It is not very often I share a third-party video, but this one from David Bergman (for Adorama TV) on why Dynamic Range is not nearly as important as most people think just hits the nail on the head. Ask yourself, when was the last time you saw a really great photograph with 12 or more stops of dynamic range? The answer is you probably haven’t, and the reason is that most great photographs actually have quite a limited dynamic range because they are taken in soft light. Just as an aside, I have long said that we should not measure cameras by their dynamic range but instead by their ISO performance (signal-to-noise ratio).
Contrary to some beliefs, dynamic range and signal-to-noise ratio are not the same, although both measure camera performance in decibels and are closely related. Dynamic range is the ratio between the maximum signal a sensor can handle and its lowest detectable signal (noise floor), while signal-to-noise measures signal quality at any given specific intensity.
In layman’s terms, dynamic range measures the span between the brightest highlights and darkest shadows a camera can capture in a single exposure without losing detail (clipping). In effect, it defines the camera’s ability to handle high-contrast scenes. The signal-to-noise ratio measures the ratio of signal strength to noise at a specific brightness level. SNR is highest at full-scale output and decreases in lower light.
There are some important key differences between the two. Dynamic Range describes the range of intensity, while Signal to noise describes the quality of the signal at one point. A camera with a high dynamic range may still have poor signal-to-noise if the noise floor is high or high SNR with low dynamic range.
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