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On my recent workshop in Iceland (July, 2003) I had a fascinating chat with Thomas Knoll about signal to noise ratios in digital photography. You may recognize Thomas's name — he is the original author of Adobe Photoshop, and also the author of Camera RAW. (A discussion with Thomas is featured in The Luminous Landscape Video Journal, Issue #6, from the Fall of 2002 when I was reviewing a pre-production Canon EOS-1Ds). But I digress.
We spent a lot of time chatting about digital topics during our 3,000 km drive around Iceland, and Thomas elaborated on one that had not occurred to me before, though once I started thinking about it makes perfect sense.

Clouds and V Formation. Iceland — July, 2003
Canon 1Ds with 70-200mm f/2/8L IS lens at ISO 400

Home on The Dynamic Range
Let's assume for the purposes of illustration that a digital SLR has a dynamic range of 5 stops (it's usually closer to 6 stops, but let's not quibble). When working in RAW mode, which you should be, most cameras record...

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Michael Reichmann is the founder of the Luminous Landscape. Michael passed away in May 2016. Since its inception in 1999 LuLa has become the world's largest site devoted to the art, craft, and technology of photography. Each month more than one million people from every country on the globe visit LuLa.
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