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"The reason this is important," Fleming says, "is that it shows that the technology is ready to deploy immediately. There isn't a technology barrier between releasing these displays and having them widely adopted." He says that such a simple, pixel-amplifying algorithm could easily be incorporated into the display and automatically enhance low-contrast images in real time.
"I think the topic is interesting," says Paul Debevec, a professor of graphics research at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles. "They're trying to get a handle on the implications of having these HDR displays and find out how it will change things."
In addition to new displays, Debevec says, there will eventually need to be HDR content because, while a low-contrast image looks great on an HDR display, a high-contrast image looks stunning. The basic premise behind producing an HDR image, he says, is to reshoot a scene under different lighting conditions and combine the shots using software. For example, a picture of a person standing in front of an open window would normally look like a dark silhouette surrounded by bright light. Different exposures gather different information, and in the end, the composite HDR image, which captures the bright light as well as the details in the shadows, looks more realistic. However, most cameras don't capture light this way, and while some animators and video-game makers are applying HDR to their work, moviemakers have yet to embrace it.
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Close but no cigar, but then again every persons' visibility varies so it is very hard to pinpoint what would be considered the perfect clarity. What may be crystal clear and comparable to the quality of the human eye to some, may be blurred and choppy to another. Far fetched, but wouldn't it be something that there was a device to adjust television, computer monitors, etc. to people's eye needs (almost like a trip to the eye doctor who will slap on a range of different spectacles on you for diagnosis). I realize you can adjust contrast, brightness, etc. on screens, but you can't adjust for people with far/near sightedness, those that need eyeglasses, etc. Realizing it might be like having to make the settings on these machines mimic a giant pair of adjustable eyeglasses, is it possible?
I think the ultimate goal, as it was put in the article, is to be able to look at a display as if you were looking out a window. With that in mind I think that it is possible to approach that "clarity" regardless of how someone actually views the image. In other words, I look out my window and the subjective image might appear different to someone with different sight. However, that doesn't change what is being viewed; the object doesn't change. I think if the display reached the level of accurateness as whatever light waves are coming through my window then it doesn't matter how the subject perceives it with sight imperfections.
Jeez, people, this is basically just about making superbright monitors that still can display deep blacks. That's perfectly achievable. Digital camera sensors continue to get better and will soon allow us to avoid having to choose between exposing for shadows or for highlights: it will all be captured. That's also perfectly achievable (RAW format is already a form of HDR: http://www.flickr.com/groups/raw2hdr/).
The main question this article addresses is how today's images and code will be displayed on an HDR monitor, since "pure white" in HDR is much brighter (uncomfortably brighter) than it is on today's monitors. Web page backgrounds are commonly pure white, but you don't want to have to wear sunglasses to read them.
A technique for recording has already been worked out a year ago by a joint Hungarian-Japanese team. I saw the presentation at a conference. Demo pictures included photos taken of an open book closely lit by a lamp, when normally the text would be unreadable. The results were very nice. The only problem with the approach was that the recording of a single picture took seconds...
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sculptor
19 Comments
Up hill battle
No current digital sensor exists that can come close to recording the dynamic range of the human eye. I suspect that such a sensor won't be developed any time soon because if there was an obvious technical solution digital camera makers would have embraced it already.
Reply
opticsdude
1 Comment
Re: Up hill battle
I agree that current sensors aren't operating with the dynamic range of the human eye, but I think the end of the article was suggesting a new configuration to simulate that dynamic range. By taking a sequence of images with different lighting conditions, you could bootstrap together an image with a higher dynamic range.
It sounds hard, but doable for still photos. It sounds crazy hard for full motion video (30fps)
Reply
CSGuy
2 Comments
Re: Up hill battle
Its seems like there is an easier solution to "simulate" the dynamic range with film other than re-shooting the same shot. A single sensor can't be used, but perhaps multiple sensors each used to sense different ranges. Then software could be used to combine the data into a single HDR image. New camera development would be needed, but it would be less expensive that re-shooting every shot.
Any film maker knows that it would nearly be impossible to get the same shot twice. The logistics of this would cost too much time and money. No wonder film makers aren't starting to do this.
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Guest (CarlHitchon)
Re: Up hill battle
Not unreasonable if "one" camera get all of the ranges.
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GraemeR
1 Comment
Re: Up hill battle
Synthetic digital images for videogames or animation would not have that limitation and could use the full dynamic range immediately.
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Wayne
2 Comments
Re: Up hill battle
I glanced through the article on my way to somewhere else.
They are crazy, I walked by an Flat panel TV the other day, with an picture of the sun blazing through it, and my eyes stung, thats quiet high range enough thank you. Even if we have an billion to one contrast ratio, our eyes are limited to around 8 bits (linearly). We like our images to be just nice, otherwise sunglasses would be an bit less popular.
High Dynamic range is useful in processing and production. Sometime ago, I estimated that an reasonably accurate 16bit(*3=48bit) pixel capture would give enough range of capture to be able to film an scene without much regard to lighting and adjust the exposure afterwards (and with 3D algorithms, the lighting at any point). In games production, and display processing, the higher bit depth helps prevents certain artifacts and contributes to an more accurate rendition.
As stated before, already displays are many thousands to one in the consumer space, and brightness levels are excessive. We don't really need higher contrast, unless we want an sunglasses in hand virtual simulation (i.e. yes like Star Trek)
This article seems an bit strange, apart from the above, dated, led backed displays have been out for years and many consumer televisions with it are said to be coming out. He says that people cannot pick the difference between genuinely high contrast, and low contrast amplified, but we need genuine HDR content because it looks more stunning. The pixel amplification circuit seems to achieve, in reverse, what we do with contrast and brightness controls on high contrast footage on bright high contrast displays.
I am an member of the digital cinema camera projects over at dvinfo.net alternative imaging forums. About cameras not been able to record an contrast range as much as the human eye, I submit the following:
http://www.hdrc.com/hdrctech.htm
http://www.planet82.com/korean/product/smpd_01.asp
http://www.altasens.com/
http://www.cypress.com/portal/server.pt?space=CommunityPage&control=SetCommunity&CommunityID=285&PageID=552&drid=67900&shortlink=&r_folder=&r_title=&ref=drs
Some can deliver the range at descent quality. About 16bit pixels, an few years ago altasens cameras had been reported to have gone up to 96db s/n ratio.
Reply
Wayne
2 Comments
Re: Up hill battle
I went to an store to see an LG 56dc1d DLP rear projection set today. The set, I have seen in times past, probably the best projection set I have ever seen, and is better than many LCD panels of it's day. They had an new LCD Sharp 10000:1 contrast, very bright, 4 color system for an more normal color pallet (LCD's tended to be very deficient). I could see that normal daylight scenes looked much better on it compared to the other LCD panels because of the extra brightness, even though highlights and snow scenes were washed out. But I prefer the rear projection, even though it has 350cd output, and 2500:1 contrast, simply because the color range of the screen was more lively, enough to make it look as good as the brighter Sharp. If the sun, or bright reflections had been on the Sharp, the result would have been more unpleasant.
http://au.lge.com/products/model/detail/tv_rearprojectiontv_dlp_56dc1d.jhtml
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