Fuji Dynamic Range affect on raw files

don_h

Rookie
There's a thread on another Fuji forum site about applying DR of 200% or 400% when one is shooting both jpegs and raw at the same time.

The consensus seems to be that applying DR of more than 100% negatively affects the raw file.

To me this doesn't sound right at all, and I can find no clear info on the web about this. I was under the impression that Raw is Raw is Raw.

Would you know?

Thanks!
 
thanks, that's a straightforward explanation and makes sense to me. but... what if i expose three files at 800 -- and with the three diff amounts of DR dialed in... will the raws be the same then?
 
DR doesn't affect the RAW in a negative way. It affects it in the intended way, by applying less ISO amplification to the RAW data than indicated in order to expand the highlight dynamic range by 1 or 2 stops.

The only thing that can negatively affect a RAW is not properly exposing the sensor pixels with photons. Everything else is just signal processing and amplification, partially analog and mostly digital.

The trick to expand DR is simply to use digital amplification and to only apply it to shadows and midtones in order to protect highlights and thus expand highlight DR of the resulting image. It's called tone-mapping, and we all know how to do it if we know how to use a RAW converter like Lightroom. The camera automates this tone-mapping process for the JPEGs that the DR function generates.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thank you, Rico. So, if I may -- shooting a Raw file at iso 800 with and without DR 400 "turned on" will produce two different raw files?
 
Thank you, Rico. So, if I may -- shooting a Raw file at iso 800 with and without DR 400 "turned on" will produce two different raw files?

Exactly. The DR100% has already been amplified to 800, the DR400% will be amplified (to a mix of ISOs between 200 and 800) during RAW conversion.
 
Back
Top