http://digitalprotalk.blogspot.com/2007/10...-salvation.html

Why didn't anyone tell me about this before!?

Steve, is this feature on your 5D? Quick Google search only shows it on the 40D and 1D MkIII.

Sure wish I knew about it for WV..

 

Thanks for sharing that link - that is a very useful feature!

 

Highlight tone priority came out w/ the Digic III. The 5D (Digic II) does not have it.

 

Thanks Clyde... this is the first I had seen it.

 

That's so cool!

 

I wish they would have shown the example taken from two different cameras at the same time (same image rather than two different shots) so we could compare how the affects the image quality and tonal range.

In theory think of an image as not video, but audio... and for this example keep in mind the shadows of an image, they need to be sacrificed to aid blown out highlights when adjusting for highlight priority. Therefore to get a corrected image one would have to adjust for white and black point in their post processing to get the most out of the image data, and whenever you do this you are either muting or amplifying a signal. Okay, keeping all of this in mind, back to the audio analogy... What happens when you turn up the gain on a signal like, for instance, a guitar? It distorts right? Distortion in any signal is the adding of (at times) unwanted noise as the signal begins to be overdriven. I say at times it's not wanted because as with a guitar, it might be a wanted thing, but distort a signal and things can go from sounding like the Rolling Stones to Jimi Hendrix pretty quickly. So ask yourself if you want all of that unwanted noise in your photographs?

Also keep in mind whenever you read stuff like this, take it with a grain of salt as the person writing it might be a noob... For instance, the guy writing this mentioned "I had the camera in "P" - for Professional mode - and shot away." For those who don't own a Canon, the "P" mode is program mode which is preferred by beginners who want the camera to make all of the decisions. Also, why is he shooting Jpegs??? I take it back, he's not a noob, but a knob!

In short, shoot RAW, shoot in "M" or Manual mode, and get proper exposure and you will never have to deal with stuff like this. Ansel Adams didn't need it, neither did Barney Rubble when he took the photos of his thumb, why should we?

 

It is a life-saver if you're shooting in-camera JPEG but not any value if you're shooting RAW. My old D70s has an uploadable custom tonal curve adjustment but in-camera D-Light algorithm (for Nikons) is even better.

 

jpeg

 

Really? Of course you can fix blunders in RAW, but I've always thought it to be beneficial to have all blunders be minor ones, and it seems like this mode would reduce the severity of blunders to minor blunder status.

/bow. I don't think anyone else in the history of s2ki has used the word "blunder" four times in one run-on sentance.

 

One of the two articles I found explained how it is still beneficial for shooting RAW.

Norm, it did mention a slight increase in noise when you pixel-peep, but said it was nothing noticeable in print.

By the way, Ansel Adams also did not shoot with a 10D either.