enhancing HDRx

[Maik Müller]

I made more experiments with HDRx and i was just thinking about ways i want to use it. I would call it Multi-Exposure mode and with Dragon it's not really THAT much about HDR anymore. However i like the idea of getting motion and stills. Images shot at the same place in time, but with different amount of blur - thats special.

So here are some ideas:

- instead of setting up with stops i would prefer to directly choose shutter-speed/angle (is it possible to not restrict that to multiples of track a's shutter?)
- are more than two images/tracks possible?
- longer exposure on x-track(s) would be nice - not just shorter than a-track (example: 1/48th on a - 1/24th on x1 and 1/96th on x2)
- a switch to bring a and x-tracks to the same level of brightness > just compensate via iso/meta-data on x-tracks
- maybe allow frame-processing separately for each track (example: standard-motion on a-track and an averaged x-track)

What do you think?

 

[Luke Neumann]

Agreed. I would add to that:

- Instead of having to preview either the A or X track, being able to preview some sort of Simple Blend or "0" value track. It's easy enough to figure out what your overall exposure will be but it's often times kind of annoying to either view a really bright or really dark track when you're trying to do a complex move with rack focus etc.

 

[Maik Müller]

Agreed. I would add to that:

- Instead of having to preview either the A or X track, being able to preview some sort of Simple Blend or "0" value track. It's easy enough to figure out what your overall exposure will be but it's often times kind of annoying to either view a really bright or really dark track when you're trying to do a complex move with rack focus etc.

Yeah, some kind of previewing the whole exposure-range - thats a feature request we had since the introduction of HDRx and it has been said it's not possible. I don't really need a full image here (a shortcut to switch does the trick) but what would help a lot is making the exposure-tools aware of all tracks - the histogram, goal-posts, zebras and so on.

Oh and maybe it's possible to route the X-track to a secondary display?

 

[Luke Neumann]

Why couldn't you simply have a resulting "0" track for monitoring that uses ISO to simulate (as best as possible) what the average would be? There has to be a way to at least monitor a faux middle track that isn't recorded somehow.

 

[Michael Tiemann]

I made more experiments with HDRx and i was just thinking about ways i want to use it. I would call it Multi-Exposure mode and with Dragon it's not really THAT much about HDR anymore. However i like the idea of getting motion and stills. Images shot at the same place in time, but with different amount of blur - thats special.

This is how I use HDRx. I can import the HDRx clip into a project twice, the first with the blend giving me 100% A and the second with the blend giving me 100% of the X. Since I can change the ISO/FLUT of these two tracks so that they give me essentially the same exposure.

I don't have a motion mount. If I did, then it would be very cool to be able to alternate the ND values between A and X frames so that one doesn't lose a stop exposure (or more) when using the X track vs. the A track. But for me there's a world of difference between 1/48th and 1/96th of a second in terms of motion blur. My 24p videos love 1/48th, but my stills look so much better at 1/96th.

 

[Maik Müller]

Why couldn't you simply have a resulting "0" track for monitoring that uses ISO to simulate (as best as possible) what the average would be? There has to be a way to at least monitor a faux middle track that isn't recorded somehow.

I think it has to do with the way things are internally routed. I assume we don't see a separate preview-stream on the monitor - it's exactly that feed which is being used for encoding. Which makes lot of sense. But processing it (blending together) is probably something not allowed in the cameras design - on purpose. The exposure tools and all that stuff are a different thing.

This is how I use HDRx. I can import the HDRx clip into a project twice, the first with the blend giving me 100% A and the second with the blend giving me 100% of the X. Since I can change the ISO/FLUT of these two tracks so that they give me essentially the same exposure.

I don't have a motion mount. If I did, then it would be very cool to be able to alternate the ND values between A and X frames so that one doesn't lose a stop exposure (or more) when using the X track vs. the A track. But for me there's a world of difference between 1/48th and 1/96th of a second in terms of motion blur. My 24p videos love 1/48th, but my stills look so much better at 1/96th.

Yeah thats the way i was using it...

Using the Motion-Mount to bring a and x-tracks to the same brightness-levels is a cool idea too - not sure if that is doable but it would be awesome. The weird thing here is, if the x-track (with 1/96th) doesn't use ND-filtration then the a-track (with 1/48th) doesn't use it too for the first half of it's exposure time. The two exposures aren't separate, they start at the same time and base on the same readings from the sensor during the overlapping time.

Two more ideas:
- separate REDCODE-settings
- separate frame-rates

 

[Tommaso Alvisi]

- separate frame-rates

Yeah 24fps and 12fps respectively...or even 6fps for stills...

 

[Mikael Lubtchansky]

I don't have a motion mount. If I did, then it would be very cool to be able to alternate the ND values between A and X frames so that one doesn't lose a stop exposure (or more) when using the X track vs. the A track. But for me there's a world of difference between 1/48th and 1/96th of a second in terms of motion blur. My 24p videos love 1/48th, but my stills look so much better at 1/96th.

FWIW the camera cannot do HDRx with a motion mount. Both have to take over the normal shutter operation and as far as I understand it there is no way of using them simultaneously for now.

Maybe WEAPON's extra computing power will allow more tracks, processing options or enable the display of a blended track but I suspect EPIC might be hitting a bandwidth or processing limit with current HDRx implementation when recording 2 tracks.

 

[David Battistella]

I have a few thoughts on this.

I'd like to see a bracketing mode combined somehow with burst. When I use my Dragon for stills, I tend to set it to record 12 frame bursts. This gives enough frames for ADD stills extraction. If I could somehow combine burst, bracketing with the creaion of 3 five or seven files for HDR that would be good.

I would however also want to have a mode in RCX that completely automates the process of stills extraction. It's all about workflow.

 

[Maik Müller]

Yeah 24fps and 12fps respectively...or even 6fps for stills...

Exactly, stills with lower compression-ratio.... or 24fps standard motion with 1/48th and additionally 48fps HFR motion with 1/96th or even slow-motion with more fps. Recording such separate video-streams brings me to another two ideas:

- ability to configure separate record-buttons
- separate pre-record buffering

Imagine shooting motion with 24p and then having a moment where you think "oh i should have shot a slow-mo of that", then remember the camera is always pre-recording at 120fps in backgroudn and press the secondary record button...

I'd like to see a bracketing mode combined somehow with burst. When I use my Dragon for stills, I tend to set it to record 12 frame bursts. This gives enough frames for ADD stills extraction. If I could somehow combine burst, bracketing with the creaion of 3 five or seven files for HDR that would be good.

If we can configure more than one additional HDR-stream then you would gain exactly that and in contrary to other bracketing modes all streams would start the exposure for each frame at the same time. You aren't shooting frame by frame afterwards.

But a "classic" bracketing mode would have some benefits too (it wouldn't eat up bandwith like parallel streams).

I would however also want to have a mode in RCX that completely automates the process of stills extraction. It's all about workflow.

You can already build a export-preset in RCX which automatically export all frames marked as stills. I haven't tried, but it's probably working nicely together with files recorded in the stills-mode of firmware beta 6.x.xx

 

[Russ Fill]

This is how I use HDRx. I can import the HDRx clip into a project twice, the first with the blend giving me 100% A and the second with the blend giving me 100% of the X. Since I can change the ISO/FLUT of these two tracks so that they give me essentially the same exposure.

I don't have a motion mount. If I did, then it would be very cool to be able to alternate the ND values between A and X frames so that one doesn't lose a stop exposure (or more) when using the X track vs. the A track. But for me there's a world of difference between 1/48th and 1/96th of a second in terms of motion blur. My 24p videos love 1/48th, but my stills look so much better at 1/96th.

I don't want to say the glass is half empty but Im pretty sure at this time the Motion Mount will not work with HDRx at this time.. Everything your talking about is getting my interest about multi images from using the all the tools mentioned.
+1 Bracketing would be something I would be very interested in...
Love these forums...