Sony European Imaging Ambassador Alister Chapman uses his platform to promote categorically false claims about HDR. We break them down using the international standards, colorist testimonials, research data, and studio policies.
Industry standards, studios and professionals reject the simplistic “HDR = Brighter + More Colorful” claim.
The “Brighter, More Colorful” Fallacy
QUOTE:
“When the first HDR workflows and TV’s started to be marketed we were bombarded with tag lines such as ‘HDR means a brighter and more colourful image’. And most took this to believe [sic] that everything delivered in HDR should be brighter and more colourful… This oversimplification of the differences between HDR and SDR has led to many (the majority???) not really understanding what HDR brings to the table.” Alister Chapman, Sony European Imaging Ambassador | Cross-published on Facebook and LinkedIn (Nov. 2025)
CLAIM: Chapman asserts that a widespread misconception guides the industry: that a majority of professionals believe everything delivered in HDR should be brighter and more colourful.
REALITY CHECK: The “Brighter” Strawman
The Standard’s True Intent
No such consensus exists. Professionals don’t build color pipelines based on marketing taglines. In fact, the international standard ITU-R BT.2390 (2016) directly refuted the idea that HDR is “all about brighter pictures” a decade ago. It clarifies that the goal is a more “natural look,” not the “same look”:
“HDR-TV enables more natural images that contain wider variations in brightness. While HDR-TV does allow the picture average brightness to increase, the expectation is that indoor scenes produced in HDR will generally be at a similar brightness as with legacy TV systems. The brightness range available with HDR enables outdoor sunlit scenes to appear noticeably brighter than indoor scenes, thus providing a more natural look. All scenes, especially outdoor, will be able to produce small area highlights such as specular reflections or emissive light sources at much higher brightness.”
The same standard acknowledges a creative choice Chapman overlooks:
“There is another way to utilize the new range capabilities… to allow for more realistic scene-to-scene luminance variations… Acknowledging this limitation with SDR, some creatives like to use the increased dynamic range of HDR to have larger scene-to-scene variations in mean luminance. So for this particular approach, HDR may result in brighter images for some scenes.”
Studios Don’t Mandate Brighter Pixels
Three years later, in 2019, the major Hollywood studios issued a joint statement asserting that the brightness or darkness of each shot of a film is entirely up to the filmmaker:
“It is also worth highlighting that a critical feature of the HDR system developed by DCI is one of creative expression. An HDR DCP need not exercise the entire range of brightness offered by the HDR specification. Despite the peak luminance that an HDR system is capable of, the brightness or darkness of each shot of a movie is always up to the filmmaker. It is not up to the HDR projector or display, which simply provides the full range of capabilities. DCI seeks to ensure that the headroom required to reproduce a filmmaker’s creative vision exists, whether that be the darkness of a cave, a candle, a car’s headlights, a meteor, or sunlight spilling through a window.” – Digital Cinema Initiatives
DCI is a consortium of major motion picture studios formed in 2002 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Universal Studios, The Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros.
Netflix similarly leaves decisions about luminance up to filmmakers:
“Netflix executives make no demands regarding dynamic range, brightness values, contrast reproduction, etc. Instead, they leave the implementation of HDR up to the filmmakers.” —Jay Holben, ASC, “Netflix Helps Drive the Creative Vision with High-Dynamic-Range Content”. American Cinematographer. (Dec. 2019)
Colorists confirm that studios rarely raise objections pertaining to shows graded to SDR levels:
“You can make images on an HDR screen identical to the range you had in SDR, if you want. No one should, or will, as far as I’ve heard, force you to make the image higher in contrast than you are comfortable with. If your vision is to limit and roll off all highlights (to where they would be in the old SDR TV or even film print) you can. It’s your creative choice. A streamer may query it, but it’s unlikely they will force you to grade to a maximum brightness (or nit value as it’s known). – Thomas Urbye
“I know of a major (huge) A-list director who just told the post crew a few weeks ago, ‘I want the HDR master to basically be identical to the SDR, don’t change the essential grade, but you can let the highlights hit 200-250.’ It’s a good question as to who will notice.” – Rajneesh Kassin
“I know of a major — think $100 million+ — 2022 feature where the director came in and said, “ya know what… I prefer the SDR picture. Don’t make it much brighter than that. You can let the specular highlights stray up to 300, 400 nits, but other than that, keep everything about where it is.” Huge movie, already shipped, nobody cared or noticed. And this is a huge A-list director nobody was going to argue with.” – Marc Wielage
The Statistical Truth
HDR video content typically has a low APL (<20%).
In a study of 41 Warner Bros. titles (over 7 million total frames analyzed, corresponding to approximately 83 hr of content) in the HDR Home format that were mastered on a Dolby Pulsar display (0.005 cd/m2 black level and a peak luminance of 4000 cd/m2), MaxFALL (maximum frame average light level) of 98.6% of the frames was below 170 cd/m2 (the display power budget of the BVM-X300). Source: Ronan Boitard, Michael Smith, Michael Zink, Gerwin Damberg, and Anders Ballestad. “Predicting HDR Cinema Requirements from HDR Home Master Statistics”. (21 March 2019)
Colorist: “That’s Bullshit”
Paolo Centofanti, senior tech editor at the Italian website Digital Day, had a chance to visit Company 3, the company responsible for the post-production of 80% of Hollywood movies and series. He wrote:
“During our visit we had the opportunity to talk at length about HDR with the various colorists and the surprising thing is that everyone wanted to emphasize that although the marketing of TV manufacturers focuses a lot on peak brightness, the benefits of HDR formats have nothing to do with brighter images.”
Colorist Cody Baker explained:
“We don’t want viewers to be dazzled or annoyed. There are rarely shots in which it makes sense to push details up to 1000 nits, if not in a science fiction movie for special effects like lasers.”
When told about the announcement of a new 10,000-nit TV, Baker burst out laughing before erupting with “that’s bullshit.” Source: Paolo Centofanti, “I colorist di Hollywood: il marketing dei TV sbaglia, con l’HDR l’importante non è la luminosità” (Hollywood Colorists: TV Marketing Is Wrong. With HDR The Important Thing Is Not Brightness) January 2024
Dolby Dispels “Brighter” Fiction
REALITY CHECK: The “More Colorful” Strawman
Saturation Aversion
Readers can breathe a sigh of relief—this section will be much shorter.
When asked why DCI specified P3 primaries rather than BT.2020 in their DCI High Dynamic Range D-Cinema Addendum, they replied:
“DCI had to weigh the creative value of BT.2020. We’ve worked closely with colorists in attempts to demonstrate the value of colors outside of DCI-P3, and those attempts have been far from compelling. In general, colorists prefer to reduce color saturation. This isn’t entirely without exception, of course, as there have been some notable examples of studios utilizing color values far outside of DCI-P3 but they’re extremely limited… Nonetheless it’s been difficult to make a compelling case for the real creative value there. So, given all the challenges to achieve 100% BT.2020, the lack of any standard that describes a realistic subset of BT.2020, and the doubtful creative value, DCI opted to retain DCI-P3 as the color gamut for the D-Cinema HDR specification/standard.”
Sony Ambassador Alister Chapman’s HDR Claims Debunked, Part I
The Daejeon Chronicles 