Understanding dynamic range

While dynamic range is a general term that is frequently used for marketing the latest cameras, many camera buyers have a poor understanding of what the term actually means. Wikipedia defines it as the ratio between the largest and smallest values that a certain quantity can assume. This is fair enough, since it can be used to describe all kinds of signals, particularly sound and light that photographers work with.

Although the dynamic range of human vision extends from starlight to bright sunlight, we can’t detect the entire range all at once. Our brains must adapt at