Sony RX1R: Extreme Dynamic Range (Outhouse Rainstorm Sunset)
In my review of the Sony RX1R is published an analysis of the dynamic range of the Sony RX1 under extreme lighting.
Included are the image and crops, RawDigger histogram and info, as well as the individual red/green/blue color channels, shown for noise characteristics.
Markus H writes:
Whenever two cameras are compared, with one having a much larger dynamic range (at base ISO), those owning the low-DR camera often say that there is only very rarely a need for a large DR and even if there were one, opening up the shadows just creates a flat unattractive image.
Your image is a great example how such a large scene DR can be transferred into a very natural looking image while showing a lot of shadow detail. It really looks like a high dynamic range scene, one can almost feel the glow of the sun and the impending darkness with the outhouse having just the right brightness that one might perceive standing there with the reduced contrast the eye would perceive it with.
(The non-sky areas probably look a bit darker in the image than one would perceive the scene in reality but the image looks very much how a scene could have looked, with the darker areas having that twilight feeling of a very soft yet still directional lighting that one gets when the whole sky acts like a huge lightbox with a gradient.)
The image also has that nice tension between the building and 'sun' with the eye being captivated by those two poles.
DIGLLOYD: It’s also true that in expert hands there is plenty of wiggle room for further improvement: the result used here is just two adjustment during raw conversion. The image can be made to “pop” even more.