Spheron HDR Video camera footage

Spheron HDR video – footage from SpheronVR AG on Vimeo.

I would have LOVED to have seen some dramatic backlit scenes as examples.  I was most interested in the lighting examples around the 3 minute mark in the above video because of the way you can relight shadows due to the latitude in the file/capture.

Full Spheron Press Release here: http://bit.ly/bnjShW

Oloneo PhotoEngine is a new player in the HDR space.  They just released their public beta 1 of their PhotoEngine application (links at end of post). I am very impressed.  Not only does it have a very desirable tonemapping operator, but it also has a truly unique way to approach relighting a scene in 32 bit space if you shot that scene with various light sources while the camera stayed on a tripod for each lighting change.  It is amazing.  User interface comments and samples here:
http://www.digitalcoastimage.com/photoengine/index.html

Click Image to View Larger Version

I’ve been using multiple applications to achieve the results I am getting with just PhotoEngine.  However, I’ve only run a few brackets through it so far and I’ve only tested landscapes, no architectural interiors.  I will report back what my results are for those much higher dynamic range scenes once I’ve had time to do so.  Here’s the biggest win using this app…

The slider to crush the dynamic range down does so WITHOUT introducing unwanted detail enhancement. So… You get to pull up shadows and bring down highlights with that slider and it has NO IMPACT on detail or sharpening.  Yipppeeeeeeee!!!!!

The slider just below the tonemapping strength slider is the one that seperately controls detail strength. Finally an application that gives you the results of Enfuse/Enblend without introducing unwanted detail cranking.  Oh, and did I mention halos?  No.  Because I’ve been unable to create any halos thusfar!!! Crazy!

I’m just addressing the default setting here which is the local tonemapper. There is also a drop down that allows you to switch to a global tonemapper or you could use the more detailed Advanced Local Tonemapper which has more controls surrounding how detail is enhanced.

Also, Oloneo PhotoEngine also has a very effective HDR DeNoise feature that reduces noise WITHOUT blurring/smoothing the image details.  Another major feature of PhotoEngine is that it is a very capable RAW processor.

And if that wasn’t impressive enough, the Relighting module allows you to take separate frames (that you took from a tripod) of a scene that was shot with different lights turned on/off for each frame.  On the merge PhotoEngine recognizes the different light sources and then get this…

… it allows you to control each light seperately for both white balance, hue and luminance controls.  FRIGGIN’ AMAZING!!!  It actually creates separate controls in the user interface for each light source so that you can control them all separately for lighting.  Its easier to watch it in action then explain so watch the YouTube video on their landing page for that Relighting module.

OK… so the app has some pitfals.  No mac version (that’s going to upset a ton of folks).  I don’t see any way to save recipes/settings and I don’t think it has any kind of batch processing.  I know it doesn’t have any ghosting controls either.  That said, there’s a lot to like.

Here’s the link again which has a gallery showing you various controls of the user interface and some sample images:

http://www.digitalcoastimage.com/photoengine/index.html

Oloneo’s Home Page:  http://www.oloneo.com/

Oloneo on Twitter: http://twitter.com/oloneo

Here’s some steps I’ve used for generating some motion/video out of HDR stills. There are many different workflows and I’ll touch on some of them from an overview perspective now. The first one is the workflow I employed for an older clip shot at Eden Gardens State Park in North West Florida. For reference, this is the clip (overview to follow below it).

HDR Video – Eden Gardens 2008 from Michael James on Vimeo.

I shot it with a Nikon D3 with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8G lens.  It sat on top of a fluid head tripod I use for video work. I also had a shutter release cable attached to the D3. I set the camera to automatic bracketing and once I determined the mid point I switched from aperture priority to full manual so that each of the AEB sequences I was about to fire would be EXACTLY the same.  I determined I would not need to go a full 9aeb and set the D3 to fire off 7 shots with 1EV steps between.  I lowered the settings of the camera to shoot JPEG in a size that is larger than HD.

Also of critical importance is locking down white balance.  I chose Daylight here (an obvious choice), but will often dial in an exact Kelvin setting for other lighting situations (although Kelvin WB selection is generally not available in lower end DSLRs).

If I wanted to shoot RAW I would not have been able to have captured the entire tilt move in just over 60 seconds due to the buffer issues, but the lower JPEG setting meant I would never tap out the buffer and could shoot burst after burst easily.  Also, because the steps were only 1EV jumps between each of the 7aeb captures, I was comfortable only shooting JPEG.  I would NOT attempt shooting JPEG for anything larger than 1EV jumps between each shot for this type of approach.  Time was critical here to capture the entire tilt move in a short period of time.  (I shoot RAW for all my other typical HDR workflows, including HDR Timelapse)

The shutter release of the camera was set to continuous so that I could hold down the shutter release cable button with one hand to fire off a full 7 shots at 9fps while keeping my other hand on the tripod handle to make small incremental movements to tilt up after each 7aeb capture.  I do it this way to be quick enough to capture the entire tilt move seen in the video in a little over 60 seconds.

To repeat myself slightly now…, I have the camera ready to capture the brackets in continuous shutter release mode and then prepared for the first AEB capture by aiming the camera slightly below the horizon into the deep shadows.  I then fired off a burst by holding down the shutter release cable button and quickly moved the tripod a very small (unmeasured and done by eye) amount; slightly tilted up for the next capture.  Then again held the shutter release cable button to fire off another 7aeb and repeated this process until the tilt to the sky was complete.  This took all of about one minute to capture.

Back home I dump the images to a folder on the computer and then I launched photoshop to begin the merge to HDR process.  You don’t have to use photoshop as the program to merge to HDR, but back in 2008 when I put this together that was the process I used.  I had a few scripts that I had created that had photoshop merge to HDR and then use custom settings to tonemap out to 16 bit TIFFs.

I employ two alternative workflows these days.  One of which is where I merge to HDR in applications that batch merge and have them save .EXR files for each merge.  Those .EXR files are then imported into either Adobe After Effects or Eyeon Fusion and then I use open source plugins to do the tonemapping in those compositing programs as well as the ensuing optical flow.

But in 2008 those plugins did not exist yet and this process I’m still describing was the workflow I used for the Eden Gardens sequence.

What you see below in the screen shot (click to enlarge or right click and open in a new window) is one of those 7aeb sequences in the merge to HDR dialogue. I’m just showing you that to show you that the dynamic range of the scene was pretty large for an outdoor shot and the sky was blown out when you could see the leaves straight ahead and the leaves were pitch black when the sky was properly exposed.

Like I said, there are several programs out there that can automate the process of merging and tonemapping your brackets and I plan to cover how to use them in this capacity in some future posts and training, but the process I employed here was a home grown merge to HDR and tonemapping recipe I used for Photoshop CS3.  In the end I had 30+ Tiffs from that automated process to then use as the skeleton for an image sequence.  I then take those Tiffs to the next step for optical flow treatment.

Before I move to that next step, here is a larger view (click for larger image) of a single tonemapped frame, along with the 7 shots above the top of it showing you the dynamic range covered for that one image.

The next step I did then was to take the TIFFs into Apple Shake which treats the group of single images like a sequence.  I then used custom settings (see image below; click to enlarge) to expand the number of frames to be created BETWEEN each of the frames I was importing into it.  In other words, Apple Shake was now going to create the frames and guess at the pixel movement between the frames I shot in the garden.  There are other programs such as After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Fusion, etc that can accomplish the same thing with optical flow, but I used Shake in this instance.

I also recropped the image in Shake to match the ratio of HD footage and had it export the sequence as 1080p ProRes footage which I planned to send to Final Cut Pro to add audio and titles (see image below; click to enlarge).

Then I imported the 1080p footage into Final Cut Pro (see image below; click to enlarge) and added sound and some titles to export to various formats (including a web version which exists on Vimeo).

HDR Expose by Unified Color - www.UnifiedColor.com

HDR Expose was just announced this morning over at http://www.unifiedcolor.com/ and is available for purchase on July 12th.

HDR Expose is a new application with a different user interface than HDR PhotoStudio 2 with some new workflows as well.  In addition to batch processing it also now plays nicely with Adobe LightRoom and Apple Aperture.

I was already impressed with HDR PhotoStudio 2 and I’m even happier now with their HDR Expose offering.

More to come later this week…

From Unified Color’s troops…

Excellent to see this work done. The cost of the camera is beyond mere mortals and it is huge, but this is coming to us all in a not so distant future.  Its only a matter of time before we have true HDR Video devices that can tackle difficult exposure issues that exceed current day sensors.

Check this video out!!!  Amazing results!

I’ve toyed with pseudo HDR Video myself, but nothing real time.  This was created with a Nikon D3 shooting brackets one after another, then tonemapped and tweaked in post to create a video like tilt.

HDR Video – Eden Gardens 2008 from Michael James on Vimeo.

Just a quick update. I’ve been out of town shooting, but recently got back and busy editing stuff I shot the weeks prior to heading out of town to shoot.  A few links of recent edits. (which were taken before the huge oil slicks destroyed the beaches)

Again, I shoot rather large and tightly spaced brackets using the promote control.

Seaside Community – Seaside, Florida
http://digitalcoastimage.com/30a/seaside/index.html

Watersound Community – Panama City Beach, Florida
http://www.digitalcoastimage.com/proofs/ws/index.html

Offices of Ocean Reef Resorts – Destin & Seacrest, Florida
http://digitalcoastimage.com/or/index.html

Adaggio Condos – Grayton Beach, Florida
http://www.digitalcoastimage.com/proofs/adaggio/index.html

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So.

Obviously I haven’t updated recently.  I’ve been busy trying to find new clients NOT tied directly to rentals here along the gulf coast.  Given this is a tourist town… it’s been a lot of work.  Lots of calling, networking and marketing.

As I write this BP is attempting yet another way to plug the oil gusher which has poured millions upon millions of gallons of oil into the gulf.  If you’ve been watching CNN, etc you’ve seen the dead: dolphins, pelicans, sea birds, turtles and countless other creatures caught up in this mess.

That 24 / 7 news cycle has spooked would be tourists that flock to our beaches May-September.  I already covered the impact in a recent post so I’ll skip the rehash any further.  Just pointing out that I’ve been spending a ton of my time trying to drum up new biz.

I have found some new clients, but these are one or two gig deals and out, not rental companies that have ongoing new inventory to shoot.  So the hunt/kill/eat cycle of freelance is what I’m dealing with right now and not leaving me much time to do anything else.

Yesterday a builder asked me to send him work  of homes I’ve shot in a particular community.  I told him to go to my website and he said he did and didn’t see anything shot there.  Hmmmmm…. so I go myself and then realize I haven’t updated my site in almost exactly a year now.  So I grabbed link after link of temporary galleries I had put up for some shoots from the last 6-12 months and started cutting and pasting links in the email.   That’s when I realized that there were way too many  So I cut it down.  Lesson?

I need to update my website!

Anyway, here are some of the links I included.  I didn’t think I should send him the nearly 100 properties I shot last year!!!  The toughest part for me is I now need to select the better shots of the last few years and put up a new website.  You know… when I have nothing better to do for a few days!

I cringed when I saw some of the shoots. I remember when I was up against hard time deadlines and cut some corners here and there when I wasn’t given any wiggle room.  Oh well.  They won’t make it to the final website, but lessons learned from each shoot.

Links to temp web galleries:

http://digitalcoastimage.com/comps/ws/index.html

http://digitalcoastimage.com/comps/willow/index.html

http://digitalcoastimage.com/destin/406w/index.html

http://digitalcoastimage.com/30a/wc/index.html

http://digitalcoastimage.com/comps/wcliff/index.html

http://digitalcoastimage.com/comps/sandestin/index.html

http://digitalcoastimage.com/proofs/sanctuary/index.html

http://digitalcoastimage.com/30a/ws2/index.html

http://digitalcoastimage.com/comps/59/index.html

http://digitalcoastimage.com/alysbeach/index.html

http://digitalcoastimage.com/comps/pinevalley/index.html

http://digitalcoastimage.com/comps/wcolor/index.html

http://digitalcoastimage.com/destin/405w/index.html

Yes this will impact HDR as it relates to me and future blog posts, tutorials, etc.  I’ll explain in a moment. LINK to BP OIL SPILL IMAGE (Before it began poluting wildlife and major fishing regions).

I live in North West Florida along the Emerald Coast. I’m a couple hundred miles from where the BP (British Petroleum) oil rig blew up. It has been spewing oil at an alarming rate per day and it is so deep it will take many weeks and possibly months to cap it.  Already predictions are saying this will dwarf the Exxon Valdez disaster. The big difference is the Valdez ship had a finite amount of oil on it.  This uncontrolled hole in the gulf of mexico is gushing many thousands of barrels of oil a day.

NEARLY 40% of United States seafood is fished from the Gulf of Mexico.  Many of the bayous already being hit with oil are major migration points of birds that fly from Canada/North America down south for the winter.

So how is this HDR related?

Because it has already impacted my world and means I’ll be more active on this blog in coming weeks.  Why?  Unfortunately not for positive reasons.  Some background…

About 5 years ago when I was looking at how to best run a real estate photography business I was seeking ways to not have to re-create the wheel with marketing and the constant trolling for new clients.  So when I decided I was going to move from Atlanta to the Emerald Coast of Florida I looked at affluent areas that had expensive homes for sale and beach rentals (high end trophy properties).

I quickly connected with companies that rented high end properties.  These gulf front homes rent for $5,000 to $15,000 per week in peak season. That’s not a typo.

So for rental companies that are getting 20-40% of each weekly rental as a fee for managing the property for the owner (again, not a typo), they have money to spend on marketing (photography being #1).  And photography is absolutely critical when 90% of the bookings are coming from out of state and those folks are making their vacation decisions based on photos they view online.  So…

I decided to contact and work with many of the rental companies that rent the higher end homes and some of the more exclusive / high end condos.  I also contacted several of the top producing real estate agents and real estate companies that deal with multi-million dollar listings. Then slowly got around to contacting builders, architects and interior designers.  Again, my goal with the rental companies was to tap into the turnover that was inevitable with them and the new properties they’d need shot yearly or rooms of units to reshoot because beds/bedding, furniture or repainting took place.  How did my little plan work?  Perfectly until the oil spill.

Rental companies have been getting vacationers calling in to cancel their May/June bookings due to watching the constant coverage of the Gulf Oil Spill on CNN, The Weather Channel, FOX, you name it.  National coverage on every media outlet including print/web.  Even if the impact is not as bad as they are predicting now, the damage for me is done.  These rental companies are playing it safe and canceling/postponing new shoots, indefinitely.  Some have resorted to just grabbing point and shoot pics for now to “wait and see what happens” with this oil spill.  I’m not out for good, but the outlook for this oil spill is bad enough that it is impacting MY clients.  Shit happens.  To me in this case.

Since moving to the Emerald Coast I’ve shot over 1000 properties.  But I didn’t bracket all those properties to then merge shots to HDR and then tonemap.  I’ve “only” shot about 700 properties employing a full HDR pipeline.  I’ve averaged about 20 shots per property so I’m probably as I type this crossing the 14,000 mark for tonemapped images from HDRs merged from brackets.  I’ve learned a few tricks along the way.

Obviously these rental companies are savvy.  There are many photographers in the area that shoot real estate so the rental companies can beat me up to some extent on pricing.  However,  for the level of work that I deliver, they can’t get cheaper. I make more money than any of the other real estate photographers in the area not employing a HDR pipeline.  Likewise, there are amazing architectural photographers that live here who can blow me away , but they charge far more than I do and use lots of lighting gear and/or professional level flash units.  They also take all day to stage and shoot a trophy property.  I’m the middle ground option here.  Not cheap, not expensive and you get a high quality product.  HDR allows me to get in and out of properties with only a camera bag and a tri-pod and move quickly through a shoot.

Tapping into those rental companies meant a constant flow of properties and when I got emails from followers of  this blog asking when am I going to do some kind of workshop, video training, personal training, … my response has always been… “someday, but I’m too busy shooting/editing”.

It was a great run.  Its not over, but this oil spill has spooked all the rental companies. In the last few days I’ve had 27 shoots cancelled.  This is going to be a hell of a test on me.  I have savings I put away for retirement and will likely have to tap into those if I can’t re-market myself rapidly with new clients.  I’ll likely start considering out of state shoots as well given there is no telling how long this oil spill impact will linger.

How this relates to HDR is that I will now have more time to spend testing all these apps for merging/tonemapping and review them.  I’ll also likely setup some kind of weekend workshop for those interested in learning how to shoot/edit high contrast scenes employing a High Dynamic Range Imaging pipeline.  I’m only 3-5 hours from Atlanta, Jacksonville, Birmingham, New Orleans and Mobile as cities go, but only a 3/4 day’s drive from Orlando and Tampa.  Those would likely be cities I’d hold a workshop in.

I’ll also be thinking long and hard about online training options.  Currently I”m assisting with a few of the Background Fundamentals Classes covering HDR basics over at http://www.FXPHD.com and I’ll be thinking about expanding my online presence to more online training for sure. I’ve never written a book and I have no contacts in that industry so I’m not sure that will be an option unless I decide to self publish.  Lots to think about in the coming days, but I won’t drag my feet.

Regardless.  The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill means I’ll be spending more time yapping about HDR both online and off.

I’ve already downloaded Photoshop CS5 beta and have been using it to test out the HDR Tools.  I’ll have more to share once I’ve used it more in depth tomorrow and Monday.  More to come…

HDR PhotoStudio 2 Review will be coming as soon as I make my run through other HDR/Tonemapping apps, but just a few review comments:

1. It handles color/saturation/hue very well for HDR/Tonemapping.
2. I like that it has a Photoshop plugin so that PS can open their proprietary .bef file format.
3. If you don’t read the manual or watch their YouTube videos, you’ll waste valuable time.
4. White balance, color tuning, saturation & noise reduction are all VERY useful tools in the pipeline.
5. Recipes will come in handy when I get back to playing with the app (think presets).

This is a quick follow-up post with three images I merged to HDR then tonemapped in HDR Studio Pro 2.  I’m still new to the software so I’m sure I could have done a better job on these, but the only way to learn these apps is to get face time and just tinker (after reading the manual!!!).  I always finish off by exporting 16bit tiffs and then do spot removal and/or final tweaks in Photoshop CS3.

The shots are too large to post on the blog (1200 pixels wide for the landscape shots) so I’ll give you the gallery link I uploaded them to.

IMAGE GALLERY of shots edited in Unified Color HDR PhotoStudio 2

First up to bat for testing out HDR/Tonemapping aps is HDR PhotoStudio 2 (see blog post from this morning below).

Just a first run using it.  It is so very different from any other HDR/Tonemapping app I’ve used.  The color fidelity is tremendous.  It took me an hour to really figure out how to tame the app.  At first the windows/highlights were blown out and I could not figure out how to clamp down the exposure.

Full review once I have run it through its paces.  Here’s a sample from my first attempt using it.