Whether the human visual system perceives a displayed slow changing gradient of tones, such as a vast expanse of sky, as smooth or posterized depends mainly on two well known variables: the Weber-Fechner Fraction of the ‘steps’ in the reflected/produced light intensity (the subject of this article); and spatial dithering of the light intensity as a result of noise (the subject of a future one).
Continue reading Smooth Gradients and the Weber-Fechner Fraction
In the last few posts I have made the case that Image Quality in a digital camera is entirely dependent on the light Information collected at a sensor’s photosites during Exposure. Any subsequent processing – whether analog amplification and conversion to digital in-camera and/or further processing in-computer – effectively applies a set of Information Transfer Functions to the signal that when multiplied together result in the data from which the final photograph is produced. Each step of the way can at best maintain the original Information Quality (IQ) but in most cases it will degrade it somewhat.
This point is key: in a well designed imaging system** the final image IQ is only as good as the scene information collected at the sensor’s photosites, independently of how this information is stored in the working data along the processing chain, on its way to being transformed into a pleasing photograph. As long as scene information is properly encoded by the system early on, before being written to the raw file – and information transfer is maintained in the data throughout the imaging and processing chain – final photograph IQ will be virtually the same independently of how its data’s histogram looks along the way.
Continue reading Image Quality: Raising ISO vs Pushing in Conversion
In photography, digital cameras capture information about the scene carried by photons reflected by it and store the information as data in a raw file pretty well linearly. Data is the container, scene information is the substance. There may or may not be information in the data, no matter what its form. With a few limitations what counts is the substance, information, not the form, data.
Imagine for instance that you are taking stock of the number of remaining pieces in your dinner place settings. You originally had a full set of 6 of everything but today, after many years of losses and breakage, this is the situation in each category: Continue reading The Difference Between Data and Information
We know that the best Information Quality possible collected from the scene by a digital camera is available right at the output of the sensor and it will only be degraded from there. This article will discuss what happens to this information as it is transferred through the imaging system and stored in the raw data. It will use the simple language outlined in the last post to explain how and why the strategy for Capturing the best Information or Image Quality (IQ) possible from the scene in the raw data involves only two simple steps:
1) Maximizing the collected Signal given artistic and technical constraints; and
2) Choosing what part of the Signal to store in the raw data and what part to leave behind.
The second step is only necessary if your camera is incapable of storing the entire Signal at once (that is it is not ISO invariant) and will be discussed in a future article. In this post we will assume an ISOless imaging system.
Continue reading Information Transfer – The ISO Invariant Case
My camera sports a 14 stop Engineering Dynamic Range. What bit depth do I need to safely fully encode all of the captured tones from the scene with a linear sensor? As we will see the answer is not 14 bits because that’s the eDR, but it’s not too far from that either – for other reasons, as information science will show us in this article.
When photographers talk about grayscale ‘tones’ they typically refer to the number of distinct gray levels present in a displayed image. They don’t want to see distinct levels in a natural slow changing gradient like a dark sky: if it’s smooth they want to perceive it as smooth when looking at their photograph. So they want to make sure that all possible tonal information from the scene has been captured and stored in the raw data by their imaging system.
This is a recurring nightmare for a new photographer: they head out with their brand new state-of-the art digital camera, capture a set of images with a vast expanse of sky or smoothly changing background, come home, fire them up on their computer, play with a few sliders and … gasp! … there are visible bands (posterization, stairstepping, quantization) all over the smoothly changing gradient. ‘Is my new camera broken?!’, they wonder in horror.
Relax, chances are very (very) good that the camera is fine. I am going to show you in this post how to make sure that that is indeed the case and hone in on the real culprit(s). Continue reading I See Banding in the Sky. Is my Camera Faulty?