HDRx footage...

[Damien Molineaux]

I don’t think that RED sensor has any better sensitivity as some top of the line DLSRs

So all depends how much light in shadows you want to capture in your HDR picture.
You can’t get out of crashed shadows if there is no light or no exposure time/aperture that will allow you to do it.

You have to use fast lenses and exposure as long as needed for given scene light.

Andrew,

I think you're looking at this the wrong way around. As has been pointed by others, HDR, in motion, is about exposing correctly for HIGHLIGHTS. Yes, you may be right about the Red sensor not being more sensitive than a top of the line DSLR, but when you're exposing for shadows (with light, good lens, wide aperture, etc.) what happens to your highlights ? If you are in a situation where you can't control them (outdoors), they are overexposed. With HDR, you can expose for both shadows and highlights, then, if you've chosen to save both those exposures, you decide in post how you want to treat them. Or with Red you an also decide ahead of time, you want 3 extra stops, and the double exposure is combined into one in camera. Choices, options, control, thank you Red.

Cheers,
Damien

 

[Jason Diamond]

is there a ballpark matrix showing max fps for HDRx™ or EasyHDR™ from 2k thru to 5k?
I'm assuming cropping towards 2K would yield higher fps in HDR mode(s)...

 

[Jason Diamond]

when you activate HDR mode(s) how does the UI change to help you expose via the common tools?
Does it just shrink in the histogram to give room for the extra stops or is there some specific UI or metering change ala new goalposts/barber pole/stop lights etc...

 

[Andrew M.]

Andrew,

I think you're looking at this the wrong way around. As has been pointed by others, HDR, in motion, is about exposing correctly for HIGHLIGHTS. Cheers,
Damien

Damien, I know that, I was responding to Lee that is not interested in the motion. As I understand his question, Lee was hoping that he can avoid long exposure times while shooting HDR stills using RED.

That is why Lee asked what is the minimum time exposure he can use with RED.

What I am reading here EPIC or Scarlet could be use for HDR stills and the result will be comparable to the high end DLSR cameras shooting stills in HDR bracketed mode, but don’t count on miracle of 1/1000 exposure time on the longest bracketed shot and get all these shadows in the church alcove at bright noon sun coming through the gothic windows

 

[Lee Fingersh]

Damien, I know that, I was responding to Lee that is not interested in the motion. As I understand his question, Lee was hoping that he can avoid long exposure times while shooting HDR stills using RED.

That is why Lee asked what is the minimum time exposure he can use with RED.

What I am reading here EPIC or Scarlet could be use for HDR stills and the result will be comparable to the high end DLSR cameras shooting stills in HDR bracketing mode, but don’t count on miracle of 1/1000 exposure time and get all these shadows in the church alcove at bright noon sun coming through the gothic windows

What I'm interested in is being able to shoot an HDR in a regular single-exposure time, rather than having to use two separate exposures separated by the normal dSLR frame period of, say, 1/3-1/5th of a second. Sometimes this would mean 1/1000th if outside in direct sun, other times this would mean 1/50th or so if in dark conditions, but in all cases it would be way faster than bracketing two shots with a dSLR. When it comes to moving subjects, bracketing isn't exactly a practical approach.

So my question stands - how short a shutter speed can you choose - for the base exposure - to get 2/3/6 stops of HDR using the approach RED is using, when shooting stills?

 

[JD Holloway]

1/48 * 1/2e6 =1/3072 ish???
for about 6 stops in motion.

sound about right?

Stills may be a different animal.
And you may want to adjust for your lensing choices.
eg. inverse of the focal length for base exposure.
100mm lens, 1/100th sec base exposure....HDR up from there to electrical shutter speed limit.
Assuming hand held or to prevent motion blur etc....
experts chime in!

edit: I reread your question...is the base shutter/exposure adjustable... I dont think we've heard yet.
I think that the higher you set your base shutter, the fewer stops of HDR lattitude be be left available, up to the sensors max read speed. I think 3000th is probably tops...I could be wrong. 6000 is pushing it

Of course we are describing a system whos DR headroom is constrained only by its shortest possible read speed.
I believe its 1/2000th for mysterium.

 

[Andrew M.]

Lee, my DLSR can shoot 10 frame per second.
So if I want to make HDR picture of fast changing scene I will use 2 shots with the exposure time 1/500 for highlights and 1/5 for shadows. Total time 220 ms. This is for indoor/outdoor scenes.
Making it any shorter requires very bright scenes or very fast lenses or both.

Now if there is no moving object in the scene I will use 3 shots 1/500, 1/5,, ½
Now you can change aperture as well in the later one. So you can change aperture and exposure.
RED is not changing the aperture between frames and I do not recommend doing it on DLSR as well but this is a different discussion.

Again depends from the light and object I am shooting, for outdoor HDR shots sometimes I use 1/500 and 1/100.

With red HDRx™ it is a pure speculation now but looks like there are two measurements being taken per each frame (shot) or maybe two ways of measuring the light being done. We don’t know this one.
We can presume that we are not dealing with two shots like in the DSLR example above.

For the purpose of this discussion let’s presume that these two shots are nested in each other so we did save some time by not waiting for the highlight shot that is very short anyway.

So coming to the first DLSR example single shot with two reading taken of the sensor, one after 1/500 sec and one at the end of 1/5 sec but both shots started at the same time.
You end up with two pictures being produced, one exposed for 1/500 sec and another for 1/5 during the total time of 1/5 sec needed to take such a shot.

Now if 1/5 sec exposure is enough for your shot it will be the total time needed to take the picture plus the time needed for storing it on the media that could be a background process.

Completely different explanation you will get for HDRx™ in motion pictures as Damien explained it above.

 

[joshua csehak]

The reason the highlight exposure precedes the rest of the image temporally is because the chips are recording data in two distinct ways to achieve this version of hdr: 1) they record the brightness of a given photosite, as normal and 2) they record time it takes for any photosite that clips to reach the clipping point.

So technically both exposures are taken at the same time just using different ways of measuring brightness; this results in motion artifacts but it's a clever solution.

That's not the way it works, according to the article. Assuming I understood it correctly, the camera takes a normal exposure, and then, without any gap, takes a shorter exposure anywhere from 2 to 6 stops shorter. So Lee, I would guess that the highlight exposure is dependent on base exposure, so if you were in stills mode and took a picture at 1/2 sec exposure and the HDR set to 6 stops, the highlight exposure would be a 1/125 sec; whereas if you were at 1/125, the highlight exposure would be 1/8000. What the upper limit is for the shutter speed, only the Red team can say, but I'd guess it to be 1/8000.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

That's not the way it works, according to the article. Assuming I understood it correctly, the camera takes a normal exposure, and then, without any gap, takes a shorter exposure anywhere from 2 to 6 stops shorter. So Lee, I would guess that the highlight exposure is dependent on base exposure, so if you were in stills mode and took a picture at 1/2 sec exposure and the HDR set to 6 stops, the highlight exposure would be a 1/125 sec; whereas if you were at 1/125, the highlight exposure would be 1/8000. What the upper limit is for the shutter speed, only the Red team can say, but I'd guess it to be 1/8000.

Other way around. It takes an initial read off the sensor and then continues exposing and reads that off as the normal exposure. The 'preceding' and 'trailing' talk is misleading.

http://reduser.net/forum/showpost.php?p=655157&postcount=219

 

[Lee Fingersh]

Lee, my DLSR can shoot 10 frame per second.
So if I want to make HDR picture of fast changing scene I will use 2 shots with the exposure time 1/500 for highlights and 1/5 for shadows. Total time 220 ms. This is for indoor/outdoor scenes.
Making it any shorter requires very bright scenes or very fast lenses or both.

Now if there is no moving object in the scene I will use 3 shots 1/500, 1/5,, ½
Now you can change aperture as well in the later one. So you can change aperture and exposure.
RED is not changing the aperture between frames and I do not recommend doing it on DLSR as well but this is a different discussion.

Again depends from the light and object I am shooting, for outdoor HDR shots sometimes I use 1/500 and 1/100.

With red HDRx™™ it is a pure speculation now but looks like there are two measurements being taken per each frame (shot) or maybe two ways of measuring the light being done. We don’t know this one.
We can presume that we are not dealing with two shots like in the DSLR example above.

For the purpose of this discussion let’s presume that these two shots are nested in each other so we did save some time by not waiting for the highlight shot that is very short anyway.

So coming to the first DLSR example single shot with two reading taken of the sensor, one after 1/500 sec and one at the end of 1/5 sec but both shots started at the same time.
You end up with two pictures being produced, one exposed for 1/500 sec and another for 1/5 during the total time of 1/5 sec needed to take such a shot.

Now if 1/5 sec exposure is enough for your shot it will be the total time needed to take the picture plus the time needed for storing it on the media that could be a background process.

Completely different explanation you will get for HDRx™™ in motion pictures as Damien explained it above.

What I'm thinking of is the situation where I'd normally need a 1/50th shot and a 1/500th shot (this gives a little over 3 stop of highlight protection), but I want them both in 1/50th. Or the situation where I want one at 1/500th and one at 1/8000th for 4 stops of highlight protection but I want them both in 1/500th.

The RED approach seems suitable for both cases but can it do the first and not the second? Where is that limit? That's my question.

 

[Michael Cioni]

Multiple angles at work

Multiple angles at work

I haven't really seen Jim this excited in a while - admittedly that kind of excitement is pretty contagious. But when we loaded the latest iteration of an HDRx™™ image sequence in 2K on the 4K projector, I realized why his excitement was like a 9.5.

My initial reaction to loading the frames of the Binion's Casino street corner in Vegas was that I was looking at IMAX photography. The HDRx™™ mode does something to Epic pictures that further distances them from "digital" and "film;" making Epic a completely unique class of imagery.

SMOOTHNESS
Because the Epic delivers the highest dynamic range of any motion-picture cinema camera, the side-effect is that this dynamic range translates into an incredibly smooth picture. With 16+ stops of dynamic range, the files do not need to be in REDLog or REDLogFilm in order to evaluate the extended range. This translates to a pre-gamma corrected display that is smooth, yet not soft, crunchy, but not contrasty.

RESOLUTION
After looking at the files in 2K, Jim re-processed the files (RedGamma/RedColor) as 5K TIFFs and we loaded them into Pablo. This is where I finally "SAW" (perhaps experienced is a better word) the resolution of 5K. Even though the projector could only see the Pablo output in 4K, the oversampling of the 5K source is clearly evident in the 4K raster. But even more impressive to me is how temporal resolution changes on a bigger screen that is further away.
If someone were to walk-in at that moment, they might laugh since a few of us were standing at the base of a 40 foot screen evaluating pictures. But when you are very close, your mind doesn't resolve the images as well because you can't take in the whole picture with one "viewing." But when we play the files back and stand 75 feet away, the resolution explodes with an indescribable cleanliness. This translates to large-format projected image that is vivid, but not too sharp, realistic, but not unnatural.

MOTION
We joked that the decision for RED to go down the path of RAW image capture 5 years ago never stops paying off. With every corner of RED RAW image capture development, a new world of image enhancing opportunities seem to organically reveal themselves. This also tends to happen on an organic timeline, as RAW advantages conveniently measure up with end-user expectations.
With EPIC and HDRx mode, there is an entirely new motion presentation that I've never seen before in a camera. While a byproduct of achieving 16+ stops of dynamic range, these new motion blur characteristics in contrasty, near-camera panning is far smoother than a traditional pan, even at a 180º shutter.
Even though this is an early iteration of how the motion compositing will ultimately behave in the release of the camera, I can say that it is already ready for primetime and people are going to like how it looks. In these tests I cannot see any CMOS rolling shutter artifacts, but even more impressive is the significant reduction of what is known as "jitter" in digital projection.
Many people think "jitter" comes exclusively from digital camera acquisition, but this is not necessarily the case. Much of what is defined as "unpleasant jitter" can be made up of 3 factors that somewhat depend on each other: shutter angle, in conjunction with the framerate, in conjunction with the DLP projection. The new HDRx™™ motion characteristics translates to an overall sharper pan with an equal amount of "film" blur (hard to describe, but easy to see). This blend produces an image that is sharp, but 24Hz, and easy on the eyes for fore and background vertical lines.

Overall, there are multiple angles at work that are converging together to make Epic a stand-out product. While I can easily get excited by operating the touch-screen with one hand while holding it in the other, the real excitement (for me) has been in quantifying and exploring what can be done with the images in post.

Really, really great stuff from the RED team.
m

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

I haven't really seen Jim this excited in a while - admittedly that kind of excitement is pretty contagious. But when we loaded the latest iteration of an HDRx™™™™ image sequence in 2K on the 4K projector, I realized why his excitement was like a 9.5.

My initial reaction to loading the frames of the Binion's Casino street corner in Vegas was that I was looking at IMAX photography. The HDRx™™™™ mode does something to Epic pictures that further distances them from "digital" and "film;" making Epic a completely unique class of imagery.

SMOOTHNESS
Because the Epic delivers the highest dynamic range of any motion-picture cinema camera, the side-effect is that this dynamic range translates into an incredibly smooth picture. With 16+ stops of dynamic range, the files do not need to be in REDLog or REDLogFilm in order to evaluate the extended range. This translates to a pre-gamma corrected display that is smooth, yet not soft, crunchy, but not contrasty.

RESOLUTION
After looking at the files in 2K, Jim re-processed the files (RedGamma/RedColor) as 5K TIFFs and we loaded them into Pablo. This is where I finally "SAW" (perhaps experienced is a better word) the resolution of 5K. Even though the projector could only see the Pablo output in 4K, the oversampling of the 5K source is clearly evident in the 4K raster. But even more impressive to me is how temporal resolution changes on a bigger screen that is further away.
If someone were to walk-in at that moment, they might laugh since a few of us were standing at the base of a 40 foot screen evaluating pictures. But when you are very close, your mind doesn't resolve the images as well because you can't take in the whole picture with one "viewing." But when we play the files back and stand 75 feet away, the resolution explodes with an indescribable cleanliness. This translates to large-format projected image that is vivid, but not too sharp, realistic, but not unnatural.

MOTION
We joked that the decision for RED to go down the path of RAW image capture 5 years ago never stops paying off. With every corner of RED RAW image capture development, a new world of image enhancing opportunities seem to organically reveal themselves. This also tends to happen on an organic timeline, as RAW advantages conveniently measure up with end-user expectations.
With EPIC and HRDx mode, there is an entirely new motion presentation that I've never seen before in a camera. While a byproduct of achieving 16+ stops of dynamic range, these new motion blur characteristics in contrasty, near-camera panning is far smoother than a traditional pan, even at a 180º shutter.
Even though this is an early iteration of how the motion compositing will ultimately behave in the release of the camera, I can say that it is already ready for primetime and people are going to like how it looks. In these tests I cannot see any CMOS rolling shutter artifacts, but even more impressive is the significant reduction of what is known as "jitter" in digital projection.
Many people think "jitter" comes exclusively from digital camera acquisition, but this is not necessarily the case. Much of what is defined as "unpleasant jitter" can be made up of 3 factors that somewhat depend on each other: shutter angle, in conjunction with the framerate, in conjunction with the DLP projection. The new HDRx™™™™ motion characteristics translates to an overall sharper pan with an equal amount of "film" blur (hard to describe, but easy to see). This blend produces an image that is sharp, but 24Hz, and easy on the eyes for fore and background vertical lines.

Overall, there are multiple angles at work that are converging together to make Epic a stand-out product. While I can easily get excited by operating the touch-screen with one hand while holding it in the other, the real excitement (for me) has been in quantifying and exploring what can be done with the images in post.

Really, really great stuff from the RED team.
m

Thanks Michael.

ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC!!!

Also to say long live new algorithms from The Foundry!!!

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Seems like "organic panning" will be another reason to shoot HDR...


Curious about the difference in computer processing. And histogram.

 

[Steve Das]

But when you are very close, your mind doesn't resolve the images as well because you can't take in the whole picture with one "viewing." But when we play the files back and stand 75 feet away, the resolution explodes with an indescribable cleanliness.

Thanks for the report..
..sounds like few more months and time for another Red Day celebration..

 

[IAN SUN]

So to be explicit Michael, you are comparing what you saw in a 4K projection from the Epic shot in 5K Hdrx, to true IMAX?

If that is the case WOW.

 

[Antonio Forjaz]

I haven't really seen Jim this excited in a while - admittedly that kind of excitement is pretty contagious. excitement (for me) has been in quantifying and exploring what can be done with the images in post.

Really, really great stuff from the RED team.

Michael Cioni told us at REDucation that he did not post often, but that when he did it was because it was really really worth posting....I think this is one of those times. A big hello to you Michael all the way from Mozambique...and to all the RED team, you all rock

 

[Andrew M.]

What I'm thinking of is the situation where I'd normally need a 1/50th shot and a 1/500th shot (this gives a little over 3 stop of highlight protection), but I want them both in 1/50th. Or the situation where I want one at 1/500th and one at 1/8000th for 4 stops of highlight protection but I want them both in 1/500th.

The RED approach seems suitable for both cases but can it do the first and not the second? Where is that limit? That's my question.

Jim mentioned that HDRx™ will go up to 50 frame/sec

The above shot was done at 180deg and 48fps shutter so the exposure time for full frame (don’t know the highlights calculation/acquisition frame time) was 1/92

So if maximum frame speed will be 50fps and at 180 shutter you will get 1/100 for the long exposure and for the short one will be 6 stops shorter or 3 stops what Jim is recommending for motion.

So the long exposure time will be 1/100 and short one at most 1/4800 for 6 stops and 1/800 for the 3 stops.

1/4800 is just theoretical speed calculated from the stops gained in HDRx™ mode.

Jim mentioned 6 stops maximum gain on HDRx™ mode but we don’t know at what shutter speed, maybe 6 stops gain could be achieved only at 340 deg shutter.

Now if you use 90 deg shutter all the exposure numbers you can multiply by 2.
So 1/200 for the full exposure at 50fps and for short or (highlight) exposure ???? yes here is unknown since we don’t know how the short exposure is done.

If it is done by recording the exposure increase rate (exposure slope) you can go really high in the virtual shutter speed but this way you will not remove the blur, blur will be fixed on the long frame time however it will give you almost infinite highlight protection.

And it is what we all want for motion, but not necessary what we do want for still photography.

I imagine HDRx™ will be optimised for motion and HDRs will be optimized for single shot

 

[Jannard]

Jim mentioned that HDRx™ will go up to 50 frame/sec

The above shot was done at 180deg and 48fps shutter so the exposure time for full frame (don’t know the highlights calculation/acquisition frame time) was 1/92

So if maximum frame speed will be 50fps and at 180 shutter you will get 1/100 for the long exposure and for the short one will be 6 stops shorter or 3 stops what Jim is recommending for motion.

So the long exposure time will be 1/100 and short one at most 1/4800 for 6 stops and 1/800 for the 3 stops.

1/4800 is just theoretical speed calculated from the stops gained in HDRx™ mode.

Jim mentioned 6 stops maximum gain on HDRx™ mode but we don’t know at what shutter speed, maybe 6 stops gain could be achieved only at 340 deg shutter.

Now if you use 90 deg shutter all the exposure numbers you can multiply by 2.
So 1/200 for the full exposure at 50fps and for short or (highlight) exposure ???? yes here is unknown since we don’t know how the short exposure is done.

If it is done by recording the exposure increase rate (exposure slope) you can go really high in the virtual shutter speed but this way you will not remove the blur, blur will be fixed on the long frame time however it will give you almost infinite highlight protection.

And it is what we all want for motion, but not necessary what we want for still photography.

I imagine HDRx™ will be optimised for motion and HDRs will be optimized for single shot

I may have mis-spoken. The clip posted was shot at 1/48 shutter (or 360 degree shutter for 48fps). The idea is that when you finish in 24fps... it retains the motion blur of 24fps shot at 1/48th and 180 degree shutter.

Jim

 

[Bill Anderson]

With A Wilt's and M Cioni's feedback using key words like "experienced rather than saw"; "organic"; "indescribable cleanliness"; "looks better than it should"; and so on, this pretty much vindicates the position that I and others have been promoting in defense against the "limited returns" arguments that wish to maintain the status quo; these include resolution, sensor size, DR... .

Pursuing an increase in resolution will not just manifest itself as an increased count of hairs on heads, or be limited to what the eye is capable of discerning from the third row of a theatre. It is about all of the other (many unforeseeable) factors and residuals that come into play once an improvement/change has been made in one element. For example (and we have seen this in large format film) the science behind an increase in resolution might very well promote some other unique quality, i.e. a sense of depth, a difficult to describe "presence". This is huge. Thanks Jim and Co..

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Actually I can testify to the fact that more resolution is not really seen untill the subject starts to move.... And when you start to see that, you sort of cannot get enough. Even if delivery is at 1080/2k.

More resolution will give smoother everything, almost like the fluidity of film....

On stills and charts it's less important....