how many stops of tone range can CMOS handle?

[blithevincent]

how many stops of tone range can canon's CMOS sensor handle? Read somewhere that the 1Ds can only handle 5 stops. Anyone know how many the 350D sensor can handle? Seems digital sensors have small dynamic range than films. Maybe that's one of the drawbacks of current DSLRs.

 

[hondasleeper]

http://forums.clubsnap.org/showthread.php?t=210430

Read the thread above about dynamic range(latitude, means the same thing to me).

I think you have it the other way round. Negative film can handle up to 5 stops, digital can handle up to 10 stops.

The drawback of digital is the reproduction size and quality.

 

[user111]

hmmi though film has more dynamic range than digital. but that was back in the early 2000's

 

[Clown]

latitude or dynamic range?
b/w film still has more latitude than digital but it's all gone after developing...

i guess latitude can be easily determined by how many shades can you pull out before it reaches total black or total blown. film still wins in some way cuz there are only so many bits u can assign to differentiate the shades in digital..

dynamic range i feel, is another thing. it's how the sensor reacts to the miniscule difference in the shades of the shadows or highlights and capture it in a way its visible to us.

example: snow photography.

for film u can overexpose or underexpose by quite a few stops but still manage to get the details out by skilled developing. that's latitude.

but for digital raw, once the highlight is blown past maybe 2 stops, it's gone. that's latitude of digital for u. but dynamic range is different. dynamic range is important when u're shooting jpeg cuz what u see is what u get. some sensors captures snow details nicely when correctly exposed, while some simply cannot tell the small tonal difference apart.

 

[hondasleeper]

Since 2000, I don't think so, the Leaf DCB was able to produce up to 12 stops. I don't think film could exceed the dynamic range of digital.

 

[Clown]

dynamic range film lose most of the time now. cuz a shade near black will be black unless dodged out or pushed. but for digital, the makers can put curves on the sensor output so a shade near black will show in contrast to other darker areas around it.

 

[denmad]

film still wins in some way cuz there are only so many bits u can assign to differentiate the shades in digital..

Actually, the dynamic range is a characteristic of the sensor and does not depend at all on how many bits you assign to represent the different shades. The dynamic range is the difference in light intensity between the brightest shade before the sensor saturates and the dimmest shade before the light gets smothered by the inherent noise in the sensor.

The number of bits you use, on the other hand, depends on how good your analog to digital conversion circuits are. (and maybe, to a lesser extent, how many bits you are willing to spend storing the picture)

 

[Clown]

Actually, the dynamic range is a characteristic of the sensor and does not depend at all on how many bits you assign to represent the different shades. The dynamic range is the difference in light intensity between the brightest shade before the sensor saturates and the dimmest shade before the light gets smothered by the inherent noise in the sensor.

The number of bits you use, on the other hand, depends on how good your analog to digital conversion circuits are. (and maybe, to a lesser extent, how many bits you are willing to spend storing the picture)

pardon my poor phrasing.. my bad.
yes that's what i had in mind.