Since the very beginnings of photography there have been limitations in capture.  The earliest photographs required lengthy exposure times and challenging chemical processes.  Throughout the evolution of photography improvements in capture have constantly changed the rules - indeed this was always a major goal.   Three of the main focuses for improvement from the beginning have been increasing film sensitivity, reducing grain, and expanding dynamic range.

Sound familiar?  This has been the evolution of digital capture as well. Increasing pixel count to capture better detail, and  improving chip sensitivity while reducing noise to achieve higher ISO’s.  One of the benefits of lowering the noise is increased dynamic range, and digital sensors now boast better dynamic range and lower noise(grain) than any film capture, especially at higher ISO’s.  Considering “affordable” digital capture is only about a decade old, the advances in all of this has been rapid and more improvements are sure to come.  These advances have brought some new methodology to digital capture.

1. ISO can be used as part of every exposure calculation.

I’ve written about this before but it is important enough to mention again.  With digital capture high ISO has become a valuable tool, and exposure now is a triangle ... shutter speed, f/stop, and ISO.  This is especially true with current dSLR offerings.  Using ISO 800 or even 1600 will yield very high quality images ... much higher quality than you could achieve by using 800 or 1600 ISO film (or push processing film to get high ISO).  Since you can change the ISO as easily as any other setting without loosing much in quality, using ISO as one of three exposure controls gives you more flexibility in your f/stop and shutter speed choices.

2.  Dynamic range allows lower noise and provides increased potential quality from single exposures.

Current sensors have terrific dynamic range, allowing you to shoot in much brighter and higher contrast conditions.  Perhaps more important, current digital tools, such as RAW processors, allow you to take images with large dynamic ranges and compress the data so those image actually look good in the limited dynamic range of  various outputs, such as printing with an inkjet printer. 

So do we need more dynamic range?  Sure ... why not.  However, for me it isn’t very important.

What hasn’t changed ... and never will ... is photography is still all about the light.  When you are outside shooting, it’s pretty easy to see your light source.  The question is just because you can use the sun itself does that mean you want to?  Probably not.  That large patch of open sky with no direct sunlight anywhere is what creates the soft magical light most landscape photographers are looking for (and most portrait photographers as well).  So even though I can probably take decently exposed images at 2:00 in the afternoon, the light is much more magical and beautiful just before the sun comes up, or just before or shortly after it dips below the horizon in the evening.  Shooting landscapes during this time of day was often attributed to the dynamic range of your film, but it really is about the quality of the light, which just happens to have lower contrast.

It will always be about the light ...