latitude of eos300d

[translumination]

I've shot with this camera for over a year now. Just wonder what people thought of its latitude. I'm not really impressed. ON any daylight shot with sky or water I get blowout of the image. It was something I never worried about shooting 35mm. I never crave for more resolution ( well we all do dont we?) but I'd love to have latitude. I also really dislike the electronic sharpening. I turn it right down but the image on the monitor still looks too contrasty. It is like looking at the image of a crappy single ccd video camera compared to the dvx if you know what I mean. The progressive scan on the dvx just smooths out the image so nicely.
I notice when I print a picture it just looks nicer. Even though paper doesnt produce as much color as a monitor it doesnt look electronic anymore.
I'm sure people have made great images with this camera but its just so much harder than when shooting with good old film I think. What do you guys think?

[Tony_Reyes]

The way it has been explained to me is that generally when shooting in digital you can expose for up one and down one stop. When shooting with film it's down three and up three (more latitude).

Am I right on this? It makes sense to me. What do you guys think?

[mmm]

One stop is probably a little stingy, but in depends on the camera. Two stops range will look quite flat. The great thing about video is that you can light from the monitor, stops don't need to be considered as long as it looks great!

[scharky]

All, YES all Digital cameras will have less latittude than film, at the moment, even the grand ol 1DsMII, however that doesn't mean that you can't take nice photos. There are some tricks. First, think of shooting digital as shooting slide film. They have a very similar lattitude range, therefore you must expose them similarly.
2. Always shoot RAW. There is no reason not to, and with good techniques I have been able to pull out an extra stop or two from a raw image that is just not possible from jpeg images. Plus with photoshop CS2, it is now actually faster to work with RAW images than with jpegs, you don't ever even need to open up the images if you aren't doing any serious color corrections, all of your corrections can be done from the RAW converter.
3. Braket. Your shooting digital with virtually unlimited amount of photos, braket your photos, and not by 1 stop, that will do nothing, a good braket needs at least 2.5- 3 stops +or- to really make a difference. If you are shooting landscapes and braketing for the sky and land, Adobe also has a new HDR image that can be made from multiple braketing exposures, or you can just do it by hand.

With digital comes a whole new experience with shooting photos, but by no means should these things be a limit for you, it is just a different way of going about capturing an image.

[Policar]

I spoke with some guy who does testing for Canon's new products and he feels that digital has surpassed film for dynamic range to the extent that he over-exposes all his shots by 1/3 of a stop. I asked him if he gets blown highlights and he said something to the effect of "sure, but who cares?" He said that in some cases he double exposes, when the lighting is really tricky. He was doing some shoot for Honda with a digital back and it was pretty awesome looking. They dragged out SOOOOOO much equipment, though, it was pretty ridiculous.

The main issue, I think, is that it's easy to see chromatic abberation, etc. on a monitor, but when you have prints made, it often dissapears and is quite minor. My film prints don't look much different from the prints I get with my rebel xt. A little less contrast, definitely a different, more organic look, but also softer and less detailed. So I think that the difference is real, but not as big as people make it out to be. The fact that film has been developed to have grain of different sizes to pick up different amount of light (something which is just being integrated now into sensors) makes me feel that dynamic range will become less and less of an issue. But 8-bit images will never compare with film simply because they can't contain enough information. 12-bit RAW mode maybe, 16-bit likely. But never 8-bit.

[translumination]

All very interesting guys. Sometimes I have to remind myself why I went digital. Instant gratification, freedom from development, a cheap way to get a feel for manual exposure, practise my composition, being able to stitch photo's so I'm not limited by framing, learning colour correction. I can almost forgive the poor latitude and unnatural electronic artifacts.

I agree slide film has less latitude than conventional film, and black and white always looks so nice with its extended latitude. But slide film has such vibrant saturated colours. It just looks so distinct.

I think on the monitor we see artifacts that just dont come out on print. Printing smudges and smears edges together. It is a deviation from "accurate" reproduction of the image but I think it is what actually improves the image. BUT I dont print most of my photos. I use the computer monitor as the end point viewing device so I still need to correct the images to please me on the screen.

[Policar]

I still think comparisons have to be made within the same medium. Printed photos versus printed digital pics or scans versus corrected RAW images. Otherwise, it's apples to oranges.

For instance, current B+W film (except the really nice stuff) is just color film with the dyes removed. No more dynamic range there than regular film. The lack of color covers cup chromatic abberation, though, and makes highlight detail seem to exist where it doesn't.

I still think film has more high end dynamic range, but it's not a lot. Artifacts don't come out in print because print is 300dpi or more, and monitors are 72dpi. If you looked at film with a microscope, you'd see strange stuff introduced by the lens and grain which you wouldn't expect. If you're shooting JPEG, then this is a valid complaint, but when I shoot in RAW, I've never noticed artifacts except in noisy areas with tons of exposure compensation.