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Dear Sir:

Lower (shadow) end of usable dynamic range is matter of

 - personal taste (noise tolerance)

 - typical image editing/retouching patterns (do you usually 'open shadows' /made it brighter/?)

 - output media size (the larger the print, the less acceptable noise)

 - output media type (e.g. matte paper will hide some shadow color noise due to ink spread)

So, it is very hard to suggest some specific numbers for specific camera. Default values (9/7/3) are conservative enough for today full-frame cameras, and rather optimistic for micro-4/3 and large sensor compacts.

Please note:

  1. FRV defines dynamic range from 'overexposure limit', so it is full DR, +3EV (from midtone to saturation) is already included in calculation. So, 4.6stops @ISO1600 looks too conservative to me. I have not used A7III, but for A7RIII I prefer something about 6-7EV@ISO1600, depending on print size.
  2. Published DR values may be normalized for some standard output size (e.g. 8Mpix in DXOMark default plot). This allows inter-camera comparison 'in same conditions', but overestimates DR range for the case when full resolution is used (due to large pring and/or cropping)

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Alex Tutubalin/FastRawViewer team