At Last, HDR Comes to Video?

Finally a better use for two cameras than producing 3D movies. You may have heard of HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography before, but if you haven’t, it’s basically a technique that combines two or more photos of the same scene, taken with different exposures. An overexposed shot brings out the shadows and an underexposed shot […]
Still from Soviet Montage's HDR video
We don't actually know this guy very well. Image via Wikimedia Commons

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Finally a better use for two cameras than producing 3D movies. You may have heard of HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography before, but if you haven't, it's basically a technique that combines two or more photos of the same scene, taken with different exposures. An overexposed shot brings out the shadows and an underexposed shot leaves some detail in the highlights. The shots are combined in software to produce the final image, which can often look slightly unreal. The technique has been around for a few years now, at first for the pros only, but then you could get "an app for that", and now the latest version of the iPhone 4's operating system bakes the HDR shooting right into the camera software, so it won't be long before it's everywhere. Now a company called Soviet Montage Productions has developed a way of producing the HDR effect for video. They use a custom built rig including a beam splitter to send the video image to two Canon 5D Mark II DSLR cameras, one underexposing by -2e/v and the other overexposing by 2e/v, and the resulting videos are combined in post production to give the slightly erie effect shown in the video below. There's a great debate going on in the comments of their site as to the merits of the technique, but we'll leave you to make up your own mind on that. (via @feliciaday!)