Sunday, 24 February 2013

Exercise: Scene dynamic range.

Take five differently lit scenes, and within each, find and measure the brightest and darkest areas. Make sure that at least one scene has a very high dynamic range and that at least one scene has a low range.


 
I wanted to try and create the highest dynamic range I could to really test my camera. I also wanted to really understand dynamic range as I have had a bit of trouble with my camera. I set the camera to aperture and then using spot metering I calculated the f stops between the very darkest and brightest areas of the image. This resulted in a dynamic range of 8 stops. I also checked the histogram and this confirmed the high dynamic range. This image is not ideal as there are areas of highlight clipping from the lamps bulb and where the light reflects off the book. Zooming in there are also areas of noise. If I was to take this image again I would shoot it in a different way.
 
 
Taken at Melford Hall where I regularly photograph, this scene had a dynamic range of eight stops between the darkest area of the curtain and the brightest area through the window. This shot does have areas of highlight clipping which I would have to resolve if shooting again.
 
 
 
This image of an engine from a plane taken at Duxford was around 4 stops. I was actually expecting a higher dynamic range but thinking about it there is actually quite a lot of reflection from the floor in the darker areas. The histogram showed quite a low contrast between light and dark areas.
 
 
 
Another low contrast image here of approximately 2 stops.
 
 
I found this image quite hard to read using spot metering and I think that this is because the tones are similar throughout. It had  dynamic range of about 1 stop from the darkest area of the roller to the lightest area of grass.
 
I fully understand what the exercise was asking and how to use my camera to meter each image. I was harder than I was expecting in some ways because I am not very technologically minded.
 
 
 
 

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