Re: Utility of dynamic range beyond a certain point
chiron wrote: gdanmitchell wrote:
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In order to produce a final image that seems authentic to our human vision it turns out that we must essentially simulate what the brain does when we look at subjects with larger dynamic ranges — simply put, we have to make some of the dark stuff lighter and make sure that the bright stuff isn’t so bright that it loses detail.
As with our human vision, it isn’t enough to just make a generic curve adjustment to the whole scene. We generally want to selectively lighten the things that would otherwise be good dark, while controlling the brightness of those that would be too light, all while maintaining tonal relationships among elements in the range in between the extremes.
As you know, I don't disagree with you. But I think one has to be very cautious about how much one lightens shadows because there is tendency to overlighten shadows that produces something that is quite artificial. The human eye can see both brights and darks in the same scene, but not at the same time--our pupil changes diameter very quickly as we move from a brighter to a darker area of a scene. We aren't actually seeing both in the same way at the same time, though we may be "remembrering" both in our mind at more or less the same time. But in looking at the scene overall, while not focusing on specific areas, we see highlights that might be blown and shadows that are too dark to see into.
My own preference, which is just my preference, is to let shadows be shadows, perhaps modestly modified, that are used as part of the composition and to use highlights sparingly and to bring them down toward the middle as much as is consistent with their role in the image. To go back to painting, Rembrandt and Caravaggio are extremists with shadows. But the master of light Vermeer has shadows that you can't really see into and that function as shadows and he sparingly uses relatively few highlights, bringing them toward a moderate tone. Probably his most famous highlight, the "pearl" in The Girl with the Pearl Earring, is pure white and has no detail, though of course it is quite small. Most of his tones are variations in the middle range and his light is filled with subtleties of colors.
Ultimately, a photograph renders what the eye cannot see and how we choose to manage the difference between the two is the artist's work and a large part of what make the photograph interesting or not.
I definitely agree with you that lightening shadows is something to be done with care, and that if any of these things are down without some taste (if I can use that term here) the results can be less than wonderful.
Your point about "remembering" at the same time is valid, too. I have a personal example of this that I only received in the past few years due to an issue with my vision due to some retinal damage. I have lost the vision in a small central area in one eye. If I close my other eye and look at something that falls in the area of vision loss I cannot see it. However, if I look at something with both eyes I can see it well enough, though with a loss in depth perception.
Here's the weird part and illustrates your "remembering" point. If I look at that something with both eyes and then close the good eye, for a brief moment my brain tells me that I'm seeing what is in the blind spot of the bad eye!
We never literally see everything fully in our entire field of vision. We construct a mental model of what we see that makes some assumptions and also works from what our brain remembers seeing.
All of this illustrates even more how much different our eye/brain "seeing" is vastly different from what our camera "see." A lot of post processing is geared to integrating those two different modes of seeing.
Jun 19, 2026 at 11:34 AM
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