shape curve has tails that go to infinity and they are closer and closer to zero the further they get from the mean, but there is possibility no matter how improbable.