HDR shooting

Alan Certeza

Alan Certeza

Active member
I don't know much information about HDR photography where I should start from but a buddy was curious about HDR filming with 3 Canon 7D that got me curious as well.

Does anyone have any thoughts, idea, or sample footage of attempts or success?


feedback is much appreciated!
 
HDR filming? Hum... As far as know, HDR requires three different expositions that are blended together in some software like Photoshop.
 
It's essentially impossible to do without a brand new sensor. Panavision is developing one for instance. The problem is getting the EXACT same image to all cameras lenses at the exact same time, which is, like I said, basically impossible. The "easiest" way to do it is to just use a sensor with 3 photosites -all with different sensitivities - for every final pixel.

EDIT: It's easy to do in photoshop for still images. Just take three photos with the same framing but different shutter speeds and blend 'em in photoshop or a similar program.
 
you could do a time lapse with stills at the very least. Could probably be done if there is nothing in the frame close to the cameras and with much less precision than if you were in photoshop.
 
For timelaps you can do it easy depending on the subject matter. As for traditional film making, the technology doesn't exist quite yet.
 
Well true HDR would be difficult but just like the Photomatix plugin in Photoshop it can be approximated. Called tone mapping, it is possible to do and there probably is plug in for AE that does it I just haven't looked. I use the Photomatix plugin for Photoshop all the time and I find it very difficult to find the differance between that and true multiple exposure HDR

*BTW I've seen a commercial that used it in video so it does exist
 
Thanks guys! I figure it might have been impossible to do with the three 7d we have. I was worth the shot to ask.

Thanks boulder for the AE link. AE is something I'm just getting started with.

Thanks guys I really appreciate it!!!!
 
star trek the next generation did it with the shots of the ship models. They used a computer controlled crane and did each shot three times at different exposures.
 
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it's possible. i'm working on an HDR video project right now. we are working from a single camera with a single exposure. i can't go into our workflow as i am in a partnership and can't divulge our secrets :-)

but i can tell you that everything we have discovered pretty much eliminates the 7d from being used. i have made great HDR stills from raw exposures from the 7d but the AVC compression from the video falls apart when tonemapping. you can get away with a little bit but the HDR look requires heavy lifting of the mids and shadows. areas of even tones such as skies contain less information and get blocky really quick. ex1 footage is acceptable and higher bit rates are better.
 
Cheezweezl,

I understand that the 7D image falls apart but couldn't you do simple tone mapping with a red image and get the same results? I'm curious because I do tone mapping all the time in Photoshop to enhance even in a very subtle way (usually I blend a tone mapped layer with a regular layer)

I'm experimenting with doing tone mapping using a variance of this method:
http://www.hdrlabs.com/cgi-bin/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1253893715/2#2
 
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boulder said:
Cheezweezl,

I understand that the 7D image falls apart but couldn't you do simple tone mapping with a red image and get the same results? I'm curious because I do tone mapping all the time in Photoshop to enhance even in a very subtle way (usually I blend a tone mapped layer with a regular layer)

I'm experimenting with doing tone mapping using a variance of this method:
http://www.hdrlabs.com/cgi-bin/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1253893715/2#2
Click to expand...


yes, if you are going for subtle effects, you can make 7d footage work. i guess i should have been more clear. we are going for the signature HDR look. that artificial, painted, plastic, comic book look that is becoming so popular. to get this look, you really have to tweak the image. even with red footage, you end up with grain so the higher bitrates work best.
 
here are some examples of the look we are going for. these are proper HDR images compiled from bracketed RAW images, shot on 7d.

4273646190_906ffc3acc_b.jpg


4272901211_0e65b07951_b.jpg


4273644430_0cb6426c2a_b.jpg


4272898787_9cb4f0214b_b.jpg


4272897723_1de6ba5052_b.jpg
 
Ouch. I wouldn't say those are "proper" HDR shots in the least. They're poorly toned "HDR Fad" shots that look like someone threw them into Lucisart and cranked it all the way up. I'm glad you realize this though, I personally think it looks like Sh!t. I don't think you're going to get something with the proper latitude for a proper HDR shot for a while. Closest would be if you shot in redcode. I used to do tonal expansion on single shot files and they looked better than most of the cartoony hdr shots


Edit: the last one is decently toned though. The rest...oy...
 
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ok. when i say "proper" HDR, i mean they are shot with 3 different exposures as opposed to 1 single exposure which is all we currently have for video. no need to insult. if you don't like the cartoony look, that's cool, but that's what we are going for and achieving with video.
 
To achieve something close to this look on moving images I think you'd have to shoot on a wide latitude 35mm film stock, telecine 3 times for highlights, mid-tone and low-lights and then have fun in post. Only way to get anywhere near enough range with on digital right now would be using two cameras and a beam-splitter. Will take a hell of a rig and lots of time to match up the camera's images though. None of the current HDSLRs video encoding methods are up to the task I'm afraid.
 
yes. i was thinking the best possible way to do it right now would be to shoot film, then telecine at three different exposures. second best would be to shoot with a cam with more latitude than video, like the red.

however, to get the comic book look, it can be done with a single exposure.
 
cheezweezl said:
yes. i was thinking the best possible way to do it right now would be to shoot film, then telecine at three different exposures. second best would be to shoot with a cam with more latitude than video, like the red.

however, to get the comic book look, it can be done with a single exposure.
Click to expand...

The images you posted have huge dynamic ranges. There's no way single exposure anything, film or digital, can get the same look without looking like crap.
 
Jester2138 said:
The images you posted have huge dynamic ranges. There's no way single exposure anything, film or digital, can get the same look without looking like crap.
Click to expand...

hmmmm..... is that a challenge?

ok then. here are two versions of the same image. one was derived from 3 bracketed exposures, 3 stops apart. the other is a tonemapped version of the middle exposure image only. i can see the difference but the single image definitely doesn't look like crap. just for fun, i won't tell you which is which, although i don't think it will be that hard to figure out.

4276086908_94a8a449db_b.jpg


4275347537_e784f8a008_b.jpg
 
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