V1.02
Thom Hogan’s Complete Guide to the Nikon D300
Page 68
Now do it by 1’s: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13,
14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29,
30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40 and phew! Take
you four times as long? I thought so.
As it turns out, Nikon’s 14-bit count speed is almost exactly
one-fourth (2.5 fps) the maximum speed Sony claims for the
transfer (10.39 fps
27
).
Dynamic Range -- Dark v. Bright
In any photographic situation we find ourselves in, there is
always a range of brightness, from dark to light. In our offices
we try to keep the range minimized—in other words, there’s
usually not a big difference between the darkest areas and the
brightest. But in the real, uncontrolled world, the range from
dark (densely shaded area) to bright (sun bouncing off a
metallic object) can be considerable. We call the brightness
differences we encounter the
scene’s dynamic range
. We refer
to the ability of our film or digital camera to capture a range
of brightness the
camera’s dynamic range
28
.
We measure both ranges in terms of
stops
; each stop
represents a doubling of light. So if I were to say that
something I wanted to photograph had four stops of scene
dynamic range, that would indicate that the brightest areas
are 16 times lighter than the darkest. Unfortunately, many
outdoor settings can have 10 or more stops of range in them.
That’s a huge range of light.
Overall, the D300 has slightly less dynamic range capability
than was captured by most print films, but slightly more
dynamic range than most slide films could handle. What’s
that mean in numbers? My measurement system says the
D300 maxes out somewhere around 8 stops of
usable
camera
27
The sensor is capable of higher performance than the D300’s shutter.
28
“Dynamic range” is the common short-hand term used for both things. I’ve elected
to add an adjective in front of the two terms here so that you’ll know if I’m talking
about the scene or the device.
