Camera DR is it that important?
Am i reading too much into DR
my d90 have a supposed value of 12.5 DR now i'm not sure how this is measured but i seem to focus in on this value more than any when selecting a camera.
i'm interested in a canon 1d mark III mainly because its a beast of a camera, looks great and fast, not to mention IQ is great too id like to use one can always resell if its too big and heavy i've completely flipped from light weight to liking these big pro camera.
but the DR is measured at 11 only, now most canons are less than nikon is DR.
whatm are you thoughts is a DR value of 11 enough do its really matter
ps i hate using filter to much messing about for my needs so i like to have good skys naturally out of camera if possbile the 12.5 was good enough on d90 but was hoping to go up in this value not down.
Dynamic Range: great if need it, wasted if you don't. High contrast scenes need it. Diffused light doesn't. If you have a scene with high contrast, you can always bracket it and merge the photos later, suppressing the urge to over process it.
If you are in love with the Canon 1D Mark III, get it.
Personally, I will continue to use my D90 until I outgrow it. Not going to happen anytime soon.
The more dynamic range the better. There's a lot more dynamic range in nature than the camera can reproduce, and even your eyes have more dynamic range. This means you can see better than most cameras. So having more dynamic range means the camera will "see" closer to what you see.
Here is an example I'm sure you have encountered.
If you have taken a photo of someone with the sun to their back, you know the person comes out dak, or if you change exposure until they are OK, then the background is too bright. This is a result of a camera having low dynamic range.
It is not an exposure setting because you can change exposure to properly illuminate your subject or background, but not at the same time.
Another example is if you are inside shooting through a window in the bright daylight. Again, you can set the exposure to either properly expose the inside room or what you see through the bright window, but not both. This too is the result of the camera having low dynamic range.
Of course, one solution is to use a fill-flash to bring up the value of the foreground… But what you are really doing is compressing the dynamic range of the scene to something the camera can capture.
Dynamic range also affects contrast, which is why HDR exists (at least HDR done to make the photo look more natural).
So yea, I'd say that dynamic range is important. If you compare dynamic range using DxOMark ratings, the D90 has a DR of 12.5, the D7100 is 13.7, and the 1DmkIII is 11.7. These factors are EV (exposure value - or stops) so the D7100 has a full 2 stop advantage over the 1DmkIII. And according to DxOMark anything over a 0.5 difference starts to become noticeable, and anything above 12.0 is considered excellent.
One thing you should know is that Canon uses their own sensors, while Nikon and everyone else uses Sony or sometimes other sensors such as Toshiba. In that regard, Canon tends to have the same specifications across the board, and it makes you wonder why they still make their own when spec wise at least, they seem to get consistently low scores (in DxOMark). Of course, specs by themselves don't tell the whole story, so you have to also balance that in your decision.
So while you may notice some improvement in cameras having higher dynamic range, how important it is to you is up to you. It may mean you don't have to use fill flash as often in high contrast daylight scenes.
Dynamic Range (DR) ofcourse.