EDR is a term with four distinct meanings across the display industry: a deprecated content standard (Dolby's 2014 'Extended Dynamic Range'), a cinematic projection standard (Dolby's 'Enhanced Dynamic Range'), a technical implementation (Apple's 'Extended Dynamic Range'), and a perceptual model ('Entertainment Dynamic Range'). This article clarifies these definitions to untangle the confusion. EDR as a... Continue Reading →
The Corrupting Influence of Jacob Schwarz
The absence of motion blur nearly made me violently ill. https://youtu.be/VwiC0xtTkcE
Monster Guide: HDR10 in Resolve Studio 21 (Part I)
Part I: Project settings, Project Render Settings, Generate MaxCLL and MaxFall HDR10 Metadata Part II: RAW Part III: The Grade Note: The information in this guide is continually revised and expanded and the reader is urged to check back occasionally for updates. The current recommendations are valid as of macOS Tahoe version 26.3.1, DaVinci Resolve Studio 21... Continue Reading →
IMAGO Rewrites BT.2020 History
In their debrief of the December 2024 London seminar on metamerism hosted by Charles Poynton, the IMAGO Technical Committee shared a list of "potential solutions that were floated around the room." Among them was this definitive directive: “Stop chasing full Rec 2020 coverage as a physical target. Rec 2020 was established as a container format... Continue Reading →
Uncompromising HDR
https://youtu.be/e1S3isxKWqI Canadian studio Red Barrels’ The Outlast Trials hits all the hallmarks of elite-tier HDR game design: a low APL, inky blacks, strong contrast, deep shadows, and carefully targeted, “high-octane” highlights. The game reminds us that HDR-strength highlights aren’t only about muzzle flashes and explosions. They’re found everywhere, reflecting off mundane materials like sheet metal,... Continue Reading →
Don’t Outsource Your Critical Judgement
During a livestream, Cullen Kelly takes a question from the chat: Why aren't more YouTubers, especially colorists, not making their videos in HDR? The first thing Kelly does is recommend listening to Steve Yedlin’s anti-HDR rant. Since associating with Yedlin, Kelly parrots his colleague’s talking points—even sharing what he thinks are profound insights that are... Continue Reading →
Charles Poynton on HDR, BT.1886, BT.2020
BT.1886 Color Space Conflation The Standard: ITU-R BT.1886 defines only a reference Electro-Optical Transfer Function (EOTF). No white point. No color primaries. The Claim: Despite this, Charles Poynton states: “BT.1886 already has primaries, D65, and [an] EOTF,” making it a full “DISPLAY colorspace.” Charles Poynton | LinkedIn comment, Aug. 2025 The definition: As defined by... Continue Reading →
Perceptual Literacy Is Essential
I'm kicking off a new series today, starting with a quote from the President of the Colorist Society International: "How cool would it be to have an SDR story or narrative that suddenly kicks into HDR for some reason that is related to the text. Imagine a modern day version of The Wizard of Oz.... Continue Reading →
Steve Yedlin Mythbuster Table
A bite-sized reference table on HDR and the standards. When discussing SDR and HDR, it helps to ground the conversation in what the ITU-R and SMPTE specifications actually say.
Steve Yedlin Enlightens Us All
“Next distinguished cinematographer Steve Yedlin ASC enlightened us all on the subject of HDR. Among the key takeaways were that the whole notion that the SDR version has to look totally different than the HDR version is wrong. Depending what the scene is, there may be no difference between SDR and HDR. Being able to... Continue Reading →
Kelly’s HDR Flip-Flop
Prior to coming in contact with HDR-loathing Steve Yedlin, Cullen Kelly used to be a leading vocal proponent of HDR imaging. Since aligning with Yedlin, he’s done an about-face. Before Yedlin HDR represented a seismic shift in how we approach imaging. It was a new language: “the move to HDR is as significant as any... Continue Reading →
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Update 2.0 10K-Nit Radiation Static
https://youtu.be/rC2me1MwmgQ The radiation static in S.T.AL.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl ignores the in-game HDR white point setting (in this case, 1,000), reaching as high as 10,000 nits. 10,000-nit peak highlights of STALKER 2 Update 2.0 In-game settings: Contrast is increased to 43% from 40%. All other display settings are at default. HUD transparency reduced to... Continue Reading →
Correcting the Record: Doug Guerra’s HDR Workflow Mayhem
“The series is worth a watch if you want to know more about HDR workflows.” —Matthew Allard, ACS Doug Guerra, a prolific video producer for B&H Photo, hosted a two-part series introducing HDR workflows that contains countless serious errors. Misunderstanding PQ CLAIM "HDR10 uses a standard known as ST 2084 or Rec. 2100. They are... Continue Reading →
The Limitation Dogma and the Alternative
Cullen Kelly’s rejection of HDR and belief that limitation is a virtue extend to his view of art history itself: “Go find me a painting where you can discern more than five to six stops of dynamic range… that’s generally not the way we absorb a painting… that’s actually part of what makes those paintings... Continue Reading →
Handy Fact-Checker
I’ve checked Douglas Guerra’s HDR workflow and found it wanting.
Charles Poynton Mythbuster
I've fact-checked Charles Poynton's recent claims about HDR. The evidence-from industry standards, colorists, and scientific studies-tells a different story. Here's a phone-sized mythbuster perfect for sharing. The article can be found here. https://daejeonchronicles.com/2026/09/06/charles-poynton-hdr-is-sdr/
Charles Poynton: “HDR Is SDR”
I’ve documented time and again how Charles Poynton is willing to embellish the truth to push his narrative, and this time is no different. During an episode of the Color Mentor podcast [1], Charles Poynton insists that cinema audiences can’t handle BT.2020 colors; that there’s an industry trend of "bigger, brighter, and more colorful" driven... Continue Reading →
Charles Poynton: BT.2020 Historical Revisionism
Charles Poynton has repeatedly stated that Dr. Kenichiro Masaoka - the developer of BT.2020 - intended the wide color gamut standard solely as a container, not as a mastering color space. The evidence shows otherwise. Masaoka’s correspondence, published papers and presentations show that BT.2020 was engineered as a forward-looking mastering color space, contingent on emerging... Continue Reading →
Historical Revisionism in Color Science: Unpacking Steve Yedlin’s Conflation of BT.709 and BT.1886
In his presentation Debunking “HDR”, cinematographer Steve Yedlin shows a slide of BT.1886 to argue that it inherently matches human visual perception. To support his claim, Yedlin points to the distribution of code values: “This has been the theme the whole time, is that the human visual system is relative more than absolute. So it's... Continue Reading →
PQ ST 2084 Is Not Log
In Debunking “HDR”, Steve Yedlin says, “it doesn't matter what the curve shape is as long as you know what the curve shape is.” Yet he has no idea what PQ is, who developed it, or why. He mislabels PQ as logarithmic: “And by the way the shape of this curve this logarithmic curve used... Continue Reading →
Photochemical Film Workflow Consistency Myths, Part II
“There used to be this in-place system… it was this kind of system that worked and made an artful color rendering… and it did so repeatedly and reliably… [that] locked system… basically went in the trash can and we now have a completely unlocked system [1].” —Steve Yedlin, ASC, describing the transition from film to... Continue Reading →
Keep ‘Em Separated
Keep color encoding and color space separate I’ve been writing about this for a while now. Rod Bogart, Principal Color Scientist at Epic Games, says it much better than I ever could. Color space ≠ color encoding “When we say linear RGB, it's telling us two important properties of the color value that we have,... Continue Reading →
The Curious Case of the “Consumer” Canon C70
“With the advent of dual gain technology, where a high and low ISO are combined in one exposure, things started to change. We saw this technology early on in state of the art cinema cameras like the ARRI Alexa lineup, and they can be found on top of our “best of charts”. More recently this... Continue Reading →
