Quote Originally Posted by Johnny Rasmussen


I have been going through the reviews at dpreview, looking at the DR for most of Canon´s DSLR´s.


Let me stop you right there. DPR's section on "dynamic range" is based entirely on JPEG with default settings. It has nothing to do with the actually dynamic range of the raw files or with non-default settings. It's worse than useless: it's highly wrong and misleading.


Even their "raw headroom" statements are unfactual. They're based on subjective opinions about how well the highlight guessing algorithm works in Adobe!


DPR has some good information, but some of it is very wrong, and dynamic range is one of those things.


Quote Originally Posted by Johnny Rasmussen
You are right about the ISO settings above 1600, most of them drop sharply at that point. Only the 5D MII and the 7D are doing good above ISO 1600. Nikon is doing noticeably better. Even the "cheap" D5000 is doing exellent. Do you know the reason for this?

The reason is that DPR has no clue about dynamic range. They don't even know what they are measuring, let alone know what they should be measuring. Even if they started measuring it correctly, I doubt they would analyze it correctly.


DxoMark.com is not perfect, but they're a sight better than DPR when it comes to measuring noise and dynamic range.


Don't feel bad that you were misled. DPR is the most popular camera review web site in the world, so you would think that they at least get the basics right. Unfortunately that is not so.