Dynamic range

The distance between the darkest and brightest detail an image holds. Wide range keeps both the shadow and the sun.

Dynamic range is the image's tolerance for contrast: how far apart the darkest and brightest details can sit before one of them is surrendered to pure black or blown white. Wide range holds the window and the room; narrow range makes the photographer choose between them.

Keeping both shadow and sun starts at capture, where lost highlights are lost forever, and continues into the grade, where the wide master is shaped for narrow destinations. For work like ours, dark frames carrying one bright event, range is the whole game: the gold can only glow if the blacks beneath it still hold detail.