should you really buy a large sensor camera because of its better dynamic range let's find out my name is Thomas eisel I'm a professional photographer from Vienna Austria and today we gonna do some myth busting based on facts of course so let's get started I'm pretty sure that you've heard the following statement you know small sensor cameras are fine but if you really need sufficient dynamic range you have to get a big sensor camera right is that even true let's find out and in order to do so we have to cover two aspects the first one is how big is the actual difference between a small sensor camera and the large sensor camera and to make things even more interesting how big is the difference between an old camera and a new camera in terms of dynamic range the second big aspect we have to examine afterwards is of course is the difference significant enough to really impact our photographic practice it's about time for a serious reality check in order to compare the dynamic range of cameras we have to have good data and probably the best source for dynamic range is photons to photos it's an independent testing site and they really specialize in testing camera sensors and the great thing about them compared to other sites is that they test what they like to call photographic dynamic range most review sites give you the engineering dynamic range which is the absolute maximum range of luminance a given sensor can record and this number is actually not very relevant for the photographic practice it's not really that when you see a 15 stops dynamic range that you can really get 15 stops of usable dynamic range it's usually much smaller and in practice I found out that this number is always very close to the photographic dynamic range number on photons to photos so enough of the disclaimer it's gonna be all practical photographic dynamic range in this comparison and now get ready to have your mind blown let's go back to the year 2003. Nikon just released the Nikon d2h4 megapixel aps-c high-end professional grade Sports camera this Beast back then was able to capture seven stops of dynamic range at ISO 200. that doesn't sound too impressive right so how about full frame in 2005 Canon released the 5D classic 16 megapixels it's probably the camera that brought full frame to the masses and yeah it's still a legend today and this camera gives you 8.34 stops of dynamic range at best I think we've just arrived at a first conclusion if we went from 2003 to 2005 and from aps-c to full frame we only got one stop more of dynamic range that's not a lot right let's go on fast forward to the year 2012. Olympus just released the OMD M5 mark 1. it's a mirrorless micro four thirds camera 16 megapixel well and it's a camera very near and near to my heart I still shoot it and this camera actually gives you 9.27 stops of dynamic range and I think this is a great opportunity to draw another conclusion somewhere from 2005 to 2012 there was a huge Improvement in sensor technology quite obviously because now we get better dynamic range with a small sensor camera then we got back in 2005 with a large sensor camera let's look at the competitor from 2012. the Nikon D800 full frame 36 megapixel professional grade DSLR very expensive back then very inexpensive today this camera gives you 11.4 stops of dynamic range very impressive also the image quality is great with this camera but I'm getting ahead of myself this is another very interesting aspect to observe right in 2012 if you bought a micro four thirds camera you got about two stops less dynamic range than when you were shooting with full frame I already hear you scream right there but Thomas those are old cameras those are granddads and those are that but what about the New Kids on the Block well I've researched some numbers and photons to photos let's take a look for example a successor the recent 5D model is the Canon 5D Mark IV and this camera has 10.83 stops of dynamic range so it's about here it's not even surpassing the D800 although it's an older camera but how about the recent mirrorless model the Sony A9 Mark II delivers 10.9 stops dynamic range so that's even a little bit less than the 5D Mark IV which is significantly older let's look at the Pentax camera the Pentax K1 Mark II a very renowned camera especially in Auto photography and astrophotography this camera delivers 11.6 stops of dynamic range with its 36 megapixel sensor so again what we see right there is that no matter at which full frame model from 2012 up to today we look at we always get around 11 to 12 stops of dynamic range that's very interesting but how about micro forfeits was there a huge improvement over the years I'm filming this video on the OM system om1 right now and this camera actually has 9.5 stops of photographic dynamic range according to photons to photos so it's also in about the same ballpark as the em5 from 2012. for landscape photography four high-end photography digital medium format is of course a thing but how many stops of dynamic range do you get by shooting medium format actually not a lot the Fuji gfx 100 medium format mirrorless camera gives you 12.3 stops of dynamic range we are again in Nikon D800 territory isn't that interesting the best tested camera on photons to photos well it's not a camera it's just a digital pack is the phase one iq4 150 megapixel digital back and it has 13.33 stops of dynamic range again that's not a lot more than what the Nikon D800 has to offer it's two stops and the IQ form costs 40 000 Euros actually a little bit more just the pack so there is a huge difference right to be honest I was quite surprised to see these numbers in front of me so I asked myself do these stops of dynamic range really reflect what I encountered in practice when shooting with these cameras and I can say yes because in reality I was able to get the shot with all these models on the table and even cameras worse than those but let's not get ahead of ourselves because in the next chapter we're gonna talk exactly about that how significant is this difference in dynamic range in practice let's go how many stops do we need in practice well for an evenly lit subject we need four stops of dynamic range that's not a lot and pretty much every camera can do that the most challenging lighting situation I've ever encountered on set was 32 to 1. so the lighting ratio was 32 to 1. and in order to capture such a scene nine stops of dynamic range are required but when you have these nine stops you can really capture everything from black to white in the scene nine stops well every camera except these two grandads can do that and even when shooting such a scene with the Nikon d2h it wouldn't be too bad we would just have to accept that some parts of the image are either clipping white or clipping black and if you like the subject 32 to 1 so very very extreme you actually want that effect so really it's not that bad and even the Nikon d2h is still somewhat in the game of course there are situations where you need more than nine stops of dynamic range and that's mostly when shooting landscape and architecture as soon as you run out of dynamic range you have to bracket your shots and combine the resulting files in post you can then use either tone mapping or exposure blending to create an HDR image when you have to do that there are two considerations first there should be little to no subject movement the good news is that mountains and buildings don't tend to move around a lot so I think we are covered in this department the second consideration is that in order to get a high quality result in post-production you have to have enough overlap in terms of exposure from frame to frame so you cannot look at the 14 stop scene with the Nikon d2h and just say all right I've got seven stops so I shoot seven seven and combine it to 14. it wouldn't look very good and here is a major difference between newer cameras and older cameras and sensors with more dynamic range and sensors with less dynamic range in general the more dynamic range you have the less overlap you need so with modern cameras you can shoot bracketing steps of about two stops from frame to frame that's perfectly fine when working with the Nikon d2h for example you have to work in one stop increments to get a good result having said that cameras like the Nikon d2h were of course not meant to be landscape cameras in the first place but the 9 frame bracketing burst from the Nikon d2h gives you 15 stops of dynamic range take that phase one with your measly 13 stops of dynamic range but wait I hear you say what about raising the iso isn't it true that when the iso goes up the dynamic range goes down yes that's true but when do we have to raise the iso number we have to raise the iso number when we want to freeze motion because in every other situation we can just put the camera on the tripod or rely on in-camera or in lens stabilization systems instead so when do we want to freeze motion we want to freeze motion when we are shooting repotage photography or some kind of action photography and in these situations we actually need very very little dynamic range to reproduce the full tonal scale of our main subject again we are pretty much back to the four to six stops subject and pretty much every camera can do that except if you are using a digital camera with less than six stops of dynamic range then it can be really really tedious to do that but you could just add a flash to the camera and you are fine large new sensors deliver better image quality than old small sensors that's not a very useful rule of thumb I know so this more an image quality well it's debatable whether it is really needed but that's a topic for another day today we just want to answer the question that's the difference in dynamic range make a difference in practice and I think we can arrive at a conclusion right now in general the difference does not make a difference because with eight stops of dynamic range you are usually able to cover everything you'll encounter in real life as soon as you have to photograph a scene with 15 or 20 stops of dynamic range which can happen in landscape photography then you either have to bracket your shots or use a gradual ND filter or something and that's even the case when working with a phase one bag that's just the reality of it so we could also say that the difference between a state-of-the-art 40 000 Euro digital back and a Nikon d2h from 2003 which costs around 100 euro today is eight shutter clicks and believe me the Nikon d2h has a very reliable shutter unit so I wouldn't worry about eight clicks more I would worry more about having 146 megapixel less than when working with the phase one fun calculations aside I'd say we can conclude that you should not really buy a new camera because it has one or two stops more dynamic range it just doesn't make any sense in practice if you want to know more about dynamic range in photography I've got a very in-depth video about it so I invite you to watch that apart from that thank you very much for watching please consider subscribing and following me on other social media see you next time [Music] foreign [Music]