Kirkjuefellfos HDR Camera Dynamic Range Experiment

Ok so I've taken one of my photos I took at Kirkjuefellfos and as you can see it's exposed for the sky meaning everything else is vastly under exposed.

So I wanted to see just how good the dynamic range is of my new camera the FujiFilm X-T2. To do this I used a technique I learned from a film photographer.

  1. Open the original image in Lightroom.
  2. Push the exposure up until you are happy with the exposure of the underexposed areas of the image (not forgetting to count how many stops you have had to push the image).
  3. Duplicate the original image file as many times as the number of stops you have pushed the image.
  4. Reset your original image.
  5. Push each duplicate 1 more stop than the previous image (e.g Duplicate 1 is pushed by 1 stop, duplicate 2 by 2 stops, etc, etc)
  6. Once you've done this merge all the duplicates & the original image using the Photo Merge HDR option.
  7. Make sure Auto Toning is on when looking at the preview.
  8. If you are happy with the result finish the merge.
  9. The new HDR image file loads up as a DNG file which you can now edit just like a RAW

Below are the results of my experiment.

I then edited this image in Google's NIK's Silver Efex Pro before doing a little more when it reloaded in Lightroom.

The FujiFilm X-T2 has a great level of Dynamic Range especially for an APS-C sensor camera.