HDR Video Demonstration Using Two Canon 5D mark II's on Vimeo

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2. HDR Video Demonstration Using Two Canon 5D mark II's

by Soviet Montage

1 year ago

1. World's First True HDR Video using DSLRs

by Soviet Montage

1 year ago

Check out our iPhone app for pro photo editing: theprocessapp.com/?v

This video highlights several clips we've made using our new High Dynamic Range (HDR) process. Video is captured on two Canon 5D mark II DSLRs, each capturing the exact same subject via a beam splitter. The cameras are configured so that they record different exposure values, e.g., one camera is overexposed, the other underexposed. After the footage has been recorded, we use a variety of HDR processing tools to combine the video from the two cameras, yielding the clips you see above.

HDR Video provides filmmakers with many exciting new opportunities. Not only can HDR video create interesting effects, it can also allow for even exposure where artificial lighting is unavailable or impractical. For example, when a subject is backlit, one camera could be set to properly expose the subject, the other the sky, resulting in video with perfect exposure throughout.

We will continue to develop and improve the HDR video process for better results and efficiency. For more information, check out our website
sovietmontage.com
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Music
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Opus 40, Number 9
Performed by Kevin MacLeod
Licensed Under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0"

Credits

8,266 Likes

heiko roggenhofer
9 hours ago
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11 hours ago
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12 hours ago
Kenneth Bø
1 day ago
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Tags

Robby Cornish 1 year ago

Amazing!
Lorenzo Sportiello 1 year ago

amazingly sad music :)
ev l 1 year ago

I believe you have the underexposed and overexposed labels reversed.

Great video though.
Patrick Lawler 1 year ago

truth
Ethan Duffy 1 year ago

Also, the two cameras are occasionally focused differently, most noticeably on the shot with the guy.
Soviet Montage 1 year ago

Nice catch. Fixed in this higher res version.
To think...months spent in pursuit of perfection, only to be struck with a typo ;)
iamkalaniprince 1 year ago

SM : That's insane : ) do you have any pictures of the rig you shot these images with?

I'm guessing you try to best match the FOV to the best of your ability then use something like "difference" blending mode to find the absolute pixel perfect match?

I love this, I'd like to see a whole music vid or short shot with the double d's : )

Love and Aloha, Kalani-
Jorge Palanca 1 year ago

Yeah! I would like to see a picture of the rig itself as well!

Nice production, guys :)
iamkalaniprince 1 year ago

"Also, the two cameras are occasionally focused differently, most noticeably on the shot with the guy."

I suspect as long as the frame exposed for highlights is in focus you'll still get a sharp image.. maybe even better? possible extra "filmic-ness" : )

I'd LOVE to see the rig.

Kalani-
tim tim 1 year ago

agreed.
Ricky Gonzalez 1 year ago

I believe they used 50/50 Glass actually, maybe I'm mistaken?

The company I work for built a rig that lets us do HDR much like this.
RJO Photo 1 year ago

holy cow!
Five5 Media 1 year ago

WOW. This is incredible!
Roman 1 year ago

This is pretty awesome, especially with humans.
Luke Skaff 1 year ago

I wonder if it would be possible for canon to implement this via firmware in future cameras. You could capture a scene at 60fps+ and alternate each frame under/over exposed.
Soviet Montage 1 year ago

We experimented with that. While viable, you would have issues with frame sync with faster movement. We like our approach best. It has its eccentricities, but we've began to iron them all out.
Ryan Toyota 1 year ago

Well, since Canon's cameras capture the images via line doubling (from what I understand) wouldn't the easier solution be to activate the unused lines and have them capture the other exposure? These sensors are capturing way more pixels than are needed for HD video, might as well put them all to use capturing different exposures for HDR.
Ryan Toyota 1 year ago

Sorry, line-skipping, not line-doubling.
Dirk Jopie 1 year ago

the sensor is not the problem, it's the data throughput to the storage that's defining the datarate (and thus the frame size) here...
how many pixels can you bring from the sensor to the storage in 1/25 of a sec...?

there's a nice new camera that does all of this for you:
arridigital.com/alexaplus

I wonder how you guys synced the camera's...?
Robert Nyerges 1 year ago

Too bad its almost $80,000 for an Alexa
JR 11 months ago

May be with the gh2 & 3d lenses and adding only a polarized cap in one of the lenses, I think it could be the easyest way to obtaining the effect.
Philip Bloom 1 year ago

fascinating...but would like to have seen the images shot normally too for comparison...
Brett Sanders 1 year ago

This. And a version with none of that stereotypical light smoothing.
Philip Bloom 1 year ago

Also am concerned about the really bad noise in places on the HDR stuff...
Darryl Gregory 1 year ago

Noise is common in HDR stills due to pixel sharpening, in fact it is so common it is virtually ignored by most viewers,
I get frustrated when I see complimenting posts about HDR images.
But to see a HDR video with less noise than most stills gets me giddy :)

I'm loving this
Breathing Media 1 year ago

I really dig the imperfect look of HDR stills and this video, though - obviously it will be perfected and smoothed out over time, but for right now in its infancy it reminds me of original silent films. It feels experimental and pioneering, and the irregularities just add a sense of wonder for me...
John Stalker 1 year ago

I agree with the silent film attribute. Great point.
Love Story Media 1 year ago

Very interesting. Just a "little touch of HDR" gives the look of film with detail in highlights retained. Impressive.
Jon Sovey 1 year ago

Wow, I have always wanted to see this. imagine what this look could do for a horror film!
Jimmy Reynolds 1 year ago

:-)
Lars Steenhoff 1 year ago

The effect with the person is a little too much, It does give it a special look though.
Steve Brunton 1 year ago

Agreed, almost like something out of A Scanner Darkly
James Drake 1 year ago

solid.
Bill Strehl 1 year ago

Thanks for putting up this comparison. Look forward to the details here or on your website.
Cesar Kuriyama 1 year ago

sweet mother of... wow... post a tutorial? haha.
Hidden Orange 1 year ago

man.. that's insane... wow.
Brad Kelly 1 year ago

Very interesting. Looks like the Future.
Kiera Faye 1 year ago

could this be the answer to the "film look" quest? let's get a dual-sensor camera made to do this!
Inofaith 1 year ago

I hope people won't over-use this in the pursuit of a film look...
Tristan Chaika 1 year ago

"Let's get a dual-sensor camera made to do this!"

Buy an Arri Alexa when it comes out. Not quite dual sensor, but built in HDR like capabilities. get ready to spend some $$ though.
Pylon Film 1 year ago

We already have 3ccd cameras. Why doesnt anyone make a 3xcolor ccd with couple of stops between each ccd? Beats me.
Conscious Minds Productions 1 year ago

I'd love to see what you're camera setup looks like with the beam splitter. Any chance we could get another video highlighting this?

Shots look great!
The Royalty Club 1 year ago

They'd use something like this ~> traderscity.com/board/products-1/offers-to-sell-and-export-1/digital-slit-lamp-conversion-beam-splitter-camera-adapter-ccd-adapter-30675/

The 2 camera's are set up on the left and right of the beam splitter adapter and the main lens is to the front.
Steve Brunton 1 year ago

Took the words right out of my mouth ;)
Pylon Film 1 year ago

Will that not make a 3d rig as well?
Chris Andrew 10 months ago

Would not be 3D no, they're recording light captured from one angle, one lens.
Mike Kochansky 1 year ago

Not bad. I knew it was only a matter of time before wed see this. Footage looks a little noisy in the final HDR video. I'd love to see some movement with the camera in your next video.
Karen Abad 1 year ago

That city shot is unreal.
Spencer Watson 1 year ago

Very cool, I can imagine a lot of instances where that kind of stylized look would be amazing. Could you please let us know what kind of beam splitter you used, and where we could pick one up?
Richard Burns 1 year ago

This looks fantastic, I'm getting a 550D (in 2 weeks) and I was considering testing out batching the frames from a video through photoshop CS5's HDR Toning effect which emulates HDR relatively well, however it won't look quite as fantastic as this. Just thought I'd mention in case anybody with only one camera might want to experiment with it...it certainly looks good with standard photography. I certainly will be next week.

Example of CS5's HDR Toning on a still: sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs385.snc4/44823_10150253697550521_707655520_14198391_5133267_n.jpg
Torben Scharling 1 year ago

Simple workflow of doing this (batch processes) ? Guy needs a tutorial :)
Frank Benson 1 year ago

agreed, tutorial?
Tristan Chaika 1 year ago

So it gives the "dirty" HDR look, but the highlights are still blown out. Kinda defeats the purpose, for me...might be good for music videos, though.
Richard Burns 1 year ago

The highlights can be fixed via parameters I believe. It's probably best to experiment yourself with a still in CS5 (image > adjustments > HDR Toning) I'm ordering a camera in 10 days (poor student y'see) so I'll do a proper example and a tutorial then...if anybody wants me to send them a message when its up just message me. Also if anyone does try it out let me know.
Kyle Cowling 1 year ago

very beautiful! thanks for sharing.
Martin 1 year ago

I like it,great job!

People looks like they came form the game Mirrors Edge :P.
Talia Productions 1 year ago

I believe we will see some great ideas come from this concept. Should be fun.
Mike Collins 1 year ago

This is really cool. Thanks for sharing.
Anthony Meadows 1 year ago

Pretty amazing stuff. I need to experiment with this myself.
Chris Marino 1 year ago

Just what we need for SF. More eyes on OUR film community here! KUDOS
Nick-at-Nite 1 year ago

Wow...that's really cool!
Jack Wilson 1 year ago

2 5dmkII's, are they side by side? any possibility of a 3d application?
Jack Wilson 1 year ago

ah, beam splitter, didnt read that bit.
mike janov 1 year ago

exited to see less people in hdr land...
J. Xavier Velasco 1 year ago

That's awesome! I made my attempt a while ago but like animation style vimeo.com/5689404
Maik Thomas 1 year ago

stunning hrd look on the man
msouza 1 year ago

Very nice way to increase the dynamic range !!! genius. I have a 2 questions... What about a software that merges the two stream in one "RAW" format ? Like Cineon, DPX, ??? Is it possible ? And i am curious about the Matching of the two cameras. How you manage to put the 2 cameras in a way that they could capture the SAME frame ? There's no paralax movimento or distortions ? Or Did you just solved it on the post production ?
Ethan Duffy 1 year ago

Beam splitter, but because you've got no timecode sync on these cameras, they're not recording the frames at the exact same time. We're talking Milliseconds but you can see it in the pans.
msouza 1 year ago

What about to have a "electronic" shutter control, that "press" rec at the same time ? Like a little external arduino controlling the shutter of the 2 cameras at the same millisecond... ? It's easy to do that in fact... I just need another 7D (i have one 7D). :) Sorry, i did not know the Beam Splitter, i will google it. :) Thnks for the info. :)
Oscar Falcón Lara 1 year ago

Looks quite interesting...
James White 1 year ago

Really interesting stuff. Some interesting artifacts too, but way better than what I was expecting. The man looks so surreal too.

Good choice of music as well. I feel more short videos/films should incorporate the classical arts more.

Very well done!
Gem Aludino 1 year ago

very nice!!!!
Mike Maez 1 year ago

interesting indeed.
Joe Moya 1 year ago

interesting and very cool... I bet this method beats the heck out of the time consuming proces I have used to achieve this effect in the past... i.e., match frame for frame.. then adjust... to achieve the HDR look with video.
Renato Conde 1 year ago

Great stuff! I can imagine this being done with two CMOS sensors in the same camera in a few years.. (one for each exposure setting) and processing done in realtime.
ZachFine 1 year ago

Has someone discovered a way of actually synchronizing two 5D's, or are the cameras not really locked in sync in these shots but there's so little movement that it's not obvious that their frames are offset in time?
Inofaith 1 year ago

Good work.

I only hope the effect doesn't get used too extremely, subtle HDR to avoid washed out skies when back-lit etc is fine.

But as we all know, HDR in photography is generally made ugly (flickr).
Patrick Lawler 1 year ago

oh it will! Just wait! in 3 months to a year everyone will be shooting annoyingly sharp and over tonemapped video.
Inofaith 1 year ago

Probably... also, apple put the auto-bracketing hdr thing in their new ios software... hope its subtle...

That first shot of that cityscape kindo looks like its CGI. Now we know what to do to make CGI more real and reality more digital :P
Petey Boy 1 year ago

I felt exactly the same way about it looking CGI. This would be a perfect technique to blend the two worlds.
CJ Guest 1 year ago

Great job! Would like to see some night shots, if possible.
Nathan Swan 1 year ago

Brilliant! So who's going to be the first to develop a 'Photomatix' software for video ;)
Patrick Lawler 1 year ago

Developing a flicker-free method would be awesome.
Patrick Lawler 1 year ago

also when the guy moves his hands there's super weird image ghosting, most likely because the cameras are a split second apart while rolling.
Ferguson Sauve-Rogan 1 year ago

Would two cameras gen-locked fix that?
Matthew Conrad 1 year ago

if only we could genlock dslrs
Tristan Chaika 1 year ago

What would it take to pull this off with "real" video cameras? the dynamic range of DSLRs becomes moot if you can tie 3 genlocked EX-3s together and you wouldn't have the smearing.
Diogo Girondi 1 year ago

I guess that the usual rolling shutter on these cameras would still prevent this from working for non-test environments even if the cameras were perfectly gen-locked.

Of course you can minimize the rolling shutter in post for both captures individually, but I will take a wild guess and say that it will probably introduce some "aberration" or ghosting into the final composite.

The ideal thing would be to have a digital negative format ala RAW for video in these cameras that dumps the sensor data directly without much processing/baking to a full or half-float point file. Something along the lines of what the RED camera does.

But apart from the flickering it looks kinda sweet for something that is being generated from just 2 exposures captured to a LDR format.

Congrats!
Patrick Lawler 1 year ago

genlock would fix the ghosting, then smoothing out the image processing would fix the flicker. Each frame looks like it was done one frame at a time, maybe batched, but still there is no relation between each frame and the previous of following frames, so the exposure levels jump around.
Alex Gallitano 1 year ago

This is amazing, like the beam-splitter technique....
This could be promising.
TNYCinema 1 year ago

Wow
Dave Dugdale 1 year ago

OK, that is pretty cool!
Chris Marrs Piliero 1 year ago

holy poop that is rad...
Joshua Brown 1 year ago

Not meaning to be rude, but here's hoping the "More to come" means, higher production and post production value. HDR shouldn't be about an effect. That said, the best shot was your opener.
Pablo Vazquez 1 year ago

Simply AMAZING.

Congratulations for the achievement and thanks a lot for sharing it.
Ravi Vora 1 year ago

Awesome! This is going to open up a lot of doors for DSLR film effects. There is a bit of flicker though when it is in HDR.
Gabe Askew 1 year ago

The city shots have a really interesting look to them. Can't wait to see what else these experiments bring.
Luiz Henrique Nunes 1 year ago

Very impressive! Great idea! I was wondering ... A 3D mirror rig could be used for this purpose too, right?
Benjamin Schmanke 1 year ago

one of the first, ever, to accomplish HDR video.. 63K+ views in one day.
well done guys, well done.
David Hintze 1 year ago

It's only a matter of time before this is just an option in the future HDSLRs, and I cant wait. Brilliant work, we all want to see more. :D