Page 9 - Lighting the Unlightable Volume 1 #1

Three things are true about digital cameras:

 Digital cameras - no camera - sees the world the way
the human eye does. After all, the human eye is attached

to the human brain, and, the mechanism by which we see
the world is far more complex than the way the camera
sees it. Even a twelve image HDR (High Dynamic Range)
composition can’t begin to rival the way the combination
of the human eye and brain captures the richness of the
world.

 Digital cameras aren’t really digital. The sensor, like
the old rotary phones that were used 50 years ago, is an
analog device. The digital processors in the camera “trans-
late” the data from the sensor into a digital format. That

sensor doesn’t “see” color. It responds to the difference
between frequencies of light that are “measured” by the
digital circuitry and then converted to color. In reality, the
sensor “sees” only black, white, and gray. On a gray scale,
there are 256 shades of gray, including black and white.

 The farther apart black and white are in a scene, the
harder it will be to produce an image that looks “natural”
- that is, looks the way the human eye would see it. Inevi-

tably, either some of the blacks will be so black that no de-
tail will be visible, or, sections of the image will be “blown
out” - totally white. Such areas of a digital image cannot
be “fixed” or “Photoshoped” - unless, of course, you are
willing to spend a significant amount of time trying. Imag-
es that have been significantly re-worked often look, well,
unreal.

When that built-in flash in your camera pops up, or, when you point
your add-on flash directly at whatever you are photographing, you are
making the problem worse, not better Why? Because you are making
the whites, whiter, and the blacks will appear blacker. The difference
between black and white will become greater, and the image will look
worse.

So, how do you know what the difference between black and white is?

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