Today I just quickly made a new dynamic range test with my fullframe Canon 5D Mark III and my Olympus OM-D E-M5. Dynamic range is the spectrum the camera is able to record with a single image from bright highlights to dark shadows. I know that Canon is not the greatest regarding dynamic range, but it's not bad at all, you just have to be careful sometimes.

This is how the cameras' jpegs look. I shot both at the exact same settings (the base ISO of the E-M5 is 200, the Canon's 100, so I took that into account; they are similar regarding actual sensitivity, means they both give the same brightness for a scene at identical settings). The jpegs usually are somewhat limited in dynamic range and you can see that in the images below, most of the windows' detail is blown due too digital clipping at values over 255, it's pure white (with film you have a smooth shoulder characteristic in highlights, means you can pull back overexposed areas very nicely).

5D

OM-D

With digital the highlight range is much more limited and therefore you have to be careful, once white, always white. But you can pull back about a stop (one brightness level in photographic terms) in RAW images, you can see that below.

5D, I pulled back highlights and shadows at once to easily show dynamic range.

OM-D

As you can see both cameras are able to recover highlight detail, and shadows can be opened nicely as well. The OM-D actually has a slight edge in highlights, shadows are about the same, the 5D shows much better colour and of course detail.

Here are crops from both highlights and shadows, Canon left, Olympus right.

highlights

and shadows

It's a shame, though, given the 5D is 2-3 times more expensive and has a four times bigger sensor (2x2 crop factor). I don't really know why Canon is losing in this regard. It's by no means bad, but with such a big sensor you physically should be able to achieve a wider dynamic range. Oh well, you always find a way to work around.

I'll show some samples comparing depth of field of a crop camera compared to a fullframe, in this case the physical difference will show, no doubt.

KIKI