Be careful of your words "always" and "better"; they depend on which standards are being used.

In December 1966, I and a friend were in downtown Lafayette IN when we saw a nifty looking HO model in the hobby store window. The only problem was that I had never seem a Burlington locomotive like that even though I was raised along the Burlington's mainline; my friend was sure that "Tyco wouldn't just make it up". (*) A few months later, as we had a "professional" slide presentation by Jim Boyd - a man whose photos were featured on the covers of magazines - I realized that I needed my own collection of photos that could be used to see what was used when.

This was the beginning of a hobby which passed fifty years a few years ago. If you visit the "Trains" Section, you will realize that they are seldom out of sunshine, and we don't care about clouds or a few ferns in the shadows. I have chosen to extend the same standards to all photos I take, so whether I use slide film {with its limited latitude} or JPEG {with its limited DR} I do not need nearly as much DR as you are assuming, nor does that extra DR provide anything I am interested in.

(*) I found out later that they had combined the silver color of CB&Q passenger locomotives {which was used with understated lettering} with lettering from CB&Q freight locomotives {which was used with dull gray color.
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