when are we going to get better dynamic range?

never mind noise (although thats welcome). Are there any advances in sensors coming that will give us more dynamic range?

How about being able to apply a digital ND grad to a scene, to bring the brightness of the sky down?

mrklaw wrote in post #6104965
....How about being able to apply a digital ND grad to a scene, to bring the brightness of the sky down?

Why not use a regular filter ND? Why add more technology for the sake of it?

We're getting new technology for sure. I dream of the day a digital camera sensor is able capture the dynamic range a human eye can see in one frame.. but for now sony has developed a back-illuminated cmos sensor. Here is the article, but it claims a HUGE boost. It might be a revolutionary sensor (for me). http://www.sony.net …200806/08-069E/index.html
and from another forum

"Sony says 8 decibel improvement. 6 in sensitivity (gain) + 2 due to noise reduction.

8 decibels = 6.3x.

Thats 2 1/2 stops."

Anke wrote in post #6104970
Why not use a regular filter ND? Why add more technology for the sake of it?

because I want to take a simple shot with a bright sky without it blowing out. I'm not hugely into landscapes, so I don't have the investment of a set of filters etc. I understand if you are then its worth it, but I think some assisting tech would help in this situation. I don't think its tech for tech's sake.

mrklaw wrote in post #6105052
because I want to take a simple shot with a bright sky without it blowing out. I'm not hugely into landscapes, so I don't have the investment of a set of filters etc. I understand if you are then its worth it, but I think some assisting tech would help in this situation. I don't think its tech for tech's sake.

There's a "digital" ND grad in Lightroom 2.0.

Anke wrote in post #6104970
Why not use a regular filter ND? Why add more technology for the sake of it?

Come oon.
Like why build IS lenses because you can always use a tripod?
Or why build better LCD's in cameras because you can view them better at your computer anyway?

Anke wrote in post #6104970
Why not use a regular filter ND? Why add more technology for the sake of it?

Exactly. They should have stopped at the wheel.

Anke wrote in post #6104970
Why not use a regular filter ND?

Because filters suck.

If you want more dynamic range, switch to medium format - either film or a Phase One P45.

Soooo
How do you propose to implement this built in ND filter in an elegant way?
Sort of like hoping for underwear that does it all for you when you need to eliminate. (and is dry when you are done)
"Here's my new camera. It weighs 15 lbs but look at all the features!"

I think the OP gets too much critic for his queestion.

Come oon, it's not far fetched, it would be great to have, and it will happen oneday - quite soon i think. My guess is that it will be done by controlling the ISO of pixel individually, so that you can have iso 100 in some parts and iso 400 is others.

i would love it.

A build in NDG filter should be easy. They just need the shutter to move faster at the top of the frame than at the bottom. Canon are you listening?

well I'd hope Canon have experts who do the design, but how about this?

lets say you have a 3 pixel sensor. You set a shutter speed of eg 1/100 of a second. The shutter opens, but instead of waiting for the full duration and then reading the sensor data, the sensor data is read in realtime (or at least in discrete, timed lumps - eg every 1/1000 of a second).

So you end up with not only the actual final exposed sensor data, but also a snapshot of that sensor data while it was being collected.

Pixel 1 is showing a value of 200 after the exposure, so that is left alone.
Pixel 2 is showing a value of 255 after the exposure. So the processor now starts looking back to see how long it took to fill up. Its data shows it was full halfway through the open shutter time (1/200 second), so it can extrapolate how bright it would have been after the full amount of time (512).
Pixel 3 also shows as full, and it filled up very quickly, after only 1/400 of a second, so it is the equivalent of 1000.

After doing this, the camera now has either a RAW image with expanded values that you can tweak, or it can go back and apply an ND filter to overexposed pixels, bringing them back below 255. Perhaps it'd need to only apply the ND filtering across a rectangular area, not sure.

No idea if thats possible at all. Might need a completely new type of sensor or method of reading it. Don't know, don't care :P

That's an interesting idea....not nearly enough data to give you all the gradations in a graduated filter.

mrklaw wrote in post #6104965
How about being able to apply a digital ND grad to a scene, to bring the brightness of the sky down?

The problem isn't in the digital domain, or there would be Photoshop filters for it. The problem is the quantity of photons collected by the sensor, and by the noise generated from various sources. A "digital ND grad" won't help there.

Since it sounds like you're interested in extra highlight headroom, and not too concerned about noise in the shadows, there are the Fuji DSLRs with their Super CCD SR sensors, and the newer Canon DSLRs with Highlight Tone Priority.

Fuji's sensor has two kinds of sensor element: normal and highlight. The data from the two groups of sensor elements are combined to produce the final photo. It's also possible to take photos with just the normal sensor elements, to reduce file size and increase camera responsiveness.

Canon's Highlight Tone Priority basically "uprates" the sensor by one stop, giving an extra stop of highlight headroom in the Raw data. The in-camera JPEG processing compensates for that, and provides a somewhat film-like roll-off of the extra highlights—remember, a JPEG can't express over 100% white. Canon's Raw software (Raw Image Task and Digital Photo Professional) can do that too.