Sony A700's D-Range Optimizer

There are many new features and specs I was anxious to upgrade to with the new Sony A700, not the least of which was the D-Range Optimizer. The D-Range Optimizer automatically prevents loss of detail in dark shadow or bright highlight areas in strongly backlit or high contrast scenes. Although, somewhat skeptical of getting usable results with this feature, I believed it would be amazingly useful if it did work as intended. Imagine not having to dig out and work with filters or painstakingly have to rely on post-processing to save a picture whose exposure values were just too wide. After playing with the other various controls and features on the A700 (for a little bit), I decided to concentrate specifically on the D-Range Optimizer. As I'm sure most have figured out already, the D-Range stands for Dynamic Range and getting all the values properly exposed in certain photos with a large range has long been a pain for photographers. Let us see how the A700 handles such situations.


I chose a typical indoor scene which usually spells trouble for the camera trying to obtain proper exposure across the whole range. The scene has one standing in an interior shooting towards a window with bright sunlight. The view is wide enough to include much of the interior surrounding and in front of the window. Predictably, if we expose for the sunlight the rest of the scene goes very dark, as shown in the first shot above.

This was the first shot I took using the Optimizer and was meant to show how the scene would record using the camera's default value. Although, I thought this setting would be what the Sony labels (D-R) or the standard setting, somehow it wound up being (D-R+) or what Sony calls the Advanced Auto Setting.


Later on, I figured out how to change the setting to standard or (D-R), which was very easy to do actually. And this setting is represented above.


So then, for comparative purposes, I thought I would capture the scene using the camera's built-in flash and this is what we see here.



Now, on to the fun stuff. Sony's Advanced Level D-Range Optimization can be utilized through a five-step range, depending on the needs at the time.

Here is the scene recorded at Level 1.

Same scene at level 2.

Here is a Level 3 shot.

A shot at Level 4.

Here is Level 5, the highest setting.

I'll let everyone be their own judge here, as to the usefulness of this feature. It plainly did lighten up the shadows and expand the range of light values. Tell me what you think.

NOTE: To keep comparisons as accurate as possible, all shots in this post are presented with no post processing except to downsize them for web use. Notice even my typical copyright is not present.

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