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HDR Video a Reality
akaru writes "Using common DSLR cameras, some creative individuals have created an example of true HDR video. Instead of pseudo-HDR, they actually used multiple cameras and a beam splitter to record simultaneous video streams, and composited them together in post. Looks very intriguing."
C&P from the linked page (assuming a /.'ing imminent)
HDR demo @ http://vimeo.com/14821961
Press Release:
HDR Video A Reality
Soviet Montage Productions releases information on the first true High Dynamic Range (HDR) video using DSLRs
San Francisco, CA, September 9, 2010: Soviet Montage Productions demonstrated today the first true HDR video sourced from multiple exposures. Unlike HDR timelapse videos that only capture a few frames per minute, true HDR video can capture 24 or more frames per second of multiple exposure footage. Using common DSLRs, the team was able to composite multiple HD video streams into a single video with an exposure gamut much greater than any on the market today. They are currently using this technology to produce an upcoming film.
Benefits of Motion HDR
HDR imaging is an effect achieved by taking multiple disparate exposures of a subject and combining them to create images of a higher exposure range. It is an increasingly popular technique for still photography, so much so that it has recently been deployed as a native application on Apple’s iPhone. Until now, however, the technique was too intensive and complex for motion. Soviet Montage Productions believes they have solved the issue with a method that produces stunning–and affordable–true HDR for film and video.
The merits of true HDR video are various. The most obvious benefit is having an exposure variation in a scene that more closely matches the human eye–think of filming your friend with a sunset at his or her back, your friend’s face being as perfectly captured as the landscape behind them. HDR video also has the advantage of reduced lighting needs. Finally, the creative control of multiple exposures, including multiple focus points and color control, is unparalleled with true HDR video.
“I believe HDR will give filmmakers greater flexibility not only in the effects they can create but also in the environments they can shoot in” said Alaric Cole, one of the members of the production team, “undoubtedly, it will become a commonplace technique in the near future. ”
Contact:
Michael Safai
Soviet Montage
201 Spear Street #1100
San Francisco, CA 94105
1 415 489 0437
mike@sovietmontage.com
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
Can anyone give a brief rundown on what HDR is? I know it stands for "high dynamic range", but as someone who knows nothing about photography, it means nothing to me. What it has to do with overexposure/underexposure (to which the video refers)? Why is it harder to do with video than still images?
Wasn't the first HDR video camera back in 1993? Granted, they called it Adaptive Sensitivity back then.
Cool
In soviet Russia, God creates you!
The technique is promising, but the provided example video does not demonstrate a true advantage it has over conventional cinematography. They filmed with two cameras, one overexposing one underexposing, but they don't have one with the right exposure to compare with the composed HDR images. The city scenes are filmed at daylight, without any areas of high contrast that would make a high dynamic range necessary. The same with the people example, they even overdid it to give it a vibrant effect, making it more of an artistic tool than capturing shadows and lights naturally.
They should make a short film with city nighttime and desert scenes, that should be impressive. They should also contact director Michael Mann, he would jump at the opportunity to film HDR.
wtf? no intelligent aperture, unlimited storage and battery life? wake me up when obama sends me one for free.
You have two of those embedded in your friggin head. :P
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
and it also has to give BJs
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
The bright spots are indeed an artifact of the HDR process -- partulcarly the tone-mapping algorithms. On its own, HDR is basically a method of capturing intensity values that would otherwise fall above or beneath the threshold of a camera's sensitivity. The problem is, when yo do that you end up with image data that can't be completely represented within the gamut of a printer or a screen. You could simply display a "slice" out of the data, which results in a regular images at whatever exposure setting you've chose, or try to "compress" the tone values into your available gamut, which results in a washed-out appearance. This is where tone-mapping comes in. What tone-mapping does is try to compute the correct exposure levels on a per-pixel basis, by comparing its intensity relative to nearby pixels. Ideally, this results in shadows being brightened to the point where you can see detail in them, and blown-out highlights brought toned down (analogous to "dodging" and "burning" in terms of old-school darkroom film processing -- the dynamic range of film is much higher than that of photo paper).
In practice, though, you end up with weird highlights around dark areas, like the ones you saw around the man's arms, because the tone-mapping algorithm is trying to maximize the local contrast in the image. It's brightened up the coat, and so it also brightens nearby pixels to compensate for the reduction in contrast. Some people try to adjust the algorithms to minimize this effect, while others try to maximize it for dramatic effect, or even an oversaturated, impressionistic look -- it's largely an artistic choice, though when done badly it can also be a sign of amateurism. Still others will manually composite multiple exposures to get the benefits of HDR imaging while avoiding its side effects entirely,
The Wikipedia article on tone-mapping goes into great detail on the different approaches to HDR photography, if you're interested.
You forgot about full lightfield capture. This can be done with a single camera using ultra high resolution and a microlens array (or alternatively, an array of a very large number of tiny cameras). Think single camera, single shot capture of depth (3D) and all focus planes. Then you can reproduce the full 3D and multiple focus depths (as in, the eye would have to focus at different depths) on a flat display with microlens array covering it (again, need ultra-high resolution since focal depths and parallax viewpoints are discretized to the pixel number covered by each micro lens).
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
and it also has to give BJs
Just get a cheap camera phone, those cameras all suck.
Incorrect, it's true HDR recording. The process of viewing it on LDR/SDR monitors is tone-mapping, which over the years has been tuned to represent the best known science of what the eyes actually see at once - our retinas already make us susceptible to only being able to view certain ranges of light at a time.
In other words, more information is being recorded than your eye can see at once, and you're complaining because when you see it, all that information isn't there? That's a pedantic, unsolvable contradiction.
A true HDR *display* (unfathomably difficult to imagine, I won't begin to go into the problems with the source for all the light being in one location, while other light is also hitting the eye from the real-world outside of the display, making visual processing of the HDR display massively erronous), would offer no advantage to a tone-mapped image, as your eye still can't see more than a certain range at any given time.
Tone-mapped SDR images actually produce images with more visible detail *at once* than the eye can distinguish *at once*. Sure, the eye can do things the still image can't, like focus somewhere else, shield out certain bright or dark parts, and readjust automatically to what you're now viewing - I'm not claiming tone-mapping will ever produce as much variance as the eye is capable of - but it DOES bring to light more detail in HDR recorded scenes than the eye could otherwise see at once looking at the same scene.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
With frankencamera you could do HDR and a lot more things in an "intelligent" camera with software. In fact the first implementation in a mass consumption device was in the N900, it takes several photos, regulates exposition and other parameters to make that photo in a more parametrizable way that the iphone could do. But not sure if that would be enough for HDR video, if needs that the input, in real time, have different something at hardware level. In that case maybe something like this 3D camera would be needed. And could give some meaning to such devices... not only shooting in 3d, but in HDR video.
Especially the part with the guy talking, made me think...
So someone's found a way to make real life look life Half-Life 2 Episode 2?
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.