Needed, High Dynamic Range Camera

[Susanto Widjaja]

Originally Posted by Jim Snow

You could mount two cameras in tandem with the lenses as close together as possible. Set the exposure for one camera for the outside portion of the scene that is visible through the open door. Manually track the exposure on the bride as she enters the church on the other camera. The footage from two cameras can then be aligned and composited in post. The light and dark portions would have to be masked so that only the desired part from each camera would be used, In 'real life' this is waaa-aay too much of a project to be practical for any wedding that I will be doing. It's a cute concept but there is nothing practical about it.

that is really a cute idea!

[John Wiley]

Haha if only HDR video was that easy.

You don't actually need to mask it, you could just process individual frames (pairs of frames actually, one from each camera) in photoshop using the "merge to HDR" function.

However, you'll find that the two cameras, even very slightly offset, will not give you a matching perspective. It would be like watching a 3d film without the glasses - everyone would have four eyes and two noses, no matter how well you match them together. Not to mention focus/zoom settings needing to be precisely matching. And you'd need to make the exposure changes using gain, not aperture, otherwise you'll end up with one camera having some objects within a wider DOF rendered sharper than the other camera.

[Susanto Widjaja]

For those using 5d cameras, there is a function inside the camera that can turn of hdr. This will help on backlit situation like mentioned here.

U'll get a d+ sign on the lcd whe its on. Just dont use it on normal lighting condition or u'll get unnatural looking images.