Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hello and welcome to Friday Minis! Today, we're gonna look at the term "Dynamic
Range". Whether you're into photo, video or audio,
chances are you've heard this term being thrown around.
But what exactly does it mean? According to Wikipedia, Dynamic Range refers
to the ratio between the largest and smallest values of a changeable quantity.
Now, that actually already makes a little bit of sense, but let's think about it further.
First, let's think about it in terms of a photo.
When you take a picture, chances are, certain regions within the image are bright.
Conversely, certain areas within the image should be dark.
But the question is, how bright is too bright for the sensor, such that the sensor can't
pick up anything - It's blown out and it appears pure white.
Similarly, how dark is too dark? And I mean that in a way that well, your sensor can't
pick up anything, it just turns out black. So you see, the dynamic range of an image
sensor is essentially the difference between the brightest and the darkest it can capture
at one time. And this is actually pretty significant - A
professional cinema camera or in fact, a professional stills camera like the Canon 1DX essentially
carries a sensor with a very high dynamic range.
This means that when you take a photo and you have the settings set properly, chances
are, you won't get parts of the photo overexposed, or underexposed.
If you're using a slightly lower-end camera, it's harder to get such optimal results.
Similarly, high dynamic range images or HDR images, are essentially combinations of pictures
taken at different exposure settings. They are then combined together by software
to actually create an image whereby the darkest parts of the image are still clearly visible,
as are the brightest parts. So the dynamic range represented by the image
increases by a lot. Because then, a lot of things can be seen
within the same image. The same applies for audio - The dynamic range
of audio would be the difference between the softest and the loudest sound you can get,
without distortion. And there you have it! That is the definition
of the term "Dynamic Range". Don't forget to like, favorite, subscribe
and visit me on twitter. Until next time, you are watching 0612 TV.