HDR and EPSRC
As you may know, I have been working with the University of Warwick and GoHDR on new methods of HDR video. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, of course, and it is a technique by which greater extremes of light and darkness can be captured in the same image. HDR has been around in the CGI and stills photography world for about 20 years so far, but for moving video, the challenges are much greater.
The University of Warwick has acquired the world’s only HDR video camera, made by Spheron AG in Germany. It’s a fascinating beast. It’s very much a prototype – it’s a black box with a P+S lens mount on one end and a cable on the other. No viewfinder, no automatic controls, and you have to have it tethered to a 24 Terabyte RAID array just to record the ridiculous amount of data the sensor kicks out. It’s about as easy to use as you might expect. But, the dynamic range is pretty special: it gets about 20 f-stops of latitude. A regular video camera might get 7 stops. Higher-end video, such as RED, might get up to 12-14 stops. Film, a truly dynamic medium, gets at least 14 stops, normally. This is one of the reasons that film is considered superior to video in terms of image quality. So, the Spheron camera’s dynamic range is truly impressive – in fact, it is a similar level of sensitivity to the human eye.
Yesterday, as part of an EPSRC public engagement grant, the University hosted an evening to show off their natty HDR technology. The team at Warwick, headed by Professor Alan Chalmers (a former SIGGRAPH VP), has all kinds of clever tricks up their sleeves. They’re developing compression systems to actually make this type of data manageable. They’re also developing systems to allow HDR material to be displayed on normal, low dynamic range monitors (the type you are reading this blog on now) while preserving the detail in the data. They are Very Smart People.
The most interesting part of the evening, for me, was the Q&A panel session we had at the end. There is a huge amount of interest in HDR video at the moment. It’s currently very tricky, but that will change, probably rather quickly. I’m very interested in the work done by the Soviet Montage guys in San Francisco, who have developed their own HDR video system. (And who are, on a personal level, simply lovely people!) Also, RED‘s new camera will apparently be able to capture 18.5 f-stops of latitude, which is also pretty damn impressive. Never bet against Jim Jannard. (Also, don’t bet that they will hit any of their ship dates! But I commend them for taking the time to make their systems really work well.)
We had a lot of very interesting questions – how do we see the uptake of HDR video? Will it go to cinemas first? Will it compete with 3D? For my money, I massively prefer HDR video to stereo 3D. But that may be because I absolutely despise stereo 3D…
We surely live in interesting times for cinematography.
