[HDR-photo] HDR as the new digital negative

[BillHughey]

I had thought to discuss the technical merits of HDR as a negative 
format over the established (?) DNG format or perhaps the motion picture 
industry standard DPX.  However that discussion gets bogged down in 
things like how many bits do you need to store a photo of angels dancing 
on the head of a pin!  Dry...

Lets say you have been doing some HDR photography today, 2007.  If you 
read the article referenced below, you might wonder what your photos 
will look like in the year 2017 when you are showing them to your grand 
kids.  If you saved then as jpegs or tiffs at todays screen ranges of 
300:1 (8bits per color channel) as most of our photos are stored today, 
they might look a little flat next to images taken with the cameras of 
2017 and displayed on screens that have a range of 10,000 : 1 or better.

Okay, so you have your HDR 'negatives' still around somewhere in your 
file system.  After finding them, you use the tone mapping programs of 
the day (2017 remember).  Tone mappers have improved greatly and the key 
idea is that now they don't have to work as hard because they are not 
scaling down to a 300:1 display anymore!  So the images that you show 
your grand kids will look even better than when you took them back in 2007.

While this may not be tops on the list of the average amateur 
photographer, think of the investment that pro photographers have in 
their art!  Preserving that investment against the future should be on 
their minds today.

So, my plug for HDR is that it represents a handy digital negative 
format.  If anyone wants to get into the bits and bytes of RGBE, 
LogLuv32Tiff, DPX, or DNG  we can.  I am initially interested if anyone 
was thinking along the lines of using it for archival storage?

Oh, and notice the fantastic color photograph taken in 1915 in the 
article below.  Gorgeous!  It also points out that color film 
photography sacrificed some tonal resolution for color over black and 
white film.  HDR can get all that back and go way beyond....  Of course 
the author also poses the question of whether a dynamic range of 300:1 
represents a 'sweat spot' in our perception of color images.  To find 
the amusing answer, read the article:->

http://www.cybergrain.com/tech/hdr/


  The Future of Digital Imaging - High Dynamic Range Photography  


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