SO... How many are actually using HDRx?

[Dominik Muench]

Here is a still frame I pulled from a motion-still shoot I did with a girl a little while ago, this was without HdrX, the shutter speed was at around 1/500s and the lens was a red zoom 18-50mm and the image is quite soft even with such a relatively fast shutter speed. aperture was around F8 if I remember correctly. shot in 5K-Ws. On my next shoot I will try and do a similar setup with HdrX and one without. But I'm worried about skintones as well.

I used HdrX only once in the past on a music video and found the image to be very flat and grey. The lighting scenario here was fairly harsh afternoon sunlight and it was all shot natural, no reflectors no fill nothing and I was very positively surprised how well the Epic footage holds up even without HdrX. But the overal sharpness could be a bit stronger for my taste.



the big version can be seen here: http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/i/20...er-d50wnlz.jpg

[Timur Civan]

Here is a still frame I pulled from a motion-still shoot I did with a girl a little while ago, this was without HdrX, the shutter speed was at around 1/500s and the lens was a red zoom 18-50mm and the image is quite soft even with such a relatively fast shutter speed. aperture was around F8 if I remember correctly. shot in 5K-Ws. On my next shoot I will try and do a similar setup with HdrX and one without. But I'm worried about skintones as well.

I used HdrX only once in the past on a music video and found the image to be very flat and grey. The lighting scenario here was fairly harsh afternoon sunlight and it was all shot natural, no reflectors no fill nothing and I was very positively surprised how well the Epic footage holds up even without HdrX. But the overal sharpness could be a bit stronger for my taste.

Its the glass.... Though the image is great.

[Dominik Muench]

Its the glass.... Though the image is great.

really ? the red zoom is quite THAT soft ?

hmm..glad I got the canon mount as well...will be trying those Zeiss Primes next I have sitting no my shelve.

[Bob Gundu]

yeah that 18-50 is a downer.

really ? the red zoom is quite THAT soft ?

hmm..glad I got the canon mount as well...will be trying those Zeiss Primes next I have sitting no my shelve.

[Mark Britton]

From what I've shot, one HDRx shot has made it into a finished piece. Generally, the A track is taken, and the X discarded. Although once, the X track was used instead for a shot of a sunset over water. Felt like a stylistic look, and it got dropped into a sequence without modification. The two 'built in' blend modes aren't enough of a starting point, and sometimes neither really works for the shot. Turning a shot into a VFX shot essentially makes it a no-go for my clients, so luma keying and hand blending the two tracks together rarely happens, in my experiences. I've got some personal shots that have some 'wow' factor that I couldn't have gotten without HDRx, but to some extent, productions have ingrained habits to avoid those situations or have strategies to deal with them with other means. Those have kinda gotten so routine and 'easy' to do, that most productions avoid the situations where HDRx might give them something special.

Going blue sky for a moment, I wonder how close we are to 'enough' DR or 'too much' DR out of digital sensors. Film is around 14-15, right? I'd say I'd like a little more than MX, Dragon might do it or be close. At some point it's more about how it looks when the image hits burnout...in a lot of cases you want and need a bit of burnout to make the image look 'right'.

[Russ Campbell]

Used it quite a few times with very good results, especially underwater shooting up towards the sun. Looking forward to being able to grade the a-track and x-tracks independently in RCX though as it is tricky to grade currently.

[Nikhil Kamkolkar]

Great thread!

I did a quick test for a specific problem I frequently run into as an indie filmmaker.

Shooting interiors with actors using available light, while protecting the exteriors seen through windows from getting blown out. Actors, hence skintone, would be part of the A track (atleast the ones I'd care about). In my test, both SimpleBlend and MagicMotion seem to give me a 'plastic-y' skintone, but I caveat that with the note that I spent all of five minutes trying to make it better. I have no understanding of these tools beyond moving the slider around and seeing if I like what I see.



Would be great if RED could post a tutorial on how to use HDRx for this situation. I agree that when the shot turns into a VFX effort, its a non-starter. So I'm hopeful I can learn how this is done via RedCineX alone.

If magicmotion and simpleblend weren't meant to handle this, here's hoping RED lets us get under the hood with HDRx in RedCineX, perhaps with a new tool that aggressively favors skintone preservation in the A track.

---
Nikhil Kamkolkar
facebook.com/indiancowboy
EPIC-X "DAZZLE"
NY/NJ

[Justin O'Neill]

I use HDRx quite often and for different reasons. Sometimes in really run n' gun situations I just don't want to have to use a mattebox with ND! I think I most often use it for pulling sharp stills while still having a 1/48 shutter for motion. Here are a couple HDRx stills from our Salt Flats shoot last weekend. X track was set to 1/192 shutter. This is a big part of why I can't wait for Dragon...with 2+ more stops of sensitivity we can set the X track to 1/500 or even higher.

[Eric Haase]

I very occasionally use HDRx. I used it recently on a feature in the jungle and I had about a dozen shots where it became useful in the DI. BUT the Magic Motion and simple Blend implementation is horrible in my opinion and we treat the X track as a separate track and luma key the highlights in the A track and replace with the X track which carries it's own grade. This way, HDRx doesn't even touch the skin tones, unless the skin tones happen to be nealry blown out which is not necessarily a likely scenario where you will use HDRx.

Most of the time I turn it on but it becomes a hassle in post- working in an expensive room with a colorist on limited time you prioritize your grading. Spending extra time on minor HDRx improvements is the first thing to get cut from the to do list. But when a shot can really benefit from it, it's pretty great and worth the time trade off.

[Mark Phelan]

I continue to use it when necessary. Here's a link to another thread: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthr...s-to-LightIron