Back to selection
A Haunting New York Shot in HDR on the RED Epic-X
Filmmaker Colby Moore has shot an eerie New York montage in high-dynamic range on the RED Epic-X. Underneath his Vimeo video he explains his process:
A short and creepy montage of scenes shot around the ever-photogenic island of Manhattan — filmed entirely in high-dynamic range and comprised of some HDR Timelapse footage I shot, along with a collection of slow-motion and normal 24fps footage processed from Red Epic-X RAW video that I recently captured and then exported as -2,0+2 TIFF stacks to be tone mapped in Photomatix using a batch processing workflow. Please note that none of this was shot using HDRx — only normal exposures from the camera post-converted into HDR using the traditional faux-HDR method of pushing and pulling the RAW file to create bracketed images.
While HDRx is a powerful tool with a lot of benefits for shooting realistic looking extended dynamic range, I chose to steer clear of it this time in an effort to avoid the motion artifacts that come with it. Especially in light of the fact that I imagine those slight artifacts would have been particularly problematic when working with a more “surreal” method of HDR tone-mapping, as opposed to the more subdued and natural proprietary algorithm Red uses. Also, in this case, the goal was to show the added “pop” you get with HDR video when tone-mapped using a Photomatix detail compressing workflow, while trying to avoid going too far over the top and completely “cracking out” the image.
Click on the link to read more, and watch the video above.
