Some film, especially B&W, has better dynamic range than most digital sensors, except in a few cases. One example is low light. Film has problems with reciprocity failure that doesn't really affect digital sensors. The photo below was shot at about 12:39 AM with a 30-second exposure. (Note the odd shadows cast by streetlights. That should tell you that it wasn't in daylight.





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To make matters "worse," your computer's display has even less dynamic range than the digital sensor does. One way to get around that is to use "high dynamic range" (HDR) techniques. Some HDR-processed images look a bit fake, especially if one is used to seeing "normal" photos on a display. The idea is to take several photos (usually at least 3) over a range of exposures. The "best" way is to meter the brightest highlights and deepest shadows you want to show, then take a photo at each of those exposures and several in between. A simpler way is to use the camera's exposure bracketing function to take photos at 0, +2, and -2 stops. That will increase the dynamic range, though not as much as the first method. It's a lot easier to do, though.


Once you have the shots, you can combine them in a number of ways. Photoshop will let you do it, though in a sort of "brute force" method. There are other applications that add in sophisticated "filters" that, for example, look at "micro-contrast" (pixel-by-pixel) and enhance it locally. Thus, the program will weight the +2 exposure where the shadows are and the -2 where the highlights are, but at a micro level. The software I use is Photomatix. It has several modes of operation and more controls than I can figure out. You can download the software and play around with it.


Of course, this only works with "static" images, though Photomatix can try to reduce ghosting for SMALL movements. See the examples on their site.


Below are two examples I did from the same 3-shot sequence by varying the white balance (shade vs daylight) and the parameters in Photomatix. Following them is the original "0" shot.





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Finally, two more done with Photomatix. The first was done when I was trying it out, thus the watermarks. It's fairly typical of HDR shots, enhancing contrast and detail in the clouds (bright) and in the trees (shadows). The second is, well, different. I wonder if anyone can figure out how it was done (other than using HDR)--and, no, it was NOT processed in Photoshop, at all, and the same color effect could have been done without Photomatix.





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