Sony Alpha 3000 review – Dynamic range
As mentioned in the Metering section, I found that the images from the Alpha 3000 lose highlight detail rather easily, but after applying exposure compensation the balance between highlights and shadows was acceptable. In many situations, a good balance is struck. By using Adobe Lightroom to process the images, I discovered that a lot of detail could be brought back from shadow areas in the raw files.
In the brightness/colour menu there is an HDR feature and one to simply optimise the dynamic range. Again, as I mentioned earlier, using DRO boosts shadow detail. It does this by applying a tone curve to shadow areas. The Auto HDR feature takes three bracketed pictures with different exposures, and then merges them together. The value by which the exposures vary can be set by the user to between 1EV and 6EV. Provided the photographic subject is stationary throughout, nice results can be achieved without causing the image to look overdone.
