Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/07/31
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Regarding the D100 not doing well in high contrast
situations, isn't the lack of latitude a problem with
most digital cameras. I don't hear much about it but
it seems to be a problem as yet unsolved in the
digital realm. Bob Haight
--- Mark Davison <mark_e_davison@msn.com>
wrote:
> I'm off to Alaska for a cruise with family and
> mother-in-law. I've been
> lurking on the list for the last month or so.
>
> After much soul searching I am only taking my N*k*n
> film SLR. I put together
> a kit with Leica M and the SLR but decided it just
> wasn't worth carting all
> that stuff around to photograph glaciers and eagles.
> I guess I was inspired
> by the "less is more" discussions, even though it
> means leaving the beloved
> M camera at home.
>
> I decided against my D100 because it just doesn't do
> well in high contrast
> situations, and I'm hoping there will be some good
> days with bright light.
>
> Being a techie by nature, I plotted out the
> characteristic curve of my D100
> (digital output vs. exposure measured in stops.) You
> get what looks like a
> power curve, with a long long toe, rising up to an
> extinction point at about
> 2.5 stops above metered exposure. There is no
> shoulder, and the slope of the
> curve is alway increasing. The metered exposure
> gives an output of about 97,
> which is below what you would expect (128). Without
> adjustment in Photoshop,
> the images coming out of the camera have very dark
> shadows, muddy midtones,
> and highlights with excessive contrast, just as the
> characteristic curve
> would predict.
>
> The practical result is that in high contrast
> situations you must carefully
> meter for the highlights with the spot meter, or
> they will be mercilessly
> clipped, leaving daubs of brilliant flat white in
> your picture, where there
> used to be white shirts, glaciers, peoples foreheads
> etc. Exposing for the
> highlights makes the midtones quite dark, and often
> pushes the shadows into
> the dreaded basement of weird digital noise.
>
> Have any of you plotted characteristic curves for
> the Digilux or LC5? Do
> they show similar characteristics?
>
> Mark Davison
>
>
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