Multi-exposure HDR capture

Any camera that allows manual exposure control can perform multi-exposure HDR image capture, although one equipped with auto exposure bracketing (AEB) is far better suited. Images from film cameras are less suitable as they often must first be digitized, so that they can later be processed using software HDR methods.

An increase of one EV, or one stop, represents a doubling of the amount of light. Conversely, a decrease of one EV represents a halving of the amount of light. Therefore, revealing detail in the darkest of shadows requires high exposures, while preserving detail in very bright situations requires very low exposures.

In most imaging devices, the degree of exposure to light applied to the active element (be it film or CCD) can be altered in one of two ways: by either increasing/decreasing the size of the aperture or by increasing/decreasing the time of each exposure. Exposure variation in an HDR set is only done by altering the exposure time and not the aperture size; this is because altering the aperture size also affects the depth of field and so the resultant multiple images would be quite different, preventing their final combination into a single HDR image.

An important limitation for multi-exposure HDR photography is that any movement between successive images will impede or prevent success in combining them afterward. Also, as one must create several images (often three or five and sometimes more) to obtain the desired luminance range, such a full set of images takes extra time. Photographers have developed calculation methods and techniques to partially overcome these problems, but the use of a sturdy tripod is, at least, advised.

Some cameras have an auto-exposure bracketing (AEB) feature with a far greater dynamic range than others, from 0.6 at the low end to 18 EV in top professional cameras, as of 2020.[9]

Information stored in high-dynamic-range images typically corresponds to the physical values of luminance or radiance that can be observed in the real world. This is different from traditional digital images, which represent colors as they should appear on a monitor or a paper print. Therefore, HDR image formats are often called scene-referred, in contrast to traditional digital images, which are device-referred or output-referred. Furthermore, traditional images are usually encoded for the human visual system (maximizing the visual information stored in the fixed number of bits), which is usually called gamma encoding or gamma correction. The values stored for HDR images are often gamma compressed (power law) or logarithmically encoded, or floating-point linear values, since fixed-point linear encodings are increasingly inefficient over higher dynamic ranges.[10][11][12]

HDR images often don't use fixed ranges per color channel—other than traditional images—to represent many more colors over a much wider dynamic range (multiple channels). For that purpose, they do not use integer values to represent the single color channels (e.g., 0–255 in an 8 bit per pixel interval for red, green and blue) but instead use a floating point representation. Common are 16-bit (half precision) or 32-bit floating-point numbers to represent HDR pixels. However, when the appropriate transfer function is used, HDR pixels for some applications can be represented with a color depth that has as few as 10–12 bits for luminance and 8 bits for chrominance without introducing any visible quantization artifacts.[10][13]

Tone mapping reduces the dynamic range, or contrast ratio, of an entire image while retaining localized contrast. Although it is a distinct operation, tone mapping is often applied to HDR files by the same software package.

Tone mapping is often need because the dynamic range of the electronic representation that display can receive is often lower than the dynamic range of the captured image.[8] HDR displays can receive a higher dynamic range signal than SDR displays, reducing the need for tone mapping.

Several software applications are available on the PC, Mac and Linux platforms for producing HDR files and tone mapped images. Notable titles include:

As the popularity of this imaging method grows, several camera manufacturers are now offering built-in multi-exposure HDR features. For example, the Pentax K-7 DSLR has an HDR mode that take 3 or 5 shots and outputs (only) a tone mapped HDR image in a JPEG file.[14] The Canon PowerShot G12, Canon PowerShot S95, and Canon PowerShot S100 offer similar features in a smaller format.[15] Nikon's approach is called 'Active D-Lighting' which applies exposure compensation and tone mapping to the image as it comes from the sensor, with the emphasis being on creating a realistic effect.[16]

Some smartphones provide HDR modes, and most mobile platforms have apps that provide multi-exposure HDR picture taking.[17]

Some of the sensors on modern phones and cameras may even combine the two images on-chip so that a wider dynamic range without in-pixel compression is directly available to the user for display or processing.

HDR can be done via several methods:

• DOL: Digital overlap[18]
• BME: Binned multiplexed exposure[18]
• SME: Spatially multiplexed exposure[18]
• QBC: Quad Bayer Coding[19]

This is an example of four standard dynamic range images that are combined to produce three resulting tone mapped images:

Exposed images:

• 
  –4 stops
• 
  –2 stops
• 
  +2 stops
• 
  +4 stops

Results after processing:

• 
  Simple contrast reduction
• 
  Local tone mapping
• 
  Natural tone mapping

This is an example of a scene with a very wide dynamic range:

Exposed images:

• 
  –6 stops
• 
  –5 stops
• 
  –4 stops
• 
  –3 stops
• 
  –2 stops
• 
  –1 stops
• 
  00 stops
• 
  +1 stops
• 
  +2 stops
• 
  +3 stops
• 
  +4 stops
• 
  +5 stops

Results after processing:

• 
  Natural tone mapping

An 1856 photo by Gustave Le Gray

The idea of using several exposures to adequately reproduce a too-extreme range of luminance was pioneered as early as the 1850s by Gustave Le Gray to render seascapes showing both the sky and the sea. Such rendering was impossible at the time using standard methods, as the luminosity range was too extreme. Le Gray used one negative for the sky, and another one with a longer exposure for the sea, and combined the two into one picture in positive.[27]

External image
Schweitzer at the Lamp, by W. Eugene Smith[28][29]

Manual tone mapping was accomplished by dodging and burning – selectively increasing or decreasing the exposure of regions of the photograph to yield better tonality reproduction. This was effective because the dynamic range of the negative is significantly higher than would be available on the finished positive paper print when that is exposed via the negative in a uniform manner. An excellent example is the photograph Schweitzer at the Lamp by W. Eugene Smith, from his 1954 photo essay A Man of Mercy on Albert Schweitzer and his humanitarian work in French Equatorial Africa. The image took five days to reproduce the tonal range of the scene, which ranges from a bright lamp (relative to the scene) to a dark shadow.[29]

Ansel Adams elevated dodging and burning to an art form. Many of his famous prints were manipulated in the darkroom with these two methods. Adams wrote a comprehensive book on producing prints called The Print, which prominently features dodging and burning, in the context of his Zone System.

With the advent of color photography, tone mapping in the darkroom was no longer possible due to the specific timing needed during the developing process of color film. Photographers looked to film manufacturers to design new film stocks with improved response, or continued to shoot in black and white to use tone mapping methods.

Exposure/density characteristics of Wyckoff's extended exposure response film. One can note that each curve has a sigmoidal shape and follows a hyperbolic tangent, or a logistic function characterized by an induction period (initiation), a quasi-linear propagation, and a saturation plateau (asymptote).

Color film capable of directly recording high-dynamic-range images was developed by Charles Wyckoff and EG&G "in the course of a contract with the Department of the Air Force".[30] This XR film had three emulsion layers, an upper layer having an ASA speed rating of 400, a middle layer with an intermediate rating, and a lower layer with an ASA rating of 0.004. The film was processed in a manner similar to color films, and each layer produced a different color.[31] The dynamic range of this extended range film has been estimated as 1:10⁸.[32] It has been used to photograph nuclear explosions,[33] for astronomical photography,[34] for spectrographic research,[35] and for medical imaging.[36] Wyckoff's detailed pictures of nuclear explosions appeared on the cover of Life magazine in the mid-1950s.

Georges Cornuéjols and licensees of his patents (Brdi, Hymatom) introduced the principle of HDR video image, in 1986, by interposing a matricial LCD screen in front of the camera's image sensor,[37] increasing the sensors dynamic by five stops.

The concept of neighborhood tone mapping was applied to video cameras in 1988 by a group from the Technion in Israel, led by Oliver Hilsenrath and Yehoshua Y. Zeevi. Technion researchers filed for a patent on this concept in 1991,[38] and several related patents in 1992 and 1993.[39]

In February and April 1990, Georges Cornuéjols introduced the first real-time HDR camera that combined two images captured successively by a sensor[40] or simultaneously[41] by two sensors of the camera. This process is known as bracketing used for a video stream.

In 1991, the first commercial video camera was introduced that performed real-time capturing of multiple images with different exposures, and producing an HDR video image, by Hymatom, licensee of Georges Cornuéjols.

Also in 1991, Georges Cornuéjols introduced the HDR+ image principle by non-linear accumulation of images to increase the sensitivity of the camera:[40] for low-light environments, several successive images are accumulated, thus increasing the signal-to-noise ratio.

In 1993, another commercial medical camera producing an HDR video image, by the Technion.[39]

Modern HDR imaging uses a completely different approach, based on making a high-dynamic-range luminance or light map using only global image operations (across the entire image), and then tone mapping the result. Global HDR was first introduced in 1993[1] resulting in a mathematical theory of differently exposed pictures of the same subject matter that was published in 1995 by Steve Mann and Rosalind Picard.[2]

On October 28, 1998, Ben Sarao created one of the first nighttime HDR+G (high dynamic range + graphic) image of STS-95 on the launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. It consisted of four film images of the space shuttle at night that were digitally composited with additional digital graphic elements. The image was first exhibited at NASA Headquarters Great Hall, Washington DC, in 1999 and then published in Hasselblad Forum.[42]

The advent of consumer digital cameras produced a new demand for HDR imaging to improve the light response of digital camera sensors, which had a much smaller dynamic range than film. Steve Mann developed and patented the global-HDR method for producing digital images having extended dynamic range at the MIT Media Lab.[43] Mann's method involved a two-step procedure: First, generate one floating point image array by global-only image operations (operations that affect all pixels identically, without regard to their local neighborhoods). Second, convert this image array, using local neighborhood processing (tone-remapping, etc.), into an HDR image. The image array generated by the first step of Mann's process is called a lightspace image, lightspace picture, or radiance map. Another benefit of global-HDR imaging is that it provides access to the intermediate light or radiance map, which has been used for computer vision, and other image processing operations.[43]

In February 2001, the Dynamic Ranger technique was demonstrated, using multiple photos with different exposure levels to accomplish high dynamic range similar to the naked eye.[44]

In the early 2000s, several scholarly research efforts used consumer-grade sensors and cameras.[45] A few companies such as RED and Arri have been developing digital sensors capable of a higher dynamic range.[46][47] RED EPIC-X can capture time-sequential HDRx images[18] with a user-selectable 1–3 stops of additional highlight latitude in the "x" channel. The "x" channel can be merged with the normal channel in post production software. The Arri Alexa camera uses a dual-gain architecture to generate an HDR image from two exposures captured at the same time.[23]

With the advent of low-cost consumer digital cameras, many amateurs began posting tone-mapped HDR time-lapse videos on the Internet, essentially a sequence of still photographs in quick succession. In 2010, the independent studio Soviet Montage produced an example of HDR video from disparately exposed video streams using a beam splitter and consumer grade HD video cameras.[48] Similar methods have been described in the academic literature in 2001 and 2007.[49][50]

In 2005, Adobe Systems introduced several new features in Photoshop CS2 including Merge to HDR, 32 bit floating point image support, and HDR tone mapping.[51]

On June 30, 2016, Microsoft added support for the digital compositing of HDR images to Windows 10 using the Universal Windows Platform.[52]