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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

SO... How many are actually using HDRx?

Gunleik Groven

Gunleik Groven

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I used it very little, and lately even less.

I like how the Epic burns out.

So...

But I guess others are in different boats?

Maybe I should start a new thread with HDRx images?
 
In Scarlet land I've mainly been using HDRx for timelapse work involving clouds and cityscapes. Just to protect me if there's any extreme exposure variations.

There's a good deal of latitude straight through a single track and like you I like how it rolls off to blistering white.

For spherical HDRs I'm still using DSLRs for studio vfx work. That's more specialized and capturing a broader dynamic range and not focused on motion.
 
For me, although it's a nice feature it isn't quick to process, couple that with it not being useable in all situations (you have to shoot it to test if it'll work), makes it a bit unappealing.

Based on the last time I tested it we only had 'blend' as an option which (I could be wrong) just looks like a 50/50 cross dissolve between the two images - the problem with this is it looks weird (especially when trying to edit it into an existing sequence), you're actually blending the dark areas of your underexposed track back into your master shot and you lose colour information the higher the blend %. In most cases it may just be a small blown out window, so 10% of the frame which is overexposed. But blend will mess up the other 90% of the shot, making it dark and grey where you previously had nice colour and exposure. It sticks out in the edit, and my untrained CC hands can't get it to match. I tried luma keying in AE to get a better mix from the A and X track, but it was faffy and results vary.

I'd love to see some intelligent tone mapping in RCX/SDK so that we get the extra highlights of the X track where the A track blew out - but not all the underexposed areas being blended back in too.

I'd seriously consider using it then.
 
To be honest I havent played with it much, I probably should since I heard its really beneficial when you are planing to pull stills images from your red footage. the problem I have with it though is like Karl said...its a bit cumbersome to work out and more importantly for me...I only have 64gb SSD cards at the moment...and when shooting at 5K...it really burns through storage in no time.

I would love to see what the difference in quality is, in regards to sharpness and motion blur when pulling stills from footage shot with HdrX and without.
 
I have found it useful in many cases, but I dont really like the way it renders skintones when you mix both channels... if a human is in shot, I generally never consider HDRx... It is useful for landscapes and many wides though.

But in general I agree... I love the way epic burns out. Very organic feeling. Only other camera that I have worked with which does it the same way is the Alexa.

Sayonara,
Ivan
 
i also actually never use it, to many artifacts with the motion blur when there is movement. The only useful way is way shooting a big total of for example a building and the shot it not using and you have a extreme contrast situation.
 
I would love to see good examples of use of it. Stills and motion...

Why not just start posting it here? Like the old glass thread?
 
Here is a still frame I pulled from a motion-still shoot I did with a girl a little while ago, this was without HdrX, the shutter speed was at around 1/500s and the lens was a red zoom 18-50mm and the image is quite soft even with such a relatively fast shutter speed. aperture was around F8 if I remember correctly. shot in 5K-Ws. On my next shoot I will try and do a similar setup with HdrX and one without. But I'm worried about skintones as well.

I used HdrX only once in the past on a music video and found the image to be very flat and grey. The lighting scenario here was fairly harsh afternoon sunlight and it was all shot natural, no reflectors no fill nothing and I was very positively surprised how well the Epic footage holds up even without HdrX. But the overal sharpness could be a bit stronger for my taste.

april__5k_epic_stillframe_iii_by_thrashdrummer-d50wnlz.jpg


the big version can be seen here: http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/144/c/6/april__5k_epic_stillframe_iii_by_thrashdrummer-d50wnlz.jpg
 
Dominik Muench said:
Here is a still frame I pulled from a motion-still shoot I did with a girl a little while ago, this was without HdrX, the shutter speed was at around 1/500s and the lens was a red zoom 18-50mm and the image is quite soft even with such a relatively fast shutter speed. aperture was around F8 if I remember correctly. shot in 5K-Ws. On my next shoot I will try and do a similar setup with HdrX and one without. But I'm worried about skintones as well.

I used HdrX only once in the past on a music video and found the image to be very flat and grey. The lighting scenario here was fairly harsh afternoon sunlight and it was all shot natural, no reflectors no fill nothing and I was very positively surprised how well the Epic footage holds up even without HdrX. But the overal sharpness could be a bit stronger for my taste.
Click to expand...

Its the glass.... Though the image is great.
 
Timur Civan said:
Its the glass.... Though the image is great.
Click to expand...

really ? the red zoom is quite THAT soft ?

hmm..glad I got the canon mount as well...will be trying those Zeiss Primes next I have sitting no my shelve.
 
From what I've shot, one HDRx shot has made it into a finished piece. Generally, the A track is taken, and the X discarded. Although once, the X track was used instead for a shot of a sunset over water. Felt like a stylistic look, and it got dropped into a sequence without modification. The two 'built in' blend modes aren't enough of a starting point, and sometimes neither really works for the shot. Turning a shot into a VFX shot essentially makes it a no-go for my clients, so luma keying and hand blending the two tracks together rarely happens, in my experiences. I've got some personal shots that have some 'wow' factor that I couldn't have gotten without HDRx, but to some extent, productions have ingrained habits to avoid those situations or have strategies to deal with them with other means. Those have kinda gotten so routine and 'easy' to do, that most productions avoid the situations where HDRx might give them something special.

Going blue sky for a moment, I wonder how close we are to 'enough' DR or 'too much' DR out of digital sensors. Film is around 14-15, right? I'd say I'd like a little more than MX, Dragon might do it or be close. At some point it's more about how it looks when the image hits burnout...in a lot of cases you want and need a bit of burnout to make the image look 'right'.
 
Great thread!

I did a quick test for a specific problem I frequently run into as an indie filmmaker.

Shooting interiors with actors using available light, while protecting the exteriors seen through windows from getting blown out. Actors, hence skintone, would be part of the A track (atleast the ones I'd care about). In my test, both SimpleBlend and MagicMotion seem to give me a 'plastic-y' skintone, but I caveat that with the note that I spent all of five minutes trying to make it better. I have no understanding of these tools beyond moving the slider around and seeing if I like what I see.



Would be great if RED could post a tutorial on how to use HDRx for this situation. I agree that when the shot turns into a VFX effort, its a non-starter. So I'm hopeful I can learn how this is done via RedCineX alone.

If magicmotion and simpleblend weren't meant to handle this, here's hoping RED lets us get under the hood with HDRx in RedCineX, perhaps with a new tool that aggressively favors skintone preservation in the A track.

---
Nikhil Kamkolkar
facebook.com/indiancowboy
EPIC-X "DAZZLE"
NY/NJ
 
I use HDRx quite often and for different reasons. Sometimes in really run n' gun situations I just don't want to have to use a mattebox with ND! I think I most often use it for pulling sharp stills while still having a 1/48 shutter for motion. Here are a couple HDRx stills from our Salt Flats shoot last weekend. X track was set to 1/192 shutter. This is a big part of why I can't wait for Dragon...with 2+ more stops of sensitivity we can set the X track to 1/500 or even higher.

Epic-0000248.jpg


Epic-000.jpg
 
I very occasionally use HDRx. I used it recently on a feature in the jungle and I had about a dozen shots where it became useful in the DI. BUT the Magic Motion and simple Blend implementation is horrible in my opinion and we treat the X track as a separate track and luma key the highlights in the A track and replace with the X track which carries it's own grade. This way, HDRx doesn't even touch the skin tones, unless the skin tones happen to be nealry blown out which is not necessarily a likely scenario where you will use HDRx.

Most of the time I turn it on but it becomes a hassle in post- working in an expensive room with a colorist on limited time you prioritize your grading. Spending extra time on minor HDRx improvements is the first thing to get cut from the to do list. But when a shot can really benefit from it, it's pretty great and worth the time trade off.
 
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