Friday, June 24, 2011

Pentax K5 amazing dynamic range


Two days ago, the sky in Geneva was really dramatic and beautiful. I quickly stormed out of the apartment fearing I wouldn't get to the spot I had in mind in time (luckily only about 5 min. drive).
Fortunately I wasn't too too late, although I think it would have been better if I had gotten there earlier.
I used a 4-stop ND grad filter with a Sigma 17-70 at 70mm, but the filter wasn't strong enough (a 8 stops would have been perfect I think).  Therefore, I had to totally under-expose the foreground, but given the K5 amazing dynamic range, I still managed to recover the under-exposed area (+2.7 stops !) without adding too much noise.
Original, totally under-exposed shot:



And the result, after using some fill light on the completely black foreground:



It's very impressive what one can do nowadays.  Even messed up shots can be recovered to be printed at a descent size, something that was not even imaginable a few years ago.
Who knows what the technology is going to achieve in only a few years from now...

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