Canon 1Ds Mark III Tonal Range

"The 1Ds Mark II has 12-bit analog-digital conversion, meaning that each color had 4,096 shades between bright and dark. With 14-bit digital data of the Mark III, there are 16,384 shades of tonal variation." ("Canon fights back with two SLRs," CNET)

Wow! Can you dig it? Soft drop shadows just got softer, among other things... Skin tones will be amazing under many different lighting conditions... this must help low-lighting image quality, too, yes?

What printers can or cannot keep up with this camera development? How discerning is the average human eye to appreciate the new technology?

RC

Tonal range is greater with the processor.....but that doesn't mean that the captured dynamic range is greater then the 1D mkII. Any better PQ is all due to the fancy processing if the sensor sensitivity has not been improved.

As for tonality.....Meh.....H​DR monitors go to 60,000 levels and HDR file formats go to 4,294,967,296 levels CG simulation and medical applications can get and show better renderings then what dSLRs can capture right now. I do hope Canon starts focusing on upping sensor sensitivity more. Getting to 16bit processors won't mean much if the sensor only records up to 11 stops of light. But something tells me they won't get into gear with that until HDR monitors come down in price.

davesrose wrote in post #3867857
Tonal range is greater with the processor.....but that doesn't mean that the captured dynamic range is greater then the 1D mkII. Any better PQ is all due to the fancy processing if the sensor sensitivity has not been improved.

As for tonality.....Meh.....H​DR monitors go to 60,000 levels and HDR file formats go to 4,294,967,296 levels CG simulation and medical applications can get and show better renderings then what dSLRs can capture right now. I do hope Canon starts focusing on upping sensor sensitivity more. Getting to 16bit processors won't mean much if the sensor only records up to 11 stops of light. But something tells me they won't get into gear with that until HDR monitors come down in price.

There you go mixing dynamic range with bit depth again....not the same thing.

For example, if you look at absolute black and the other extreme, which is absolute white, that range does not change if that analog data is mapped to 8, 12, 14 or 16 bits of color depth. So you see, DR and bit depth are not the same thing

Steiglitz wrote in post #3868359
There you go mixing dynamic range with bit depth again....not the same thing.

For example, if you look at absolute black and the other extreme, which is absolute white, that range does not change if that analog data is mapped to 8, 12, 14 or 16 bits of color depth. So you see, DR and bit depth are not the same thing

There you go arguing semantics about what dynamic range means again And here we were agreeing about how in an analog sensor, it gets a certain amount of brightness (it's dynamic range). And that can dictate what range a dSLR can capture.

bit depth does relate to tonal range.....white is different in 8, 12, 14, 16, and 32bpc formats. Otherwise, HDR formats wouldn't have been invented. White in 8bpc is 255. White in 16bpc is 65535. See a difference? 16 and 32bpc formats might be read as the same thing as a 8bpc file on a 8bpc monitor (especially when they're using a floating point format).....but on the encoding level, they do simulate that particular luminosity range (65536:1 for 16bpc, 4294967296:1 for 32bpc). On a HDR monitor, you would see the difference in range between a HDR image and a LDR image.

davesrose wrote in post #3868425
There you go arguing semantics about what dynamic range means again And here we were agreeing about how in an analog sensor, it gets a certain amount of brightness (it's dynamic range). And that can dictate what range a dSLR can capture.

bit depth does relate to tonal range.....white is different in 8, 12, 14, 16, and 32bpc formats. Otherwise, HDR formats wouldn't have been invented. White in 8bpc is 255. White in 16bpc is 65535. See a difference? 16 and 32bpc formats might be read as the same thing as a 8bpc file on a 8bpc monitor (especially when they're using a floating point format).....but on the encoding level, they do simulate that particular luminosity range (65536:1 for 16bpc, 4294967296:1 for 32bpc). On a HDR monitor, you would see the difference in range between a HDR image and a LDR image.

Dave. The rest of us can't discuss this topic without you dragging irrelevant trivia into the discussion. Start your own thread please. Now this is another thread I have to ignore.

DDan wrote in post #3868848
Dave. The rest of us can't discuss this topic without you dragging irrelevant trivia into the discussion. Start your own thread please. Now this is another thread I have to ignore.

Dan,

There really isn't that much disagreement.....only slight semantics. I implore everyone to read this article if they don't think file formats have anything to do with tonal range.....which has nothing to do with dynamic range

http://www.cambridgein​colour.com/tutorials/d​ynamic-range.htm

also, more about HDR images:

http://gl.ict.usc.edu/​HDRShop/

As for what is irrelevant......wasn't the OP what PQ difference you might find if a processor has greater tonal range then the DR range of the sensor? humm: me talking about DR and tonal range is not relevant at all

Steiglitz wrote in post #3868359
There you go mixing dynamic range with bit depth again....not the same thing.

For example, if you look at absolute black and the other extreme, which is absolute white, that range does not change if that analog data is mapped to 8, 12, 14 or 16 bits of color depth. So you see, DR and bit depth are not the same thing

True, but the bit depth that the dynamic range is mapped to allows greater or lesser detail, particularly when performing processing of that pixel and the image as a whole. They are not the same, but they are related, particularly when you start discussing image quality.

KAC

What isn't true with Steiglitz's statement is that an image format's absolute white can change with bit depth. Both tonal range and # of tonal levels change with bit depth: at the file level. Note that they are separate from the DR of the analog sensor, but you need adequate enough tonal range to record sensor information.

As an example, 10-bits of tonal precision translates into a possible brightness range of 0-1023 (since 2^10 = 1024 levels). Assuming that each A/D converter number is proportional to actual image brightness (meaning twice the pixel value represents twice the brightness), 10-bits of precision can only encode a contrast ratio of 1024:1.

Most digital cameras use a 10 to 14-bit A/D converter, and so their theoretical maximum dynamic range is 10-14 stops. However, this high bit depth only helps minimize image posterization since total dynamic range is usually limited by noise levels. Similar to how a high bit depth image does not necessarily mean that image contains more colors, if a digital camera has a high precision A/D converter it does not necessarily mean it can record a greater dynamic range. In practice, the dynamic range of a digital camera does not even approach the A/D converter's theoretical maximum; 5-9 stops is generally all one can expect from the camera.

http://www.cambridgein​colour.com/tutorials/d​ynamic-range.htm