Raw Vs HDR Video - whats more stable/easier workflow?

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grantw

Well-known member
I'm shooting an office tour that's right on the water with huge windows. I want to try to expose the outside without needing additional lights inside. I'm going to run some test's this weekend - but what do you think is more stable as far as no technical issues, and the easier workflow? Raw or HDR Video? Since I haven't used either so far I'm a little nervous shooting 50% of my footage with one of them - so want to go with the 'safer' bet.

I'm renting a 5d3, but I'll also have my 5d2. Does either one matter as far as stability with magic lantern?
 
Do you own/have any fast CF cards? I do not think ML is something you jump into and start working with right away. RAW can be stable if you have the right CF cards. I would go with the 160MBps Sandisk or the 1025X Lexars. I have never tried the HDR function so I can not comment. But, hearing rental, ML and "I have never used it" in the same sentence with something important to shoot sounds scary. Not because ML is unreliable but because it has a time period needed for testing and trusting.

RAW workflow is pretty defined by now. Resolve or After Effects.
 
I never used the HDR function in ML, but a friend of mine used it extensively. You might wan't to look up some tutorials on what's involved with the workflow. If I remember correctly, my friend had to shoot at a higher shutter speed and use After Effects to interpolate both exposures together. Depending how powerful your computer is, it might be more straight forward to shoot RAW. I think RAW gives you up to 12 stops of DR.
 
ML Raw is very data intensive and will require lots of fast memory cards and hard drive space. It it will also slow down post production by a fair amount. It is great but there is a price to pay. You must consider the storage requirements here, HD raw is 83 MB/s at 24P. That is megabytes not megabits so 1.2 GB per minute.

HDR video in ML is more of a gimmick than something that is really usable. It only really works with shots with no or very slow motion. It basically records every other frame with different ISO settings, so you get a bright frame and a dark frame. There is then software you can use that will take the two frames and combine them to make a HDR frame. Now problem is that since they are two frames taken at 2 different times the frames are not the same. The software will attempt to distort 1 frame to match the other but this only works if the frames are very similar. If there is too much difference in the frames from motion then there will be artifact and less than desirable results.

There is also dual ISO for the MKIII that does the same thing as HDR video but rather than 2 separate frames it does it in a single frame by alternating ISO's for different lines of pixels. The problem here is that half the image is 1 iso and half is another. This can then be processed into an HDR, seems to work well but I am sure there are issues but might be a better option than HDR video. I believe this must be done with RAW so there will be the post processing hit as well.
 
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Dual ISO is actually pretty good but the workflow penalty is immense. I shot a music video with only three shots with Dual ISO. I could increase shadow detail very, very well (probably somewhere around 14 stops) but it only really worked in ACR, Resolve had weird errors in shadows. It also took A LONG TIME to convert those files with the cr2hdr.exe and wasn't exactly beginner friendly.

But it is now an option on my toolbox :)
 
There's some youtube vids of a guy who shoots zillion-dollar beach houses with HDR. It looks like a phenomenal technique for that kind of work, but pans, cranes, etc. have to be very slow and you need to shoot at 60p. He has some breakdowns of his process.

Not something I'd just jump into without extensive testing on set and in post, but his real estate work is simply phenomenal.
 
You might want to look more at light management than camera tech for this one. Even with raw or HDR you might not have enough dynamic range to make both the outside and the inside look good at the same time. If it's only a couple windows you could cut the light down with some tint or mesh (assuming the focus will be soft enough to not go moire crazy) or increase the light inside enough to get closer to the daylight level. Not to say that doing that is easy, but at least it's possible whereas it might not be possible by just depending on the camera's dynamic range.
 
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