dynamic range
The span between the darkest and brightest tones a sensor can record in one exposure.
Aviation scenes routinely exceed it: a dark underside and a bright sky, or a lit apron against a night sky. When they do, something has to be given up, and the usual choice is to protect the highlights and lift the shadows afterwards, since clipped highlights hold nothing to recover.
Nearby in Photography
- crop sensor — A sensor smaller than a 35mm frame, most commonly APS-C at around 24 by 16 millimetres.
- depth of field — The range of distances that appear acceptably sharp in an image.
- exposure compensation — A deliberate offset applied to the camera's metered exposure.
- f-stop — The aperture expressed as the ratio of focal length to the diameter of the entrance pupil.