Dynamic Range on the Sony A7II

In photography, dynamic range refers to the ratio of light intensity captured by a camera's sensor (whites and blacks). For landscape photographers, dynamic range plays a huge role in the craft because it lets photographers capture a huge range of color.  This gives the camera the ability to capture detail in the sky while also retaining detail in the shadows (a common scenario is a sunset picture).

My Canon 6D had great dynamic range and I had no complaints, however after using my Sony A7II for a few days, I’m amazed by how much more room there is to play with. With the 6D, I wasn't able to bring the shadows up as much as the Sony can without introducing noise artifacts. I also notice greater highlight retention and recovery with Sony's RAW files.

For the following pictures, I exposed for the highlights, which means the foreground is underexposed. I did this in order to preserve detail in the sky and in the clouds. By using this technique, I’m able to have a detailed sky and I can recover detail in the shadows by lifting them via post processing.

Click the images to see the originals.