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Maybe in a single still capture? Let’s not forget cameras can easily combine multiple exposures into a single capture to substantially increase dynamic range, and can do so at high frame rates, and can go well beyond 21 stops in doing so. The human eye is stuck with the same ~21 stop range regardless.

If you use a pair of digital sensors with a 15 stop exposure offset between them (seems fair - humans have two…), thats ~30 stops in a single shot if we assume best we get is 15 from a digital sensor. Again though with high-speed exposure blending and one sensor this is not really necessary in a lot of cases.

The practical reality is digital capture can exceed 21 stops and you don’t need particularly fancy equipment to do it. Two decent cellphone grade sensors (~12-14 stops) would be enough if you don’t want to do single sensor blends and would work well for real-time video applications.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-exposure_HDR_capture