I have a Fuji X-T4.
It has an automatic HDR-setting,
as well as the ability to select specific
dynamic ranges (DR).
I have played a little with those settings today,
(note: RAW only) and so far, I have come to
the conclusion that setting DR to, say, 400,
will give me safer latitudes than using the
built-in HDR-ability.
Thanks to darktable’s superb LUA addons,
dt will automatically sense DR and alter
exposure values accordingly.
As my X-T1 is ISO-invariant to great extent, leaving DR to auto ensures considerably larger margin for being safe in the highlights.
What DR settings do, is basically to deliberately underexpose 1, 2 or more stops in order to protect highlights, then to apply different basecurve to lift the shadows - I speak about in-camera JPG engine.
We can benefit from it in scene-referred workflow, as camera relieves us from responsibility of taking care for highlights to some point. In case of my camera, underexposing about 1 EV brings no or almost-none noise penalty, so I leave DR to auto - when the camera thinks it’s better to underexpose and leave more room to highlights, it’s ok for me.
X-T1 doesn’t feature HDR, but I can guess it works in your X-T4 as in other bodies on the market - to capture few consequent frames with different shutter speeds and merge them into one. Of course it works best with non-moving objects and tripod.
They are quite known and documented on dpreview for example.
In a nutshell, they are underexposing on purpose and boosting shadows / mids after, to preserve extra highlight data.
Not that different to setting -2ev on other cameras and shooting raw , and then boosting ev in post. Except that it happens automatically and you get a better preview in the camera and during taking the shot.
Awesome feature to have . Be careful in lowlight though. Although the sensors are generally awesome, there is a limit to how much you can boost the shadows cleanly .
