Practice question · Multiple choice
Sensor data is recorded linearly, whereas human vision perceives brightness logarithmically. Why does this physical characteristic make underexposing a raw capture so damaging to image fidelity?
Hints
- How are the available discrete levels distributed across the stops of dynamic range?
- What happens to the allocation of tonal steps when light is halved?
Show the answer
A. Darker stops receive far fewer quantisation steps
Why
Because light values halve with each descending stop, the lowest stops share only a tiny fraction of the total digital levels. Noise dominates shadow recovery, whereas highlight headroom retains thousands of discrete tones.
Practise Digital Capture and the Input-Output Chain
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