Wednesday, 9 November 2016

Why don't digital cameras have better dynamic ranges?


ISO in digital cameras is a digital amplification of the signal. If your camera's native ISO is 100, setting the ISO to 400 would make the sensor amplify the brightness 4x.


So if ISO is digital, does that mean cameras artificially limit the dynamic range?


Let's say you shoot a photo at f/8.0, 1/500th sec, and ISO 200. The shadows are clipped. Now you shoot a photo at f/8.0, 1/500th sec, and ISO 400. The highlights are blown out. But ISO 400 just amplifies the signal, and the highlights are well below the absolute maximum limit of the sensor since they look good at ISO 200. Why does the camera cut off the whites early then?



What's stopping camera manufacturers from mapping a wider range of sensor values to RGB(0-255)?




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