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> I mean is it a gimmick Yes, but no. It's a gimmick because invariably it becomes over-used in some streaming TV shows as a "special effect", which breaks th

> I mean is it a gimmick Yes, but no. It's a gimmick because invariably it becomes over-used in some streaming TV shows as a "special effect", which breaks the immersion. However, it's not a gimmick as used by hundreds of millions of people. Something I noticed with the new HDR support in Adobe Lightroom is that proper HDR "simply works" by default, whereas it is actually SDR that takes a lot of manual "color grading" and general fiddling about with sliders to not look terrible. HDR is essentially more faithfully representing the light as it is in reality, whereas SDR is a combination of aggressive tone mappings to make it "fit" into a tiny gamut. I went back to look at some Nikon RAW[1] photos from as far back as 2013 and turned HDR mode on. Those photos instantly looked not just better, but more correct, as if I had spent an hour adjusting them in Lightroom! This is why Apple iPhone photos just look better (on other iDevices!). They're not using AI magic[2] to colour grade them like a Lightroom professional, they're instead leaning on the HDR mode to simply show the photos accurately, without the need to aggressively tone map them. This is why HDR photography is actually the vast majority of photography now, easily outnumbering professional photographers (and videographers). It's the path of low resistance to a good quality outcome, which makes it very attractive as a consumer image capture/display technology, especially mobile phones. The vast, vast majority of mobile phone users tap the shutter button, and will never adjust the colours, contrast, or any other image setting. It is HDR mode that enables this to "just work" and not result in photos that look like they were made with a potato. [1] Most professional photographers and serious hobbyists shoot in RAW format, which has always been a "HDR" format in all but name, typically capturing about 12 bits per channel instead of the 8 bits typical of SDR. [2] iPhones do actually use a lot of computation photography and AI magic, but the point is that for tone mapping and colour grading they need a lot less than they would have without HDR.

account42 3y ago
I agree in general - sRGB and other SDR technologies are a hack to deal with tech limits. Removing those limits instead makes lots of things easier. > Most professional photographers and serious hobbyists shoot in RAW format, which has always been a "HDR" format in all but name, typically capturing about 12 bits per channel instead of the 8 bits typical of SDR. While RAW captures do have a greater dynamic range than your typical 8-bit sRGB image, they are still fairly limited compared to lighting conditions in the real world. There are plenty of scenes you won't be able to accurately capture in a single exposure even on high end cameras. Also it's worth pointing out that using 12-bit RAW formats doesn't mean that there is 12 bits of useful information per pixel. At some point all you are doing is storing more precise noise. This is even more of a problem for phones with tiny lenses and image sensors - which is why they often take many exposures and magic them together into one image.

account42 3y ago

I agree in general - sRGB and other SDR technologies are a hack to deal with tech limits. Removing those limits instead makes lots of things easier. > Most professional photographers and serious hobbyists shoot in RAW format, which has always been a "HDR" format in all but name, typically capturing about 12 bits per channel instead of the 8 bits typical of SDR. While RAW captures do have a greater dynamic range than your typical 8-bit sRGB image, they are still fairly limited compared to lighting conditions in the real world. There are plenty of scenes you won't be able to accurately capture in a single exposure even on high end cameras. Also it's worth pointing out that using 12-bit RAW formats doesn't mean that there is 12 bits of useful information per pixel. At some point all you are doing is storing more precise noise. This is even more of a problem for phones with tiny lenses and image sensors - which is why they often take many exposures and magic them together into one image.