TSHDGTL

As far as human dynamic range is concerned, look out a window inside your home and notice the interior in your peripheral vision. My camera doesn't even come close.

TSHDGTL

Just did an experiment. For the exterior i had to have 1/320s @ f4.5, iso 200. For the interior I needed 1/10s @ f4.5, iso 200. So around 5 stops on top of the cameras dynamic range.

bclaff Loc: Sherborn, MA (18mi SW of Boston)

I'm continually surprised at sweeping hyperbole based on personal observation.
If you don't photograph in low light or need high dynamic range than naturally you don't care.
But I can assure you that a significant percentage of photographers; wildlife, landscape, astro, etc. do care (and for a reason).
BTW, there are far fewer than 7 billion people using a digital camera; another example of hyperbole.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Right on point...

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

I wasn’t writing about photographers... I was writing about the viewers of their work. Average Joe and Mary don’t care whether you got a stop more noise than the next guy.

Yes, if you only come out in dim light, or you make huge prints from high ISO images, DR and high ISO performance certainly matter. But a one or two stop difference at the margin is rarely a showstopper. Less than ideal? Surely. Will you and I notice? Yeah.

However, I would never carry three times the weight or spend three times as much for something I can rent for the short period of time (<5%) that I might need it. The rest of the time, I’ll go with efficiency.

It would be a different story if 95% of my work were low light, or gigantic prints to be viewed from abnormally close range.

BebuLamar

DXO measured dynamic range in EV and EV is logarithmic. It's log base 2.

bclaff Loc: Sherborn, MA (18mi SW of Boston)

It's a logarithm of a linear measure.

bclaff Loc: Sherborn, MA (18mi SW of Boston)

That's a self-selected sample. They only see the photos that were "keepers" and for some photographers dynamic range and low light performance is what makes the difference.

A stop is a huge difference to me and to many others.

Once again you put forward your own personal experience and preferences as if they are universal; they are not.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

No, that's not the point at all. The point is that sometimes it matters and sometimes it doesn't. Just use the right tool for the job.

If you almost never print, you work under reasonable lighting, and you display 95% of your work on screens, do you really need ISO 2.6 million? Do you really need to carry around that much weight, bulk, and perhaps, debt? Conversely, if you make wall-size landscapes of industrial properties or nature, photograph models to make life-size point-of-purchase store displays, or if you photograph birds in flight in dim, late afternoon light, can you really use what I do (Micro 4/3)?

The problem I have with this site is that there is a sort of DR snobbery here... It's like a "Mine's bigger than yours" locker room game. Or a "How big is your engine?" game played by street 'rodders. Never mind that *any* engine will do if you need to be stuck on the freeway creeping along in 5:00 traffic every day! Plush seats, a Bluetooth speakerphone, nice stereo, and great air conditioner are more important there!

I worked in a pro lab for over three decades. Some of the worst photos I've ever seen were made with the finest gear on the planet. Some of the best were made with point-and-shoot cameras, or worse.

In the vast majority of cases, it's not what you have, but how you use it that counts. If it didn't, over 90% of today's imaging would not be done with smartphones.

Knowledge is often more (or as) important as equipment. More photographers ASPIRE to greatness than know how to achieve it. Very few photographers really know what to do with the finest instruments available to them. Yet many more wannabes have expensive gear than actually use it.

Many wannabes will ask around, "What should I buy?" They are told, "Nikon D850" or, "Sony a7rIII" or "Canon D1x..." or whatever's hot when they ask. And because they have the cash (or credit), they buy it. Then they ask, "What's the best lens for it?" Obviously, they have no clue about the camera, haven't taken a course, haven't read the manual, haven't invested the time or mental energy. Hell, they don't even know that they don't know where to start! So the expensive camera sits in the closet for years, used once or twice in frustration, and abandoned out of embarrassment.

I dated a girl in college whose father was a wealthy heart surgeon. He had a red '62 Corvette, a mountain house, a beach house, and a party boat. His wife wore high fashion to the grocery store. One day, he ordered two Nikon FTn bodies and six prime Nikkor lenses, with a big, custom-made black leather case to hold them. He ran a few rolls of film through them and got back one blank roll from when the leader didn't engage the sprockets, one fogged roll from when he opened the back before rewinding the film, and a couple of rolls of grossly underexposed slides (meter set to ASA 400 when Kodachrome 25 was loaded). He had thought that buying the finest gear he could afford would somehow make him a good photographer. He called me an ass when I politely asked if he had read the manual. That's when I knew I didn't want him as my future father in law! I didn't want him operating on my mother's heart, either.

When the good doctor died, his daughter found the camera bag in his front hall closet. It had several rolls of film in it that had expired about two years after he had bought the camera. The receipt for the film (and the cameras and lenses) was still in the bag. So she knew he hadn't used it again. He had quietly given up and stowed it away. She said he had bought a nice Polaroid soon after...

The same thing had happened a few years older. I had a rich aunt in Chicago (Hinsdale). She had just buried her second husband (owner of a Buick dealership), so we went to see her. She took me to his "toy" room, as she called it, and said, "I don't care about any of this... take anything you want!" I took the Nikon FTn in the black leather case, with 50mm f/1.4 lens. It still had a roll of slide film in it. The counter said 13.

They had returned from Hong Kong, where he bought the camera, about two years before he died. He exposed less than half a roll, before telling my aunt, "it's too complicated." The slides were from Hong Kong...

Hopefully, automation makes that sort of pattern less likely now. But still... Aspirations often lead folks into a morass of impenetrability when they have less patience than ego.

Most of the masters of the last 100 years used very good, but not always the best, equipment. Chance favors the prepared mind.

bclaff Loc: Sherborn, MA (18mi SW of Boston)

It favors those who understand the capabilities and limitations of their equipment; that includes things like dynamic range.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Agreed!

blackest Loc: Ireland

bclaff = Bill Claff

Now I feel kinda stupid arguing with the fella that put together the data ..

How far wrong am I?

bclaff Loc: Sherborn, MA (18mi SW of Boston)

I thought your initial post was pretty good and I was just clarifying that human vision and digital cameras are fundamentally different including on what dynamic range means.

Who I am and what I do gives me experience but what I say and how I back it up is what matters. I try to communicate well but sometimes I fail.

I'm quite sure you aren't stupid; just as I'm equally sure we are all, including myself, ignorant in some areas.
I try to be a little less ignorant every day.