The use of Dynamic Range, Highlight and Shadow Tones

[Starkman]

Hey all,

 

I'm shooting a Fuji X-T10, and I'm interested in a few camera settings.

 

First, with regard to dynamic range, highlight and shadow tone settings within the camera, I take it the RAW file will disregard these settings (I'm using Photoshop Elements 15 to post process both JPEG and RAW)?

 

Second, after doing a bit of research on using dynamic range settings, I'm still a bit unsure as to which seems to be the preferred setting. Some folks are using Auto all the way around, others are leaving it at 100, and in one video, featuring Bill Fortney (a Fuji shooter), Bill has his ISO at 6400 and his dynamic range at 400 --  he was shooting inside a somewhat dark church. As it stands, I have my ISO set to Auto with a max of 800, and dynamic range at 100.

 

My first question, then, is how are you using dynamic range? Again, I assume RAW would throw this information out, so I'm figuring JPEGs are the interest here.

 

And my last question is, do any of you ever adjust highlight and shadow tones within the camera (again, the RAW / JPEG thing!)?

 

Thanks very much,

 

Starkman

[johant]

DR200 and DR400 underexpose by 1 or 2 stops. That *does" affect your RAW file.

[milandro]

as Johan says the “ extended dynamic range” is achieved by underexposing your file and it does show on your raw (although by its nature recovering is not a problem) 

 

A bit the same when we wanted to saturate colours on analog pictures on slides. Now you have a dense picture and you can merge different versions of this on different layers and have an extended dynamic range of sort.

 

But really you can only get a true extended dynamic range by shooting pictures with different exposures and then merging them together , this is I believe what people want to achieve with extended bracketing.

 

Changing highlights and shadow settings shows only on the jpeg (and it is affected by the film simulation too), I suppose most will enhance shadows and reduce highlights but then most will do things while processing which counteract or put things even further.

[Starkman]

Thanks for the input. So do any of you ever adjust the DR? If not, what do you leave it at? As it stands I will probably be shooting more RAW as time goes on, and I'm just not sure how the DR option for the Fuji play out. Thanks

[milandro]

after a long time at 200 I am now leaving it at 100 

[mdm]

I set it to Auto (100 or 200) and forget about it.

[Starkman]

Hey, thanks much. I appreciate the input.

[Doug Pardee]

The following applies to JPEG shooting:

1. Shadow Tone does what it says on the tin. Negative settings bring out more detail in the shadows, at the cost of some overall contrast. Positive settings smash shadows toward black.
2. Highlight Tone affects whites and near-whites, but doesn't have much effect on bright colors. In my opinion, its effect is more of an overall contrast adjustment -- negative is less contrast, positive is more contrast.
3. Dynamic range is increased highlight headroom during capture, with the highlight processing of the JPEGs being "softened" to take the extended highlights into account.
4. DR=Auto can help protect against large areas of blown highlights, but it suppresses readout of calculated shutter speed and/or aperture until half-press or AE-Lock.
5. The effect of DR is not visible in the EVF/LCD. Similarly, it's not reflected in the live histogram -- the right edge is the DR100 cutoff even if you're using DR400.

[Starkman]

Thanks, Doug.