HDR video - even worse than it sounds

[feppe]

We all hoped that HDR* was a short-lived gimmick, but after several years we still are plagued by cartoonish scenery, ghoulish skin and apocalyptic clouds. Now HDR is coming to video:here ghastly proof-of-concept samples. I shudder to think what House would look like shot in gimmicky overcooked HDR - but hopefully pros have more taste than that.

* yes I know there's realistic-looking HDR, and even tonemapping can have pleasing results, but almost nobody calls that HDR.

[Misirlou]

Compared to what? Ever since the first Matrix, it seems like a lot of the movies I see are shot with that horrid cyan-toned overly contrasty look. And after Blair Witch, there's the excessive use of intentionally unstabilized cameras all over the place. I find both of those techniques to be irritating and trite at this point. Granted, those examples are pretty annoying, but this will just be another tool that filmakers can use or abuse, like any other.

I've pretty much cracked the code on using HDR to make natural looking shots, under certain circumstance where I don't have enough DR to handle things in any other way. Surely others will figure out how to do that with HDR video too.

On the other hand, Dan Burkholder (www.danburkholder.com) uses HDR to make photos that look nothing at all like nature, and I quite like them. Perhaps a filmaker will find some way to expoilt HDR in some appealing way.

[Graeme Nattress]

Like all technologies, it can be used or abused. We're working on HDR technology in the new RED Epic cameras. It looks natural - not fake day-glo, but I can see how such natural results are hard to achieve, but just as with photography stills HDR, it doesn't have to look un-natural.

[RFPhotography]

We all hoped that HDR* was a short-lived gimmick,

Who's 'we'?  Speak for youself.  Don't lump everyone into the same boat as you.

but after several years we still are plagued by cartoonish scenery, ghoulish skin and apocalyptic clouds. Now HDR is coming to video:here ghastly proof-of-concept samples. I shudder to think what House would look like shot in gimmicky overcooked HDR - but hopefully pros have more taste than that.

Interesting that you'd think that simply because it's not what you like the people who created it aren't professionals.  Whether the look is what appeals to you or not, the fact that this was done is very interesting.  If no one pushed the envelope of possibility we'd still be stuck with collodion wet plates.  Given what they did it would be pretty difficult to get a natural looking result.  In this case; however, the process is more important than the result and it may well spur others on to try other methods and improve on the process over time.  Can you say that everything you've done was perfect the first time you tried it?

* yes I know there's realistic-looking HDR, and even tonemapping can have pleasing results, but almost nobody calls that HDR.

Really?  Almost nobody?  Odd.  Anyone I know who has a clue about HDR calls it HDR.

[LKaven]

We all hoped that HDR* was a short-lived gimmick, butafter several years we still are plagued by cartoonish scenery, ghoulish skin and apocalyptic clouds. Now HDR is coming to video. I shudder to think what House would look like shot in gimmicky overcooked HDR - but hopefully pros have more taste than that.

You might have said the same about color photography, since 99.99% of that is just awful.  But HDR is not to blame for godawful HDR images.  Blame bad artists.

Of course we do /all/ wish that bad art fads would just pass quickly.  And there are bad excesses of HDR usage that are practiced as a fad.  And we wish that would go away.  My favorite pet peeve is /bad compositions in HDR/, which look as though the artist spent a long time crafting something (whether s/he did or didn't) without ever seeing how foolish they were.

But even after the dust settles, HDR is still standing there.  HDR is simply a practical approach to photographic capture and rendering that says nothing at all about how the final product is to look.  You capture as many stops as you dare to in whatever time is allotted.  Then you take that and do whatever you want with it.  We have new tools, such as tonemapping that are in primitive stages of development.  But the tonemapping concept is a very general and practical one that applies to source images of any kind.  It's just a way to map a source image to a target image, something we do every day.

Consider the future.  High dynamic range displays are being developed that are intended to be capable of resolving 16 stops.  Cameras will find ways to expand their ability to capture dynamic range, whether by adaptive localized exposure, or use of the electronic shutter for rapid multi-exposure sequences, or by new high dynamic range sensors. 

HDR video fits into this technology horizon too.  Put to one side the faddish excesses of today.  It's got a future.

BTW -- I don't think there is any such thing as a "natural" look.  My perception of reality comes from the adaptive processing my eye and brain do as I attend to different parts of a scene.  There is no single white point or black point.  I can see inside the room and out the window just fine.  But I can't capture it in a single shot.