There's a school of photography that basically lives and dies by over-saturating images (e.g. http://kenrockwell.com ) and they'd likely have a cow over the headline, but understand and be totally onboard for the actual goal.
Actually, I suspect that even that crowd, after the initial shock would be absolutely on board. This would mean that no longer would the sensor control how the high-end clipping happens, but now that could be tailored specifically via a post-processing filter. E.g. to exactly match a long-gone film emulsion's behavior, "enhance" a classic, or to simply to create new clipping functions.
This is a bit analogous to the flexibility that black and white shooters gain by working with modern color sensors. When shooting B&W film, the tonal result was controlled via a combination of the film's spectral response and any colored lens filters applied, the latter used to manipulate tonal contrast between different colored subject matter (e.g. sky, plants, skin tones, etc.). Now a skilled photographer can shoot color RAW w/ B&W preview (for a preview of the image luminosity) then adjust in post to nail the image effect without having to mess even thinking about what colored lens filter(s) to have used.
Good point -- if this worked even moderately well -- e.g. it lets you capture 20 bits of DR -- a photographer could go crazy with the old film approach of "expose to the right" and simply keep settings such that every shot is "over" exposed and simply fix it all in post (it's pretty hard to over-expose by more than 6 stops unless you're trying...)
To emulate film stock we need a solid 14-bits of Dynamic range (while DxO says the D810 has it, the article below says 11-bits, but the best video cameras are getting there):
Ideally we'd get something like this AND capture polarization data as well (per the recent Olympus patent). Then you can apply polarization and exposure correction in post.
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Actually, I suspect that even that crowd, after the initial shock would be absolutely on board. This would mean that no longer would the sensor control how the high-end clipping happens, but now that could be tailored specifically via a post-processing filter. E.g. to exactly match a long-gone film emulsion's behavior, "enhance" a classic, or to simply to create new clipping functions.
This is a bit analogous to the flexibility that black and white shooters gain by working with modern color sensors. When shooting B&W film, the tonal result was controlled via a combination of the film's spectral response and any colored lens filters applied, the latter used to manipulate tonal contrast between different colored subject matter (e.g. sky, plants, skin tones, etc.). Now a skilled photographer can shoot color RAW w/ B&W preview (for a preview of the image luminosity) then adjust in post to nail the image effect without having to mess even thinking about what colored lens filter(s) to have used.
Good point -- if this worked even moderately well -- e.g. it lets you capture 20 bits of DR -- a photographer could go crazy with the old film approach of "expose to the right" and simply keep settings such that every shot is "over" exposed and simply fix it all in post (it's pretty hard to over-expose by more than 6 stops unless you're trying...)
To emulate film stock we need a solid 14-bits of Dynamic range (while DxO says the D810 has it, the article below says 11-bits, but the best video cameras are getting there):
http://wolfcrow.com/blog/where-cameras-stand-in-dynamic-rang...
Ideally we'd get something like this AND capture polarization data as well (per the recent Olympus patent). Then you can apply polarization and exposure correction in post.