selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

As you can see with my earlier post of the trees, you win some, you lose some. Severe underexposure just doesn't work well with large smooth areas of tonality like the sky or still water. The raw file simply runs out of bits and you end up with banding and posterization.

ISO invariance is an interesting phenomenon but, like ETTR, it can be carried too far.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

I have tested my 5D3 previously (so I know where the limit is), but I don’t have the data handy. I’ll re-run it with raw digger and correlate with the “blinkies” and post the result - of course it will only be accurate for my camera, but worth the test.

Cheers

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

If the blinkies thing were variable from camera to camera, there would need to be a way to calibrate it - but there isn't.

Canon may use a different threshold for blinkies than Nikon or Sony but I would bet that it's the same for all Canons. It simply doesn't make any sense for Canon to vary their trigger for the blinkies from one model to the next. I would be surprised if it is any different for your Canon than for any other model they make. Why would they do that? Nor is it likely that their manufacturing process would use a different threshold for your 5D MkIII and someone else's.

Occam's razor tells us that, "Best Explanation Is the Simplest." As R.G. said it in a separate post, "BTW I think the blinkies will be triggered by the most significant bit of the raw value turning to 1, not the others all turning to 1. That way only the MSB needs to be monitored." That's the simplest explanation of all.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

And I would be surprised if they weren’t. Why would you think that with different models having different sensors, DR, S/N, amplifiers, A/Ds and processors, that they would be the same? Now it may be that it’s based on setting the 13th bit of a 14 bit A/D (or the 11th of a 12bit) or it may be that it’s based on a voltage comparator on the input to the A/D, and if so, it may or may not be factory adjustable, and it may or may not be affected by in camera settings, or it may be none of the above, but there’s one thing you can count on - there’s a tolerance involved, just as there is on AF that requires MFA.

Now it would be great if designer’s kept Occam’s razor in mind, but they clearly don’t - look at the complexity of a modern DSLR such that it requires a 400-500 page user’s manual. They’ve clearly not learned what it took me a long time to learn as a designer - that the simplest system solution is the best, and without sounding ethnocentric, let me just add that Japanese designers are the worst when it comes to adding a zillion features vs simplicity.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

I would expect them to be the same because they would follow the same basic design parameters and standards. The software is programmed to produce predictable results.