> I've easily captured 16 stops of exposure on film, that sort of range is no > big deal for anyone who can process their own film Karl Your missing the point: Digital is better than film in every way - once you have mastered that concept you will begin to realise that comparisons are futile. Can you process your own pixels? Of course not! As to latitude (Lea's original post), I nearly replied right then with "it depends what you mean by latitude" but thought it might come over as facetious. Looking at the replies it seems it was accurate. For me, I'd always thought it was the amount by which you could over- or under-expose film and still obtain an acceptable end product. For negative film processed at "Boots" for sure I'd taken test brackets 3 stops over and 3 stops as a test under yet the prints were equally bad <G> when they came back. Slide film on the other hand was unforgiving by that metric. Judged by *direct viewing* (including projection) even 1/2 stop under made them muddy - basically the photographer had to pin the exposure (there was almost no latitude. The same slides used as "negatives" for scanning or even ciba printing had a bit more latitude (that is, some rescue work could be done) but IMO the end product was *visibly* never as good. Now some pure speculation ... On digital: latitude is almost entirely defined by - the number of bits per channel of information you require in the finished picture (currently 8-max for jpeg shooters) - the number of bits recorded by the sensor that do not map to the 8-bits in the finished files. - the range of tones in the scene If the sensor honestly captures 12-bits of real information (as opposed to noise) then, ****ignoring any gamma conversions****, that's a 4-stop range. But of course that is nonsense: with gamma it ain't so simple because - of course - because the 8-bits "finished image" don't just map 1:1 with 8 of the 12 bits "at the sensor". In fact there is almost no latitude for scenes that require all 8-bits of gamma-coded output - not without losing shadow or highlight detail that is. Most scenes ain't like that though. Happy effin Christmas mate ;o) Bob
