I came across this video on YouTube explaining what HDR is and maybe also why we are having trouble using it with our regular cheap equipment.
Regards, Leif.
Be aware not to mistake HDR photography/video with the new HDR playback/monitors/material.
While with the first you basically try to take multiple images of the same scene in different exposures to merge them and create an image which has both light and dark parts of the scene perfectly captured (which is comparable to how the human eye sees the world, as we usually see both shadows and highlights at the same time if the contrast is not extreme, while cameras can only really set their exposure to either capture one of both)
HDR on monitors/TVs/Games etc on the other hand refers to a high dynamic range of colors and contrast. Which basically means a much wider spectrum of displayable colors, and highlights/shadows.
So while both are about high dynamic range they mean different things in the end.
We could easily capture a HDR image with our phones just by adjusting exposure, taking at least 3 images and merging them together. But creating HDR content as I described in the second part would require cameras which can record all those colors and brightness levels.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but Anafis HDR feature refers to the first meaning of HDR. It doesn’t produce a „HDR“ video which is only playable when you have the right TV. Instead it records multiple exposures at once and merges them to capture as much detail as possible for both highlights and shadow parts of the image at the same time. This of course will lead to more noise if you use it in darker lighting conditions (as multiple noisy images will get merged). So alway decide when to use it. If you don’t try to film scenes which benefit from HDR (like a bright sky and dark shadows on the ground) it’s usually better to not use HDR as otherwise the colors and brightness may seem to be off or oversaturated.
I suppose that our Anafi camera is an HDR10 + image, which is Google's version of an HDR image/video. HDR10 + is also the latest coming edition for/to the HDR family. In fact, I suppose the computer in our Anafi uses Google's Android as its OS.
However, we still lack those cheap consumer displays that can display a "real" HDR image.
Regards, Leif.
Very interesting Leif. I watched all of it and am now wiser and confused at the same time. The video is dated 2017 so things may be better now but I have no intention in upgrading my plasma TV or computer monitor at the moment.
Are you sure? I am not sure if the Anafis HDR is a HDR image in the sense of colour range etc. from what i have seen the produced video file doesn’t even have any HDR info (could be wrong of course). I imagine the Anafis HDR is just a HDR as in the sense of merging multiple exposures like I described above, that’s basically also what parrot says on their website.
How to make a video with high dynamic range from the camera's sensor has nothing to do with an HDR video standard. What makes an HDR video image different to the SDR format is the metadata you put into the video stream along with the image. The metadata describes how the video stream should be processed by the screen if it is to be displayed as an HDR video. The standard is named Rec. 2020 for HDR10.
Rec. 2020 - Wikipedia
In the first HDR from Anafi there was no metadata in the video stream. If they have changed that when the HDR algorithm was redone, I have not investigated. But it is probably a "half" HDR standard that Parrot uses.
Regards, Leif.