Since I have not seen many people sharing their experiences with dynamic-range of Sony cameras, I decided to start the thread. Would be interesting to see what you were able to accomplish utilizing available dynamic range of your camera.I will start by posting the following two pictures, one being unprocessed RAW converted to JPEG and the other one is with a bit of processing (lifting shadows till 100 in LR CC, besides other minor corrections to the contrast and exposure).Unprocessed image but converted from RAW (compressed) to JPEG with no sharpening and noise reductionProcessed image, converted from RAW (compressed) to JPEG with additional adjustments, can post if interested.

impressive. So it really is all about "expose for the highlights" now... looking forward to no longer needing GND-filters.

This thread was going on over at FM that was had quite an extreme example.http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1393191

kkcy wrote:This thread was going on over at FM that was had quite an extreme example.http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1393191Thanks for the link, they do have some really extreme examples, impressive indeed!

It looks about 1/2 stop better than the NX1 for boosting exposure.The NX1 with a 1 stop advantage looked about 1/2 a stop better in the comparison scene when it had a 1 stop advantage.

Perhaps that is true, I was more interested in the real world applications to see where people found it useful and helpful. In the shot above, I did not shoot in manual mode or had any exposure compensation dialed-in, it was the matter of the moment and I am not a pro. Later, when I saw the shot I did not hope that I could recover it, but luckily it was possible, at least to my level of satisfaction.

You did a great job with dog, but the background is too bright and the sky is over exposed. Is it posibble to make a background little bit darker without reducing the dog brightness?

Thanks for feedback. I think it would be possible to do that but I was afraid to give the picture too much of HDR look.

http://www.lightfinity.net/sony-a7rii-first-impressions/My wife made a post about this when we first received the A7RII.  In that set is an image I underexposed by way more than I meant to, but it was able to be "rescued" by post processing.  Note that the result had a lot of noise from the shadows (as expected) but was otherwise good enough for web resolution.

Nice, I would not have hoped to recover this much and this level of noise is absolutely OK in my books. Very well made website, by the way, enjoyed your pictures a lot.

This is actually an A7ii where I deliberately underexposed in order to protect the candle flames (which were blown anyways). Once I found the frame (it was so dark I missed it early on) I pushed it 5 stops in post but the result was good enough that I even ended up printing it.Before...After...

That is one exceptional image that inspires, I applaud you for this phenomenal shot. IIRC, this was the image that inspired me to explore DR in A7x series. Thanks for sharing! -- https://phpb.com/- My Photography Blog

My feeling is that making the most of the dynamic range of the camera is actually quite a bit more complicated than people imagine. Especially those who like to wing their highlights to -100 and shadows to +100 in LR.The problem is that brightening the shadows reduces contrast and very quickly skin tones appear washed out. So in order to give the impression of better light you nearly always need to add some selective contrast to the subjects.As an example... here is a shot I took last weekend unadjusted in LR (at default)...Now we move the shadows to +100 and the highlights to -100, it looks a lot better but essentially the more you push the shadows the flatter it will look especially in his face...But adding back some localized contrast with curve adjustments in PS creates for me what to me is a better starting image...So if you look at the dog picture at the beginning of the thread, you can see from the 'before' photo that there is a lack of contrast and, to me anyways, recovering the shadows still leaves it looking a bit washed out. So I added some contrast to dog and it just seems to pop better...

Thanks, you are very right, it does take some learning to get the most out of the shot. I also was trying to use localized exposure compensation but with not very smooth contours, yet to complete the work. Doing exposure comp locally and controlling black level, gave me much better contrast and overall better results.What are the other tricks that would be useful in recovery of shadows or highlights that anyone can share? -- https://phpb.com/- My Photography Blog