Sunlight, Contrast, and Exposure
By Carl Weese
There is a fairly common misperception that clear sunlight is "high contrast" light that challenges the capabilities of digital sensors and film. This isn’t so, but I think I know some of the reasons for the misperception.
Our perception of strong sunlight includes its harshness. In bright sun we squint, shade our eyes, reach for sunglasses. Sunlight feels harsh even though it can be flattering for some subjects. I like to photograph buildings in hard sunlight. People or flowers, not so much. But that's an aesthetic choice; it has nothing to do with the ability of photographic media to record a scene in strong sunlight in an accurate and convincing manner.
The dynamic range of a subject, and so the contrast we need to encompass on film or sensor, results from two distinct factors. First there is the reflectance of the subjects in the picture. Few natural objects reflect much less than 10% or much more than 90% of the light that falls on them (recall Ctein’s recent post dealing with the similar limit to the reflectance range of a photographic print). This means that under even lighting, sheer difference in subject reflectance is hard pressed to offer a 4.5 stop range: a white egg on a piece of black velvet is no problem even for a short range (high contrast) color transparency film. But if one part of a uniform subject—imagine a large piece of gray cloth, or a lawn seen from a distance—is in strong light and another in deep shadow, the difference in light reflected back to the camera can be enormous even though the subject is all one tone, a difference much greater than the potential reflectance range of different objects.
So the luminance range of a scene and the difficulty of recording it depends on the stuff in front of the camera, and even more on the nature of the light. Which brings us back to hard-edge, squint-inducing sunlight. When the sunlight comes from behind the camera ("near-axis") it is one of the lowest contrast situations you can encounter. All major surfaces of the subject receive precisely the same light. Axis light makes for shadows so narrow that they just don’t matter and we are left with only the reflectance range of the subject matter itself, not even five stops. Black and white film swallows this range so easily that a print from such a scene on normal contrast paper is apt to be dull and lifeless. Grade 3 or 4 is likely to be needed (or a Zone System style expansion development can be given to the negative). With a typical DSLR camera this range is so short that we’ll probably want to override the camera’s meter and add some exposure in order to "expose to the right" so the recorded data falls in the rich right-hand side of the histogram, then adjust the tones to a full range later, like changing paper grades in the traditional darkroom.
Waterbury, CT, 2008. The sun is behind and above the camera, near-axis light. The only significant shadow is that of the stop sign, and because it lands on light sidewalk, it's bright and open. A shadow on a light surface gives a middle tone, not a dark one.
What happens when the subject is lit from the side, say at an angle between 45° and 90°? Now the shadows widen and we probably want to see into them. That means the film or sensor has to record the reflectance range of the subject matter plus the difference of intensity in the light falling on highlights and shadows. But this is still no big deal.
Torrington, CT, 2009. Even with the sunlight fully from the side, the tonal range is no strain for the sensor of my Pentax K20D, in fact I raised the ACR slider for Black Point a bit to reinforce the deepest tones.
As the highly informative data sheets that used to come in film boxes would have told us, there is generally a three stop difference between full sunlight and “open shade” (open shade is a subject position where direct sunlight is blocked but the light of the open sky is available). In practice this means that the sunlight parts of the picture are receiving at most three stops more light than the broad (open) shadows.
Torrington, CT, 2009. The street and wall are in "open shade," lit only by the overhead blue sky with no direct or bounced light, but the sensor manages to hold detail all the way up to the white signs in full sun. I used a modest amount of both Recovery and Fill Light in ACR.
The exposure difference between light and shade is often less than three stops because of light bounce from objects in the environment. If there are clouds in the sky, shadow values can rise more than a stop because white clouds reflect sunlight down to the ground. So a scene with a typical distribution of subject values in a situation where there is a bit of bounce light and a few clouds in the sky may add only two stops of dynamic range to the reflectance range of the subject. So maybe seven stops. This pushes the range transparency film can record, but is well within range for modern sensors, and a piece of cake for negative film, as long as the exposure is set correctly.
All the dynamic range in the world won’t help unless the exposure makes use of that range intelligently.
Meters for reflected light, beginning with the earliest selenium cell units down to the computer-enhanced systems in modern digital cameras, all work on the basic principal that the average of values in a scene will be "in the Middle." Yes, modern equipment uses highly sophisticated algorithms to guess when a scene isn’t actually of middle value, but I've yet to encounter a system that won't render a snow scene as middle, or maybe light, gray, instead of a more accurate bright (but not burned out) white. A scene with mostly dark or shadowed objects and just a few smaller bright areas will also give the smartest camera systems fits.
More important for understanding how to expose, no photographic recording medium records values centered on what we perceive (and metering systems measure) as Middle Value.
Color transparency films, Polaroid direct-positive materials, and digital sensors all have a "High Middle." The correct exposure of middle values is not in the center of the available tonal range of the film/sensor, but closer to the high values. That is, if middle value subjects are exposed correctly, there is a relatively limited ability to record brighter values and a greater ability to read into the shadows. Also, the cutoff with overexposure, to clear film or clipped data, is abrupt and clear-cut. The slide into darkness is gradual and determined by our tolerance for muddier color, grain, or noise. Kodachrome could hold detail a good 2.3 stops above Middle, and as much as 3.5 stops below, depending on the specific picture and the way the transparency was to be used—viewed by projection, reproduced for the four color press through process separations, etc. When film separations were replaced by scanning beginning in the '80s, chrome films got effectively slower and more centered because scanners could retain more information from the thin highlights and less from the dense shadows, compared to good process camera seps. Digital sensors are rapidly improving, but even the best have less ability to read into the highlights than into the shadows.
Waterbury, CT, 2009. Full sunlight in the foreground and background, deep shadow (much darker than open shade) in the middle. I set the camera to "sunny 16" (1/320th @ ƒ/8 with effective E.I. of 80) to keep the highlights from burning out, then used a little Recovery in ACR to give them more substance along with a lot of Fill Light (stupid name but useful tool) to bring out some sense of texture in the deep shadows. Note the extra tone in the lower surface of the I-beams from light bounced back up from the pavement.
Negative films, either properly exposed and developed B&W or C-41 color negative, are also off-center, in an even more lopsided manner, but in the opposite direction. There is limited ability to read into the shadows, but an enormous ability to read up into areas much brighter than the Middle. In the picture above, using "sunny 16" with a negative film would be a disaster, leaving blank film in the shadows. To expose this scene on negative film, we need to measure the deep shadows and expose two stops less. The shadows will have full detail and while the fire hydrant technically will be overexposed, it will have plenty of tonal separations in the negative and so print or scan quite easily. On transparency film, all you could do is use sunny 16 and accept pure black in all the shadow areas. Or bring in an entire film crew to light the underpass.
Now for a digression: for as long as I’ve been using black and white films (since the early 1960s) experienced workers knew that to get the best tonality you needed to expose more (at least a stop more) and develop a bit less, than the manufacturer’s recommendation. In effect, the established standardized rating (known first as ASA and then ISO) was really about a one stop push. So Tri-X at its official speed of 400 wasn’t as bad tonally as Tri-X pushed to 800 or 1600, but it wasn't as good as when rated at 200 or 100. At the official rating, shadow values are weak and difficult to print even just two stops under Middle, and as film is pushed/underexposed this keeps getting worse while extended development makes negative highlights denser without necessarily improving their detail. (Thus comes the dictum of David Vestal about how to handle B&W film, "don’t underexpose, don’t overdevelop.") Careful densitometric testing of film speed to the Zone System standard of Zone I at 0.10 above film base plus fog (fb+f) also generally results in a tested speed one or one-and-a-half stops below the manufacturer’s rating. With proper handling, B&W film retains rich detail two stops or a little more below Middle and three, four, or even five stops above (with some darkroom work to retain those highlights.)
So, with negative film, you use an exposure that makes sure no important subject matter is exposed more than two stops below Middle, and know that the film will easily record subjects three or four stops above Middle, or even more with special development. When color negative films took a giant leap forward in quality starting in the late 70s, the big news was that they suddenly offered sharpness, fine grain, and saturation rivaling chrome films, but with at least the dynamic range of properly handled b&w negative films. Art photographers understood the significance and adopted color negative film immediately, while commercial photographers and, for a while, photojournalists, had to continue to use transparency films because clients refused to adapt away from the workflow of transparency film—but that’s a digression I won’t continue here.
With color transparency films, you make sure that no highlight is brighter than 2.0 or 2.3 (depends on the specific film) stops above Middle. Negatives or positives, you are trying to avoid winding up with clear film instead of recorded subject data. All of this means that with negatives you expose for the shadows and accept the generous highlights. With transparencies you expose for the highlights and accept what you get in the shadows, or fill them in with artificial light. With digital capture, it’s like transparency film, except there’s more range at both ends, while the short end with abrupt cutoff is still in the highlights so they are the critical exposure set point. The "paper towel test" is useful for getting this right with individual cameras.
Torrington, CT, 2009
Even full backlight is within range using a few tricks. In the shot above, there are bright buildings behind the camera, catching full sunlight over the roofs of the low buildings in the picture. A lot of light is bounced back to the building on the right. The full sunlight at center-left is glancing along the pavement at an acute angle which lowers its intensity. The exposure of 1/200th @ ƒ/5.6 is almost two stops more than "sunny 16" but everything is within range. What happened here is that a backlit subject has another backlit object behind it, so the sensor doesn't have to deal with the full power of direct sunlight.
So don't be afraid of the sun! The real problem of shooting in full sunlight is to find subjects that are flattered by that all-important point-source in the sky; the technical problems are really negligible. You can see more sunlight pictures among recent postings at my Working Pictures daily web log.
Next time, some lighting situations so much more demanding than sunlight that they really do present difficult, even impossible, problems not just for sensors but for negative films.
Carl
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Gorgeous photos, wonderful article. Thank you.
Posted by: Nick Wright | Sunday, 03 May 2009 at 03:40 PM
A very significant contribution! Thanks a lot!
However, the claim in the caption of the 1st picture is wrong. The brightness of a shadow is not influenced by the brightness of the medium it falls on!
You can produce a completely black shadow on a totally white background. Try this: take a white paper, put a non-transparent object in front of it, wrap the whole setup with a black cloth and take a photo with a flash a little bit off the camera axis. You will get a wonderful black shadow on white paper.
Actually, the second picture shows two shadows on the same light-gray surface and the one in front is distinctly brighter than the one in the back. A clear indication, that the surface is unimportant.
What really decides about how deep the shadow is, is the fact, whether there are objects reflecting light into the shadows or not. In a city you usually have enough walls around, acting as reflectors, in order to get reasonably open shadows.
To make a long story short, the shadow in the first picture is not medium tone due to the light surface but due to objects like the wall on the right side, bouncing light into the shadow.
Regards,
Wolfgang
Posted by: Wolfgang Kuechle | Sunday, 03 May 2009 at 04:21 PM
Carl,
excellent article!!!
Posted by: Martin | Sunday, 03 May 2009 at 04:40 PM
I 'grew up' shooting K64, then Velvia and Provia, so I got used to their unforgiving handling of highlights. It has taken me a surprisingly long time to wrap my head around digital capture's handling of sunlit scenes, and to overcome an intuitive dread of mid-day sun cultivated by working with chrome films. After more than six years shooting digital I still have to get past that initial shudder when I see stark shadows. Yet it's so liberating to get past the 'Velvia aesthetic' of subdued subject contrast range and neon color. Oddly enough, looking at Edward Hopper's paintings has been the best antidote for me.
Posted by: Geoff Wittig | Sunday, 03 May 2009 at 05:35 PM
Carl, thanks a lot for this understandable explanation of light intensities and the effect on film and sensor. I thought I had a fair understanding of this topic, but your description made me correct my perception especially on the highlight topic.
Posted by: Markus Spring | Sunday, 03 May 2009 at 06:50 PM
"In effect, the established standardized rating (known first as ASA and then ISO) was really about a one stop push."
Gawd, I wish somebody had f***ing told me then. I did everything by the book (many books), and I always had underexposed negatives.
Posted by: Eolake Stobblehouse | Sunday, 03 May 2009 at 07:31 PM
That's a very lucid description, Carl. Well done.
My related anecdote is about the disappointment I had to swallow when I got back some transparencies of an important portrait shoot some years ago. I thought I was being clever by using my client's new Nikon D100 as a substitute for Polaroid preview shots. I set up and adjusted the lighting and exposure until everything was perfect in the D100's playback picture and histogram. Then I plugged the strobes into my Hasselblad and took the "real" shots on Astia.
What a disaster. The trannies looked like there had been no fill light of any kind. What you point out in this article about the different behaviour of the various recording media - neg versus pos versus digital - was a serious trap for the unwary.
Posted by: Craig Norris | Sunday, 03 May 2009 at 08:06 PM
Thanks to all for reactions.
Wolfgang, there are many factors that influence the brightness of a shadow, including environmental reflections. But the brightness of the surface is important: click on the first illustration for a closer look and follow the shadow of the stop sign post as it transitions from the middle gray asphalt to the bright gray concrete sidewalk.
Posted by: Carl | Sunday, 03 May 2009 at 08:38 PM
For some reason, I spent my whole film life tied slavishly to rated speeds for normal development (though I very frequently pushed TRI-X). It was, after all, an official standard! Seems kinda dumb in hindsight. I'd read about establishing personal ASAs in the 1970s, but somehow rejected the concept. Maybe it was as simple as not feeling I could afford to give up the speed (I guess this is the photographic equivalent of "we need the eggs!").
I did eventually figure out that my Kodak Plus-X negatives printed better than my Ilford FP-4 negatives because the slightly purple base tone of the Plus-X increased the contrast of the Ilford variable-contrast paper.
Posted by: David Dyer-Bennet | Sunday, 03 May 2009 at 10:25 PM
Great article. This is how we learned exposure back in the day, and it's surprising how much you sometimes need a refresher.
Posted by: Jeremy | Sunday, 03 May 2009 at 10:26 PM
Wow, did I need that! Thank you, Carl Weese.
Wolfgang, Carl: apples, oranges. Let me see if I understand your exchange about shadow tonality, or lack thereof:
When there is absolutely no ambient light or secondary source, shadows are simply not illuminated--the surface is literally invisible. Let's call this "absolute shadow" (which is, btw and AFAIK, an exceedingly unlikely occurrence outdoors in daylight (on Earth, anway)). On the other hand, any ambient light or secondary direct source falling on the shadowed surface will fill-light it, in which case it is just another lit surface, albeit more dimly lit than other parts of the scene.
Please correct me if I've misunderstood. And thank you both for forcing me to puzzle this out.
Posted by: robert e | Monday, 04 May 2009 at 01:23 AM
Nice to see a lucid account, with explanation, of things it took me a fair amount of trial and error to figure out.
Posted by: Martin Doonan | Monday, 04 May 2009 at 03:55 AM
Carl, very interesting. Would you rate current colour neg film like Fuji 400H likewise at say 200 or 160ASA?
Posted by: Guy Batey | Monday, 04 May 2009 at 04:17 AM
Robert, I read somewhere that there's no "open shade" on the moon because there is no atmosphere to scatter sunlight. Sounds like your idea of absolute shadow. Light scatter in the atmosphere is what limits open shade to a three stop differential from sunlight. If the shade isn't "open" (like the underpass shot) then it can be more than three stops darker. Or bounce from surrounding objects or clouds in the sky can make the difference less than three stops.
There are other factors too. A vertical surface like a wall is in a better position to catch bounce light from another wall than a horizontal surface like a road. With the camera pointing down, a nearby shadow on the ground will look lighter than one farther away because of the viewing angle (that's happening in the Hot Bar Keep shot).
Guy, I haven't shot color negative in many years now, so I don't know about current films. Give it a try by bracketing some typical subjects. See if the lower speed gives richer shadow detail, or just unnecessary added density.
Posted by: Carl Weese | Monday, 04 May 2009 at 07:00 AM
Photos taken on the surface of the Moon show plenty of light in the shadows. While its true that there's no atmosphere, the surface (and spacesuits)will bounce light around.
Unless of course it was all done in a sound stage with aliens looking over our shoulder.
Posted by: Kevin | Monday, 04 May 2009 at 08:12 AM
Its not the sun I fear, its those few clouds in the sky on a sunny day that drive me crazy. ch
Posted by: Charlie H | Monday, 04 May 2009 at 10:04 AM
Deep, black shadows give pictures a meaning. Your clean technique turns every scene into a dry and unemotional record of so-called reality.
Posted by: cb | Monday, 04 May 2009 at 10:21 AM
Carl, that's a very succinct explanation and I appreciate that it covers both film and digital, for comparison sake.
Guy: Yes, in my relatively short experience, 400H loves being exposed at 200, or even 100 in the right light, esp. if you meter the right thang. (I got this info from a interview of a pretty well-respected wedding photographer who shoots 400H almost exclusively -- maybe Jonathon Canlas - his work is nice). Sometimes, with 400H you can just let the highlights blow a bit and can get some lovely effects (a look not available in digital without a whole heck of a lot of computer time, if at all).
Posted by: Jeff Glass | Monday, 04 May 2009 at 12:45 PM
Thanks for the further clarifications.
To be fair (and obvious), perceptual or photographic "absolute shadow" (zero light or tone) is not uncommon, where a surface is merely dark enough that its luminance doesn't register (clipping). But this is an artifact rather than a representation of nature. If we could somehow render this in a truly nonreflective medium, it would, I'm sure, look as unnatural as it is.
To put this in some perspective: the nature, perception and representation of shadows challenged painters for centuries. “No shadow is black. It always has a color. Nature knows only colors … white and black are not colors.” (Renoir)
Posted by: robert e | Monday, 04 May 2009 at 01:38 PM
i certainly take your point about the range of tonal values we generally encounter in sunlit scenes and the overall sufficiency of our media, but i think you are kind of sidestepping one of the issues which makes a lot of people yearn for more dr in digital sensors (discounting another one of the issues, which is that too many people expose poorly). in your scenes the point of the photographs is, largely, the contrasts of light and shadow. while the scene may have 'really' looked like your rendering, in our perception we probably recall more detail in the shadows, because we can easily adjust and see into them with our eyes in real life. so when a lot of us take a sunlit picture with a person or people in it, shadows (especially on the face) are something we are trying to overcome, not something we want to emphasize for dramatic effect. that is, we mainly just want to pull detail out of the dark pits where the eyes reside, without making it look really nasty. yeah, sure, we could have used fill flash, but that isn't always possible or even desireable. with bw neg film, this was pretty easy; so far i've found it more difficult with digital sensors, though one thing i think helps is to not increase iso from the camera's base, eg, my 5d handles sunlit shadows better at iso 100 than at iso 200 (it seems like most users have taken a cursory look at frames made at the two isos and concluded they look equally good, and then proceed to use 200 as their everyday base iso. but doing so sacrifices some ability to retain sunlit highlights and still bring shadows up in a natural-looking way).
overall i think that the discussions about how much dr we need to photograph a scene have been talking past each other a bit. you and ctein are talking about using the full range of tones from white to grey to black to represent the values in the scene as lit, but other people want to be able to hold detail in clouds and still go down into deep shadows as if they were the middle grey. that is, they want to be able to view their photograph as if it were a real scene they are looking at with their eyes. the difference is a little bit like the way many people like their photos to be 100% in sharp focus front to back, rather than accepting a single plane of focus as the camera (and their eyes, but not necessarily their whole perceptual system) see the scene in a particular moment.
personally i like to see what the camera sees--it is more interesting to me to get exposed to a specific point of view--and likewise, i think the arguments for dr sufficiency are premised on representing a camera's eye view of the world. but it's no surprise that people still want to see what their mind's eye did.
Posted by: chris | Monday, 04 May 2009 at 02:31 PM
Robert, on the Renoir quote, it happens my wife is a painter--classic academy training and a lifetime of experience--and she wouldn't be caught dead owning a tube of black paint. All shadow values in her work are mixed from deep colors, just as all grays are mixed from pigments with intense but complementary hues.
cb, I find deep shadows that retain descriptive power vastly more interesting than a print area that looks like spilled India ink.
Chris, there are plenty of daylight situations that exceed the ability of film as well as sensors, but sunlight from front or side doesn't get there. Many subjects in overcast light present a much more difficult dynamic range than sunlight...but that will be the subject of a future article.
Posted by: Carl Weese | Monday, 04 May 2009 at 03:26 PM
Dear Chris,
We're not talking past each other. I'm not sure you got the import of my last column. Recall what I said in my last column about having difficulty coming up with photographs that even used up the full exposure range of my camera. There were very few of them, and none of them exceeded the 11 stop range. I could have produced exactly the look you're after from the two photographs in my column; I just don't happen to think it's an attractive look for those photographs.
The problem we are concerned with is mostly an aesthetic one; it is rarely a technical one. A good digital camera can record all the visible tones in almost every scene without clipping. The problem is rendering those tones in a way you'd find attractive. People who want a photograph that "looks like what they see" don't realize that this requires making aesthetic choices, not technical ones. Simply capturing ever-increasing exposure ranges doesn't address that.
There are many artistic solutions to the problem: the classic S-shaped characteristic curve, HDR-like tonal mappings, and even a straight linear rendition, ala Stephen Johnson's Digital Parks project from the 1990s. All of them present problems with "realism" because all of them are mapping a subject luminance range to a much shorter display/print range.
In summary, the arguments for which you referred to as "DR sufficiency" don't depend on accepting the camera's view of the world. My camera has sufficient range to capture everything in the scene for 98% of what I photograph. Producing an appealing photograph from that is a whole different problem.
There are technical problems associated with making such photographs, but they're not in the sensor; they're in the optics! To record a 12 stop subject luminance range with good tonal separation in the shadows means that flare and light scattering have to be held down to 0.01%! That is much, much harder for lens and camera designers to achieve than you might imagine. And the longer the exposure range you want to capture, the worse the problem becomes
~ pax \ Ctein
[ Please excuse any word-salad. MacSpeech in training! ]
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Posted by: ctein | Monday, 04 May 2009 at 06:22 PM
well, i guess we're still talking past each other then. it looks like robert e was taking the point though.
i'll try once more. consider a subject on the street. lots of patches of bright sun, reflective cars, etc, but also lots of shade, from open shade to the deep shadow of doorways, etc. you expose close to the sunny 16 rule to retain proper color and detail in sky and highlight areas. but your main subject, let's say, is a face, and that face is facing away from the sun (or even facing away, and already in shade as well). sure, it is no problem to represent the face as shadowed, but since that is the main subject, we really want to locally raise it a bit. now the skin, which might have been just above grey had it been sunlit, is at best that minus 3 stops (using your own estimate for shadows). in other words, the region you hope is about in the middle is now about 5 stops below the highlights, but we'd like to raise it back up 2~3 stops. but wait--that's just the cheeks. now go into the eyes, possibly quite dark eyes--god help you if the subject is wearing a hat--and we're talking about regions where the image quality is falling apart. if you were to raise them up along with the rest of the face, they would look terrible and unnatural.
hypothetically, if we had say two stops more range over what a good sensor (5d would be my standard, but a lot are as good or better) gives us now, raising those shadows selectively to craft a picture more representative of our perceptions would be much easier. i am not saying i 'need' two more stops to do photography, obviously. but i would have plently of uses for it if i had it. and we can perhaps agree that sunlit scenes would only be a start, and not the most significant gain.
Posted by: chris | Monday, 04 May 2009 at 06:56 PM
Chris, consider the work of Alex Webb and Constantin Manos. They work with short-scale Kodachrome in harsh sunlight, but construct their pictures to read entirely from the highlights. If a person's face is turned out of the sun, they wait. Then shoot when the architecture of the picture fits in the range of K64. They don't do spot news.
There's a reason news photographers have a flash mounted on their cameras. They aren't making art, they can't wait, they're making recognizable shots of politicians or celebrities, and that calls for exactly what you've described: fill flash to open the micro shadows of three dimensional objects--like people--in harsh sunlight. It looks awful, but it gets published. Back in the twenties, the guys shooting for the Daily News with Speed Graphics carried as many giant flashbulbs as sheets of film in the 4x5 holders...for the same reason.
Posted by: Carl Weese | Monday, 04 May 2009 at 07:49 PM
Carl, I saw Alex Webb doing a "show and tell" recently, and he's been using his dwindling "stash" of his favored, discontinued Kodachrome 200, though he admits that he did also shoot some K64 recently. Costa Manos and David Alan Harvey are now shooting with the Leica M8 and 28mm (35 equivalent) lenses. Have a look at Costa's wonderful "Magnum in Motion" essay and also click on "Leica M8" and have a look at his digital work, it looks just like his previous work with K64!
Posted by: Bob Casner | Monday, 04 May 2009 at 10:47 PM
ctein: i'll take your post (evidently written before my second post, which i likewise wrote before yours was up) as proof that, in fact, we're still talking past each other. how was it unclear that i was referring precisely to aesthetic choices? and the point is, lots of people would like to have a technical base which could provide more freedom to make new, or at least their own, aesthetic choices. as for the argument about how we're at the limits determined by lens flare--clever, but considering your current camera isn't straining under the effects of flare, i think we will be able to handle that 12th stop just fine.
and carl, i admire the photos of webb and manos (greatly). i was careful to say that i personally don't need more stops to make good photos. but really, those guys' work is more a demonstration of my point than a counterargument. they have chosen to stick with the (distinctive) way their camera system (including film/sensor) saw the scene, or at least the spirit of that vision--well and good. they choose not to raise shaded faces, and in fact frequently push them to solid black. all i am saying is that for other people who sometimes want to raise important subject details veiled in deep shadow--and it would be specious to suggest that there aren't plenty of great artworks where this has occurred, without resort to fill flash--the greater dynamic range in capture would be a real advantage.
can you really not bring yourself to agree with this? even if it is not what your current work is all about, you can't see how it might be put to good use by somebody?
Posted by: chris | Tuesday, 05 May 2009 at 03:37 AM
Outstanding article ! This is the stuff that doesn't appear in books, but you'd pay 300 USD to go on a day's training course and the Famous Artist wouldn't be able to tell you this clearly and succinctly...
In fact it's "Great Briefing in the Sky" material: (Richard Bach, but in his period writing about aviation, before he got into soppy sloppy stuff about seagulls and things...) It's stuff that when you hear it, you assume that everybody else must have been told it at the Great Briefing in the Sky which you somehow missed...
Y
Posted by: Yanchik | Tuesday, 05 May 2009 at 04:34 AM
Chris, I haven't said that more range wouldn't be useful, in fact I'd love for sensors to read up into the highlights as much as negative film. I've spent years shooting large format and ULF to make contact prints in platinum/palladium specifically because of the glorious tonal range available. A textured gray sky can fall on Zone XII and print with beautiful, delicate detail. I've been delighted to find in recent years that nearly all of that rich data in the negative is accessible to scanning. It would be great for a DSLR sensor to do this, but that's a ways off. In the meantime, my point here has been that the sensors we've already got can handle strong sunlight with aplomb.
Posted by: Carl Weese | Tuesday, 05 May 2009 at 09:51 AM
Excellent, excellent article Carl! Thank you!
Posted by: steve e miller | Thursday, 07 May 2009 at 02:34 PM