HS10 Review Part 12 – Dynamic Range Revisited

My regular readers will know by now that I like to pound certain points home. Sorry :-)

One thing that is a bit disconcerting after shooting for so long with EXR technology is the lack of forgiveness in the images from the HS10. You have to perfectly nail the exposure, and even then, you are likely to blow highlights sky high.

Some highlights cannot be saved no matter which technology you use. But when there is a chance, I like to save the highlights. It simply removes one unnecessary jarring element from the image, and why would I not want to do that?

So … a pair of images shot in the back yard, from about the same spot as the comparison shot in part 11, but facing 180 degrees from those images.

I am shooting a small branch of my Buffalo Berry, a tall bush with 1 inch thorns that could kill in my opinion. I hate this thing, but right now it has to stay because it is roped to my fence, holding the fence up …

About 6 feet behind the branch is the fence, and it is in shadow and is thrown nicely out of focus by both cameras, which are shot at the F70EXR’s maximum focal length of 270mm equivalence.

HS10

F70EXR

First off, why the contrast difference? Well, despite using a setting of “soft” for both color and contrast, the HS10 shoots higher contrast than the F70EXR. Its use of binning for dynamic range extensions definitely show up on images like these.

So I had to use more contrast for the HS10, and I left the F70EXR looking softer. And before you say that you prefer the higher contrast look og the HS10, I must point out that the F70EXR has plenty of room to increase contrast, while the HS10 does not have as much room to decrease it. Not a big difference, but remember that as we go on.

Details on the leaves and branch are similar. Good texture in both images.

So what is the big difference?

Look at the leaves on top of the branch where the dappled sun strikes full force. With the first image, the leaves are burnt to pure white. There is no detail and no color. A fairly jarring element in this image.

On the second image, you see that the EXR binning has saved all but the top right portion of one leaf. There is a bit of color and the tonal transitions are much less jarring. It’s subtle, but it’s the whole point of extending dynamic range. Retain color where other cameras cannot.

And remember that I shot both camera at –0.67EV, which saves more highlights than normal. Had I shot at 0EV, we would be looking at serious burnout everywhere.