"In film photography, highlight roll off refers to the gradual transition from the highlights (the brightest parts of the image) to the shadows (the darkest parts of the image). This transition is not abrupt, but rather it occurs gradually, giving the image a smooth and natural-looking tonal range." - Quora "On film, if you were... Continue Reading →
Gamut Rings
Although a chromaticity diagram is useful for 2D representations, the color gamut of a display actually needs to be evaluated using a 3D color space that includes the lightness axis. Gamut rings representing a 3D color gamut solid using a 2D diagram are a solution to this problem and have been adopted as an international... Continue Reading →
British Cinematographer: Ed Lachman On The EL Zone System
“I discovered, to my amazement, that IRE stands for the International Radio Engineers,” Lachman says. “They developed the system in 1895, before film even had sound. So as strange as it seems, we’re basing our exposure on radio signal voltage, not photographic exposure of light.” Why are we basing our exposures on sound waves? In... Continue Reading →
Title & Text Brightness Levels, HDR
Typical luminance levels of the titles in our videos. The titles of HDR videos on YouTube are often far too bright for comfortable viewing.
BBC study of tolerance to program brightness shifts
Subjective tests reported by the BBC investigated viewer tolerance to sudden changes in overall brightness for HDR television, using the mean pixel display luminance as a measure of brightness as described in [2]. This measure has been shown to correlate well with subjective ratings of the overall brightness, but there may occasionally be a scene... Continue Reading →
HDR Luminance Levels: Why The Critics Are All Wrong
Discussions surrounding the brightness levels of HDR often talk about brightness as if there were some fixed, immutable number beyond which the picture becomes unwatchable (for many, that number is 48 nits!), whereas studies conducted by Dolby and DCI both showed conclusively that viewers overwhelmingly prefer brighter picture levels than are currently available in home... Continue Reading →
Assimilate Play Pro Studio Just Made RAW Convertor Obsolete
Assimilate Play Pro Studio, compatible with both macOS and Windows, is now able to convert ProRes RAW footage from any camera or recorder to CinemaDNG. Not only that, but you can use coupon code PPS50OFF to get 50% until the end of the month. That works out to $150.00 for a permanent license. Meanwhile, RAW... Continue Reading →
HDR: Power Windows
In this post, we look at how to deal with overly bright highlights. Whatever speed limit you decide on for your project, pay close attention to how rolling off highlights affects the texture, detail and vividness of the image. Download the original clips here. https://youtu.be/BuyX4s-rsUE The strongest highlights are 638 nits and the laptop display... Continue Reading →
Major Motion Picture Studios Statement on HDR Brightness Levels
There has never been a push for or a requirement by any of the major Hollywood studios or leading streaming content providers that HDR shows hit a peak luminance of 1,000 nits. In the case of digital projection or direct view displays, there’s never been a requirement that movies hit system peak brightness either. “It... Continue Reading →
Why more care has to be exercised when shooting/grading/delivering HDR than SDR
Clipped highlights that can be rolled off in SDR are unsightly in HDR. HDR is more prone to unsightly banding artifacts. Streaming bitrates must be higher to avoid blocking artifacts. Noise becomes much more of a nuisance in the shadows. Overstauration can make your picture look like cheap camcorder footage. The higher local contrast of... Continue Reading →
HDR used to make the audience uneasy: a good strategy?
During Eric Weidt’s presentation (FilmLight’s Colour On Stage), where he discussed his collaboration with David Fincher on Mindhunter, the colorist talked about how the overhead neon tubes in the shot of a couple shopping at a grocer’s were overpowering, which is why he ended up decreasing the intensity, but that the extended brightness of HDR... Continue Reading →
Is taking advantage of HDR in just one or two scenes of a film a good strategy?
All Quiet On the Western Front (Netflix) had a couple of powerful scenes on the battlefield at night, the small fires burning on the distant horizon, flares in the sky (VFX) and the glint of soldiers’ helmets in the blackness created a very strong impression. As did the brightness of daylight as a few surviving... Continue Reading →
Cullen Kelly: Set A Speed Limit Of Around 250 Nits
During a live stream, Cullen Kelly said that 1,000-nit specular highlights are unpleasant to look at and that windows should be closer to middle gray. Do you agree? Can intense specular highlights serve an expressive purpose? "HDR is fairly new, and as typically happens with new technologies, we have impartial parties really, really pushing for... Continue Reading →
Cinematographers on HDR
Match the quotes to the DP “[HDR is] a dream for any cinematographer, any creator of images... I think every cinematographer will have an interest in high dynamic range, because it’s the way that we want to capture images, so later we can do whatever we want in [digital color grading]. We need all the... Continue Reading →
MiniLED – How many dimming zones are necessary to a achieve contrast ratios comparable to OLED?
According to this study, when seated at the minimum viewing distance, 4X as many zones are required for an 85" 8K TV as compared to a 55" 4K TV; but when seated at the optimum viewing distance (at which the display occupies a 40° field of view)), the number of zones remains the same for... Continue Reading →
No, It Doesn’t
Forum member, EOSHD https://youtu.be/wEf8FmPMJxM It appears that many in the online community obstinately refer to ETTR as overexposure, which it is not. Overexposure is pushing highlights too far, to the point of clipping, at which point they are unrecoverable. Exposing to the right maximizes dynamic range while minimizing noise in the shadows.
Devotion is a Feast for the Eyes
Unlike 99% of productions, Korean War drama Devotion was conceived, monitored and shot in HDR, the show LUT and dailies were HDR, the hero grade was HDR - and it looks simply gorgeous. Photo: Netflix Photo: Netflix Photo: Netflix Photo: Netflix
“Is the Barten Ramp the correct threshold?”
The Barten Ramp is calculated from P. G. J. Barten’s 1999 Contrast Sensitivity Function (CSF), a model that supposedly incorporated most of the important variables in the ability of the HVS to detect contouring in digital display systems. Note this is modeled rather than measured data and the model is based on data that predates... Continue Reading →
“Television Better Served By HLG“
“The PQ system was developed by Dolby, a company whose main focus is on the cinema while the HLG system was developed jointly by BBC and NHK, two organizations whose main focus is on television… Television is probably better served by the HLG system that was designed from the ground up by television engineers for... Continue Reading →
Narrow vs. Full Range
Grass Valley White Paper diagram of the Barten ramp showing the susceptibility to banding of different HDR curves. We can see that full range offers only a very slight advantage over narrow range in guarding against banding artifacts. Photo: Grass Valley
The Daejeon Chronicles 