Skip to content

Comment on Unbounded High Dynamic Range Photography Using a Modulo Cameraparent

Comments

Halos are a problem, but they can mostly be removed with good post-processing. Note they're not a fundamental aspect of tone mapping. Tone mapping is just whatever algorithm you chose to compress the HDR information into a low dynamic range we have for displays. The great thing about this camera compared to multi-exposure HDR (apart from the halo effect you mentioned) is you can actually take pictures of moving objects or even make HDR movies (the temporal variation should actually help with better phase unwrapping). That would be amazing for the film industry I think.

Out of curiosity, with regard to video, what would be the difference between what you describe and a nicer version of the sort of processing used in (for example) some Axis security cameras? I guess the current method is just to capture a decent range and then process each frame to boost the gain on shadows and lower the gain on highlights, right? Sort of an extension of quick-and-dirty HDR on still photos.

Either way, this is the sort of stuff that has always interested me about photography and videography. The creative aspects are obviously the end goal for most people (myself included) but I've always been a sucker for the technical aspects of it...the craft to the art as it were. Nothing prompts me to pick up my camera and shoot some photos or some video like learning about some new tool or technique that I want to try out. It may be the mark of the eternal amateur but still enjoyable.

I'm not familiar with those cameras. But if they're using a conventional sensor, this technique yields qualitatively different results.

You can actually already do this with current cameras, using 2 exposures per frame, works for most types of action.

Red Epic does this with HDR-X and hacked Canon cameras with Magic Lantern with Dual ISO

As explained in the article, this is different to combining exposures, which is what conventional HDR does too. The important thing to consider here is how does this scheme affect the SNR of the sensor. This scheme encourages keeping essentially maximum possible sensitivity (ISO), but this "modulo sensor" circuit may introduce some additional noise.

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.