Hi all,


I work for a large mining company and our corporate photographer was on site recently to take a bunch of photos around our site. One of my good friends works in the community relations department and introduced me to him. Now even though he shoots Nikon (2 x D3s's... quite nice to be honest), he's a great guy and we got to talking and I even took him out to a couple of my favourite spots for some night shots over the mine.


To cut a long story short he briefly mentioned thatthe most important thing to look out for when looking to upgrade a body is the dynamic range of the sensor. Now I have a couple of other things that I also find highly important (high ISO performance, sensor size, AF performance etc etc etc). But I'd liketo know if these properties are in fact related to the dynamic rangeof the sensor. Anyway, I kindly agreed with him and we carried on shooting.


So I supposemy questions are:


What is dynamic range (in laymans terms) and how is it measured?


- My understanding is that it is the range within which you can still pick up detail in a shot. i.e without being a blown highlight or a completely black shadow. I realise that the measurement is the number of stops but how does this translate to real life.


What does dynamic range affect? Is it just colours/light? Is it related to ISO performance?


That might do for now but I'm sure as the thread progresses I'll have some more detailed questions. I really enjoy the technical side of digital photography so I'd love to get a better understanding of dynamic range. (sometimes though I think I need to remove my engineer's hat and donn a more creative one)


Thanks in advance, I look forward to your replies.


Ben