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Panasonic has the technology for improving dynamic range.
  • I was navigating arround some of panasonic tech, and saw this from its network cameras.

    http://panasonic.com/business/products-surveillance-monitoring/why-panasonic-mega-super-dynamic.asp

    Full suport of H.264 in stream via ethernet Dynamic range pixel by pixel 120x improvement. Full HD, even a 2048*1536 image (4:3) Its a CCD Has Face detection software Finally some interesting thing, the whole sensor board inside can move, forward and backwards, for better color reproduction, making a "moving flange rage" tech allready available.

    I know its a CCD technology but Its funny how they CAN make some dynamic rage improvements in CCD and giving us shit CMOS dynamic range on GHx series. Ok sensor sise wise and tech its a totally diferent, but achivement is possible and proved tech. I dont mind having a Black and white mega dynamic range mode in GH3, really not joking, it should be grate!!

    Well its all, share your thoughts.

  • 10 Replies sorted by
  • AFAIK the biggest issue with CCDs today is their higher power consumption. This is certainly not an issue for a non-battery operated device like a surveillance camera.

    Also, surveillance cameras are not supposed to deliver "natural" or "beautiful" pictures, so they can be optimized on other criteria, sacrificing the former.

    Last but not least: These surveillance cameras are probably not any cheaper than a GH2... so why shouldn't they include advanced components?

  • This feature when available in HDSLR will be the next revolution in digital video/cinema. There are two ways to get High Dynamic Range from the same sensor, in same frame: to use different shutter speed or to use different iso in the highlight and shadow pixels. different shutter keeps noise the same but hurts the motion giving different blur/ no blur to shadow / highlight areas. different iso keeps motion the same but gives different grain/noise in shadow / highlight areas. I think manufacturers will implement this when they start to see the selling volume going down and they need a reason to make people to replace cameras or to compete with another manufacturer. today magic lantern hdr is an average aproach, but it uses different iso in different frames and it needs motion optical interpolation to merge frames and it hurts the image on some amount and just work on some canon dslr.

  • another way to implement this feature would be an improved HTP (high light tone priority) on canon cameras and an improved idr (inteligent dynamic range) on panasonic cameras. nikon, sony, pentax, olympus also have some kind of dynamic range increase (gradation/active d-lighting/dro/etc...), (but i do not know if it works just for stills, not for video), also these features need improvement to give more fstops of DR improvement to make a real difference in video. manufacturers are working in other improvements by now, when they feel there are nothing so important to improve in available features they will start to implement new features and Video HDR is a good feature to compete and sell more cameras.

  • If you watch the flash animation ( http://www.panasonic.com/business/security/megasd_networkcameras/flashPromo/swf/swf.html ), it's basically just glorified HDR. I do think HDR is going to be the next big thing for video, though. RED is already doing it, and with rapid improvements in sensor and processor technology there's no reason why other manufacturers won't also.

  • True: RED is already doing it, and professional shooters don't use it a lot, see current discussions:

    http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?84320-SO-How-many-are-actually-using-HDRx

    As soon as we can record (not only see!) 15 stops, who cares for HDR?

  • @nomad , It is an interesting topic of discussion, since sensors are allready acheaving perceptual eye interpretation in a resolution basis, and even on dynamic range, there will be no more concerns about that in a cinematographical way, only about maybe lenses.

    Then what?

    pure storry telling, and art, the way it was ment to be.

  • It seems there is some misunderstanding here. the HDR we are talking about is just and improvement in the number of fstops the camera can see, for example improve the DR from 9 to 15 fstops. To do this the sensor needs to output two streams in different iso or different shutter speed and merge them into one video file. We cannot record 15 fstops without this feature, the dslr sensors cannot do that even if they can shoot raw video. Also the cameras that can shoot raw video (red/mb/bolex/etc...) needs lots of post processing and the file sizes are ruge... For us, low budget, the camera needs to merge the two streams realtime to the sd card to keep files small and avoid post processing. We do not need that kind of tone mapping hdr used in stills, we just need to improve the number of fstops and two streams merged in camera are the way to go.

  • Maybe HDR (high dynamic range) is not the correct words to say what we need, maybe we can talk about WDR (wide dynamic range). Wikipedia has some info about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_dynamic_range

  • this link shows a video comparison between 7D DR and Alexa DR. Remember GH2 DR is worst than 7D (as shown in Zacuto Revenge part 3 empirical test). http://nofilmschool.com/2011/01/hdslr-missing-dynamic-range/ Alexa is a better camera and also shoot raw and raw gives more DR when post processing... The two streams merged DR is the solution for the cheap cameras and low budget people to get something similar to Alexa.

  • @apefos .

    I see you like alot the dynamic range info. We could make a thread about it.