>From the link of the link that William posted: http://www.imatest.com/docs/tour_q13.html:
"The figure below illustrates results for the Canon EOS-10D, taken from a JPEG image acquired at ISO 400 and converted with Canon Zoom Browser set for low contrast. (...) The total dynamic range is 8.6 f-stops. Total dynamic range changes little for 48-bit TIFF conversion or ISO 100. But 48-bit TIFF conversion has lower noise, hence higher dynamic range at any given quality level. Because the maximum noise is 0.44 f-stops (in the darkest region), a medium quality image can be achieved when the full dynamic range (8.6 f-stops) is utilized. When a high quality image is required (maximum noise = 0.1 f-stops), the dynamic range is reduced to 6 f-stops (indicated by the yellow line on the middle left plot). High quality slide film has a total dynamic range of 5 to 6 f-stops. " So, you either get noisy 8.5 stops or clean 6 stops. Where did 11 stops exactly come from? best, mishka
