[X] My Assistant

[ngunn]

I wasn't sure where to put this. It's not at all Mars-specific but it is 'tech general'. I was wondering if a camera could be designed to respond to light levels in a way more similar to the human eye. Why are all our current cameras linear and therefore highly intolerant of wide brightness differences? Is this not a most unfortunate handicap in space where the surface brightnesses of objects are so hugely variable?

http://www.globalspec.com/FeaturedProducts...an_eye_/36317/0

Could there be a useful way forward here? Has this come up before? If so could somebody bring me up to speed?

[djellison]

Well - high dynamic range is the buzz phrase in the animation world - and even with a bog standard camera you can get HDR output by doing multiple exposures at multiple exposure lengths and then adding them all up to get a cool image. The sort of thing you see being used for an example is the inside of a cathedral, and you can drag the brightness up and down from seing all the cathedral lit in dark candle light, and then drag it as far as totally black in the cathedral but you can see clouds outside the windows.

How much that might apply to something worthwhile or useable for spaceflight...I don't know.

Doug