HDR footage from dual AF100s?

[mkfotos.com]

RED has or is working on HDRx, a number of companies from GoPro on up have 3D camera setups, but after reading a post on cheesycam, I'm wondering, why not shoot true HDR (instead of the quasi HDR that HDRx offers, or 3D) with two AF100s? The cameras are small/light enough that even a handheld/shoulder rig should be relatively easy to handle. Sure, maybe 20 stops is an unrealistic figure, but what about 16 or even 18, for about the cost of an F3?

 

[Jarek Zabczynski]

In the form factor of a 3D beamsplitter/prism/doohickey rig? No thanks...I'd rather become a lighting master and learn how to communicate with the sun gods so they can help me with any lighting situation I may find myself in.

But realistically speaking, a proper 3D rig for two of these cameras and all the stuff required to make them and the lenses work in sync far exceeds the cost of even 2 AF-100s.

 

[Bassman2003]

It is an interesting point and can be applied to a lot of the large single chip camera implementations. For example, the 5D mark II is throwing away a lot of pixels to get down to video resolution. What if they found a way to set three levels of exposure using all of the pixels and then interpolated down the HD or whatever resolution? At least there would be image data for all of the pixels which would effect Moire. This would all be through one lens and could give a lot of dynamic range if techically possible.

 

[Mike@AF]

In the form factor of a 3D beamsplitter/prism/doohickey rig? No thanks...I'd rather become a lighting master and learn how to communicate with the sun gods so they can help me with any lighting situation I may find myself in.

But realistically speaking, a proper 3D rig for two of these cameras and all the stuff required to make them and the lenses work in sync far exceeds the cost of even 2 AF-100s.

Agreed. I recently worked as rig tech and stereographer on a 3D feature shot with 2 F3's with a beamsplitter. Aside from the entire rig being cumbersome and somewhat unwieldy, it's a major pain and very difficult to perfectly align the lenses. With 3D that's not as crucial because you're spreading the I-O anyways, but in 2D with the lenses at zero I-O it's never perfect at all distances and will appear soft or have double edges in some places. This would end up requiring a lot of post work to fix.

There's also the issue that the AF100 doesn't have genlock or slave timecode capability. That's partly why we went F3 instead of AF100. If you shoot 2 cameras to do something like this the shutter needs to be sync'ed.

You'd be better off lighting better and getting a camera with more latitude and dynamic range. Or camera manufacturers could make a wider sensor to have 2 images projected onto it or 2 sensors and then include a beam splitter inside the camera between the lens and the senor. Then you could adjust the settings differently for each sensor in the camera and even record to completely separate files for the HDR. This would theoretically work because there would be no lens alignment issue. Basically you're doing what they did with 3CCD cameras, except now it's 2CMOS HDR.