K5 and improved DR

I'm still considering the merits of the K5 and whilst I'm well aware of the improved iso, burst speed etc non of these are really that relevant to landscape photography.

What I'm more interested in is the improved dynamic range that's been talked about but I'm intrigued as to how much benefit I'll see from this in "real world" shots, I'd be interested to hear from those who have seen benefit from thanks

thanks

Simon

How much "real world" do you want? If you mean it as simple JPEG point-and-shoot type then no, you won't see any difference because JPEG only has 8 bits worth of data. The DR only shows significant effect when you process RAW and pull up shadow / pull down highlight or both.

And nothing pulls shadow and highlight like creating HDR photos from a single RAW file.

In the below HDR, to see the bars in the large window, you need to pull the original exposure down 1.5EV. To see pattern on the pillar in the lower left corner clearly, you need to pull the original exposure up 1.5 EV.

If my calculation is correct, 1 EV = 1 additional bit of data so to do the HDR from RAW, you need a minimum of 11 bits of usable DR (8 bits visible JPEG + 3 bits of "space"). Usually will need at least 1 bit more because the different colour channels clip at different rate and have different noise level.


Old Royal Naval College Painted Hall by Tùng béo, on Flickr

thats a nice image