Brightness of Fine Detail in Ground Photography

Abstract
For a number of typical outdoor photographic scenes on cloudless days, a statistical study has been made of logarithmic brightnesses and of differences of log brightnesses on adjacent pieces of fine detail, as they would be seen by a representative camera. Values were obtained photographically on Super XX film and also by means of a photoelectric telephotometer corrected to Super XX spectral response. The results do not disagree seriously with accepted values for the photographic brightness range. However the uncertainty in the meaning of “brightness range” is illustrated and a definition is proposed for a “99% range.” For difference of log brightness on fine detail, low values are found to predominate, with two-thirds of the differences below the average value of 0.15.

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