HDR results from a single RED Raw Clip

[Gunleik Groven]

I think he meant a single frame R3D from REDcineX

I did... A TIFF frame will not be very informative.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

HDR results from a single RED RAW clip in 2 steps:

1. Open AE.
2. Effect -> Color Correction -> Shadow/Highlight

http://www.screencast.com/t/xuMIuj9xCb

[Interstellar]

I did... A TIFF frame will not be very informative.

I'm on the road the next few days, but will post a frame when I'm back in the studio.

Cheers,
Kris

[Zach Gray]

HDR results from a single RED RAW clip.

Like you've said before... (how many times), it's just tonemapping. You aren't finding new values, just changing how we see them. The +2/-2 doesn't actually get you any more exposure, just more workflow complexity.

[Matthias Hutter]

Yep, its tonemapping without HDR. The reason this is very often used in conjuncture with HDR is because there are very few displays that can display a high DR - so tonemapping is used to trade global for local contrast.

Regards, Matt

[Igor Ridanovic]

The bottom line is that the example looks good. The clouds are not blown out and the shadows are not too crushed. Of course it's tone mapping. Every time we use a power window to protect or enhance a detail in the image we engage in a similar manipulation.

[Anup Sugunan]

Looks great! How long did it take to do those 19 seconds of footage?

[Brian Ferguson]

This is fairly standard. I saw this a couple of years ago at Plaster City. Certain scenes have a set dynamic range. Skew one layer towards a shadow setting and add a luminance key, with a highlight scene. Albeit this was in a Quantel Pablo suite, fairly pricey equipment. You can't get it all in one setting, but doing layers of grading, it looked amazing - just like we always did in film.

In RAW there is a range you can show in RGB (or broadcast color space) based on middle gray. Make layers and skew the middle point with luminance keys in post before you make the final grade, and it behaves just like many film transfers I have done. It was beautiful. As the Colorist said "All of the information is there if it is exposed right". Just like film, it was exactly what I would have done 10 years earlier in a film transfer. It is similar to HDR, we just did in post and it was no big deal. So I always wonder when people give film these huge dynamic ranges because we were always using digital tech to push it around. just the way we did before RED existed. My commercials didn't have as much range as they did after I spent $600 an hour in the DaVinci Telecine suite making power windows, and making multiple layers from my film to tape transfer.

My belief is we cheated film negative to fit the RGB video limitations for years with Telecine. But anything that is "NOT FILM" has to come out of the gate perfect, like tape with its narrow dynamic range. Because of years of film vs. video comparisons. If we just said there is no film or processing expense and proceeded along the previous mindset we would be way ahead.

Film to tape transfers especially with commercials were dealt with enormous Telecine hours until everything was perfect.