Highlight headroom
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is orphaned as few or no other articles link to it. Please help introduce links in articles on related topics. (September 2006) |
 |
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (September 2006) |
Highlight headroom is a measure of how much more capacity any given photographic media (such as film or digital) has to record detail within the white portion of the visible spectrum.
|
|
The tone or style of this article or section may not be appropriate for Wikipedia. Specific concerns may be found on the talk page. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions.(February 2008) |
Imagine you're trying to photograph a white wedding dress against a white background. If you have limited highlight headroom, you'll find it hard to appreciate the intricate details within the fabric of the dress. The higher the available headroom, the more subtle shades of white will be captured.
In practice, photographers are often faced with photographing outdoors on a cloudy day, but with the sun shining through a gap onto the subjects forehead. This can often lead to a bright reflection which records as bright white. If this bright spot (called a highlight) lies at the edge of the persons outline (from the cameras perspective) then it may end up blending into the cloudy sky if there is insufficient highlight headroom. This is a particular problem with digital cameras which only have a limited gamut of discreet colour values.
