Thread by @aliceonaroll

So I picked up photos I shot a year ago, out of a whim. And I was struck by how many keepers I had. (Photo slang for how many photos I believed were worthy of processing and uploading as against blurred/out of focus/plain bad shots that need to be trashed)

Nerdy thread alert

I was surprised because I have done the Hoysala temple circuit many times; come back disappointed with how little I can shoot inside the temples. High ISO doesn’t help much when light conditions are like this and oddly placed electric lamps throw harsh spotlight at random places.

But when you have a camera in hand you can’t stop yourself. You go ahead and shoot a frame anyway, praying that the shadows and the black stone don’t merge all details into plain dark pixels, with the odd ray of light blowing up like nuclear fission.

One of the reasons I didn’t touch the folder for a year is because of the low expectations I had. LOL.

I know the solution to this problem. Full-frame sensor camera that offers good dynamic range i.e. ability to capture details in shadows in extreme light conditions

But I’ve always had to compromise on it and use crop-sensor cameras for two reasons. FF cameras are more expensive. And for wildlife, crop sensor camera gives me more reach. 500mm lens gets amplified 1.5x times because of cropping by sensor. With birds every mm counts.

And so I resigned myself to low Dynamic Range with my crop sensor cameras. Until now. This was taken with the Fujifilm XT-3. This murti is outside the garbhagudi on the shadow side of the pillar, away from the electric lamp. And I barely processed this. Other than RAW->JPG.

And the point is not that the camera could capture enough light in the image. High ISO capability in most cameras can do that.
Point is the texture of the stone, the carvings, the slight browning of the jewellery, everything comes through in such bad light.

And then comes colour. Within the temple, you have only shades of black. And then here, harsh afternoon sky against cool shadow on walls. Ordinarily, I’d get a white sky, and a detail-free wall in a two-dimensional image. This is barely processed. I could cry.

No filter. No polariser. No Photoshop filters to darken the sky. I haven’t touched any of the colour sliders in Photoshop. I’m not as surprised by the blue as I am shocked by the brown and grey on the door and floor. The many shades!

And the browns and greys and blacks on the walls! This is not revolutionary by professional camera standards for sure, but the fact that a hobbyist APS-C #Fuji camera does this in a heartbeat makes me question all my presumptions about its ability and perceived limitations.

Just to drive the point home, how many shades of grey can you spot here?

#Fujifilm #dynamicrange