Jurgen wrote:
Doug Jewell wrote:


With the
highlight priority mode that is no longer necessary - I can now shoot
a scene with only occasional adjustments to the in-camera metering,
and without need to tweak the shadows/mids afterwards.


To me it seems like all these patches trying to tame highlights are
circling the issue of poor sensor design.

Yes and no. I firmly believe that pre-40D, DSLRs (and
compacts too), put the wrong curve on the images. As we all
know, compared to film, digital has less highlight range,
but much more shadow range. Even traditionally tough films
like Velvia could hold highlights better than digital
cameras. Added to that, when film does roll over into blown
highlights, it does so with far more grace than your typical
digital.
Before highlight priority mode, I found the only way I could
get acceptible scenics was to underexpose and then apply a
different curve. This compressing of highlights resulted in
a more film-like image, and dare I say it, a more
human-eye-like response, than what the standard
auto-exposure image would. Because of the very good shadow
depth of digital, lifting the shadows in this way doesn't
significantly hurt the image - yes they become a little
noisier, but again, that is more film-like, and again in a
bright scene the human eye doesn't do a wonderful job of
picking up shadows anyway.

Since the 40D, more and more cameras have started doing
things like highlight priority mode - the Pentax/Samsung 20D
does it now as well. I think ultimately, time will prove
that applying this type of curve to an image is a better way
of generating images than the previous system.

I know Sony and Nikon have had Dynamic-Range-Optimiser and
D-Lighting since before the 40D - although to get these
functions to deliver similar results to highlight-priority
does require a negative exposure compensation at time of
shooting.

One of my cameras (Fujifilm s5
Pro) uses dual sensors to address the problem. Not many
scenes I come
across that can't be captured cleanly with this camera.
Pity is has
other shortcomings!
The main shortcoming I noticed with the S5 was it's speed,
or complete lack of, whenever the extended range function
was turned on. The concept of variable-sized photo-sites is
an interesting one, and one I'm surprised more sensor
manufacturers haven't explored. An S5 sensor, backed up with
a decent processor such as Digic, would really make for a
good camera - as long as they put an EOS mount on it :-P