Camera API

[Trevor Meier]

There's been lots of hints and sideways comments about being able to externally control the camera: shutter speed, record start/stop, etc.

Is there going to be a published API for the camera? How do I access it? How do I go about hot-rodding my RedONE for the crazy idea I have in my head?

... and I do mean crazy... something no-one has ever accomplished, only possible with a RAW-based cinema camera that I can adjust frame-by-frame electronic shutter speed...

Anybody want to guess my idea? Actually, it's probably not that hard to figure out...

[Don Woods]

Well It is way to late to even take a crack at what you are thinking. That said I think the camera will have some sort of CCU/RCU controller or menu that you will be able to control some camera functions. As far as full autiomations as in changing the shutter as the sun gose down I don't know. No one has said as far as i know.

[Curran Giddens]

The camera will have a PCMIA card slot which can be used for a wireless remote control. Was this your idea? I found this on another forum written by Stuart English of Red:

To answer the original question - can it shoot a HDR image. We believe that we already do. Can it represent an even higher dynmaic range image than the native resonse of the sensor woould indicate - yes I think that you could do that with some tricks. Heres how:

Limitations :

1. You have to be operating at or below 1/2 of the maximum frame rate.
2. You have to be operating the camera under remote shutter control.
3. You must be able to blend two images back into one in post production.

Steps :

1. The camera has to be programmed to capture images in a frame pair sequence where the frame exposure time of the first frame in a pair is delayed until late in the frame, but for the second frame it starts immediately at the beginning of the frame. This minimizes time delay between the samples.

This is not in the camera, but the controls are, so it should be possible to program an external controller.

2. Establish a fast shutter speed for the first frame that will allow capture of the highlight information.

3. Establish a slower shutter speed for the second frame that will allow capture of the lowlight information.

4. Repeat (automate) above for sucessive frames. Record REDCODE RAW.

5. Take the recorded frame sequence into REDCINE, convert to RGB and blend each pair of frames in some appropriate software.


Again, the mode is NOT supported explicitly in the camera, and I will leave the debate of its value to others, but a little programming of an external conroller and some post production tricks should allow some experimentation to be undertaken.

[Rob Lohman]

Not PCM(C)IA, but a SD card slot.

[david farland]

When the frame pairs are combined, will the effective dynamic range be over 11.5 stops, provided 11.5 stops is the dynamic range for a normal Red frame?

DF

[Evan Owen]

When the frame pairs are combined, will the effective dynamic range be over 11.5 stops, provided 11.5 stops is the dynamic range for a normal Red frame?

DF

Way over 11.5 ... at least that's the idea.

I've done quite a bit of HDR photography myself, and would personally love to see something like this. Let me know if you ever get something working Trevor! I'm not too far from you here in Vancouver...

[GlennChan]

This might be a PITA, but could you potentially just shoot video/continuous images and change the shutter speed on the fly?

HDR by varying the exposure will only work on non-moving images anyways. *If it's a moving image, then you'll have to figure out how to do motion compensation... which I don't think anyone has solved successfully yet (although it might be possible). It would be like optical flow, except harder because you have motion blur and overexposure on top of that.

2- There have been other multiple threads on this topic.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

It'll look like crap..... unless you use some advanced non-existent pixel flow technology to line up the images.

Motion blur will glow, there will be strange ghosting like an old analog TV set... I can't even begin to describe all of the problems that will come from this approach.

Pans will be unusuable, epsecially at 24p. I see no reason to ruin your image for a few extra stops.