I think you can do some great things with HDR, but I think a lot of people tend to overdo HDR and I just don't like the look of extremely obvious HDR. I think pictures look the most refined when you apply HDR in a subtle manner.
I think that goes for many more artistic mediums than pictures. Almost anything is better when done subtly, rather than there in your face, so yeah, I agree :p
@@freevbucks8019 - I notice a difference with HDR. It's like SDR but with a non destructive contrast range. Colors pop more and SDR black fogginess is pushed back too. It kinda feels like the bright version of OLED for VA panels.
Having a subscription for youtube Premium im starting to ignore these kind of video's... in paying not to get commercials now you get them in the videos like this. Linus has some nice videos but I'm starting to get fed up by his sponsors.
I'm quite sure how it works. This video isn't uploaded in HDR. HDR shows up as a separate play option for the videos, it says something like '2160P HDR'. I've watched other HDR videos on YT. Do you know how HDR works?
BonkedByAScout you clearly have no idea what you're talking about and how this works. Any video can show HDR. HDR in this context, means that the shadows were brightened and the highlights were darkened. This is all. The procedure is called tone mapping.
MarioDragon Actually, due to the time it takes light to travel long distances, we could build a telescope so far away that when looking at his head, we would see the joke just as it was going over his head.
Would love to see a video about HDR in video games. this does a good job of explaining the concept in still photography, but what about digitally rendered 3d environments that you move about in? how practical is HDR in a video game?
HDR in VR gaming is absolutely insane. It really helps with immersion cos the world around you looks much more tangible, especially with an OLED screen with proper blacks, then for instance the sun glints in the corner of your peripheral vision almost making you feel like you need to squint. Awesome.
Just a little correction: dynamic range is measured in stops not f-stops. F-stops exclusively refer to the aperture of the lens. Stops however can be used for exposure (i.e. two stops overexposed) or dynamic range with there being say 15 stops of dynamic range between the darkest and brightest part of the image.
Sometimes motion can make the image look really nice. I did some HDR in 6th form and found that motion can be really nice if you are patient enough to take the same photos 100's of times to find the one you were looking for. HDR works really well in macro blakc and white which was my final photo.
I don't know why these videos are too damn good. I finished the main segment and Linus started talking about Shutterstock when my girlfriend called - I paused the video, had a chat, and once I was on the phone I resumed the video to listen to the rest of the advert. I didn't have to... I mean, I'd already learned what I needed to. But I did. ... I willingly listened to an advert. Man, this channel's crack.
HDR is basically the visual equivalent of the way radio stations compress their audio dynamic range so that everything plays at the same volume. Both techniques have practical benefits, but can ruin the fidelity of the source material when overused.
For the next as fast as possible, can you please explain what single/double precision is and floating point ops? I have a vague idea but I would really like to know what these are further.
In vfx, HDR means something different. What Linus describes in this video is the "consumer" version of HDR which is often referred to as "tone-mapping" (ie crushing everything into low-dynamic range so that you can see the details in both underexposed and overexposed areas). In the industry HDR images we use are NOT tone-mapped and stored as "linear" or "scene-referred." Meaning the pixel values recorded correlate directly to the amount of light captured (which isn't the case with everyday photos which operate in perceptual space). These HDR images may appear funny when you look at them without any conversion, but they're super useful for all kinds of applications such as compositing and staging CG lights.
What happened to your Pebble?!?! I also have a red Pebble, and a lot of people say it's silly, and literally just 2 hours ago I used the argument "Linus has one and he's awesome, therefore I'm also awesome."
May be 4+ years old but I got a new phone with HDR and at 3.27am I wanted to know what it actually was. Thanks for making this really easy to understand!.
I was actually expecting an explanation of HDR as in TV's or gaming like 4K HDR , but also made me realize that yes my iPhone when taking pictures says an HDR option to on and off toggle !
So glad i found this video I have a motorola moto e5 plus and the HDR was snapping two photos instead of one while using front camera with led flash. I thought something was wrong with my phone but I am thankful I found this video... Anyone else ever have this same issue as me and thought your phone was broke?
Nice explanation for starter photographers, and i recomend using HDR only for cold colour landscapes or just for having crazy unreal imager for your wallpaper. :3
I miss Linus without a beard. And his voice sounds higher-pitched in this video, than in his recent videos, like he went through puberty later in life.
*TL;DR:* - Notice how it's hard to take a picture of landscape AND sky both visible on a sunny day? Solution: - Your camera takes multiple photos with different brightness and blends them together: 1) Camera takes photo with lowest brightness (so the sky is actually visible, but everything else dark) 2) Camera takes another photo with normal brightness (sky partially visible, everything else partially visible) 3) Camera takes last photo with max brightness (sky completely white, everything else clear as a day) 4) Blend these photos together digitally to get both blue sky AND everything else looking sharp and clear!
Thanks for the explanation! Is there a way to do this manually with two separate photos? Additional question if you feel like it: is it possible to take pictures of a micro object without blurring with a mediocre camera?
I've always liked looking through photo books of surrealistic HDR photos. Sometimes reducing the barrier between reality and imagination is a healthy exercise.
Great explanation of HDR. It sums up what the average smartphone user needs to know in order to make informed decisions about when to turn the feature on.
Well, I do use HDR sometimes in order to get more contrast and/or color out of my pictures. But I do it on my computer where I can better manage f-stops. Also, if you don't want blurry images, usually caused by moving objects, it's better to take only one shot (also good for the storage, if you don't have much) and multiply it by 3 or 4 or as many different exposures you want, on your computer, then post process them to get the desired result. This way, since you're basically working with a single shot, and assuming the initial shot was good one, you've got no chance to get blurry pictures caused by overlapping different stages of moving objects.
HDR is great on a phone like the Galaxy S5 since you can preview it live instead of after taking the picture. It makes it easier to take pictures of people outside with bright sunlight without having to worry as much that their face will be too dark.
Daniel Copeland Yup, that's why it can be turned off. That's the compromise, but usually HDR is for pictures of still objects. If you plan on fast moving stuff, you better also plan you lighting and camera location.
I've been using HDR for photos. It's not so much the expanded dynamic range that gets me; in fact, it's the tone map features available in HDR programs. You can create very stylized accents, and create your own style. I look at vivid, grungy, and/or overly detailed images as a great basis for art, while I think that for photography is quite overwhelming.
I'm a hobbyist photographer, so take what I say as such; I'm no pro. But in general I like HDR technology. There are times when it's handy, and times when it's not. I think learning to use it in appropriate situations is perfectly fine. And while it may make some images look surreal, I don't think that's necessarily always a terrible thing. I think Linus hit all the points about how HDR works, problems with using it, and situations it is better for.
I was kinda annoyed when it said 'as fast as possible', but by the end of the 4 minutes (I'm excluding the end spruik) I was happy. You really did explain the whole of it well, including the nuances of it - things that might usually left out (to the loss of the viewer). My trust in committing attention to you talking has increased dramatically. Thank you for isolating the advert to the end of the video, because I don't want to watch it :) Cheers.
HDR looks to me like a panel with brightness and contrast cranked up a bit. Like we suddenly just discovered brighter colors on monitors! Monitors were just in a stagnent market and they needed something to market. I can't believe how much all of the tech RUclipsrs bought into it.
I personally love HDR from a personal art standpoint, however I understand the arguments against it. I love that surrealism you can achieve, but I am also the kind of photographer who loves tilt-shift.
You can somewhat cheat the hdr system but results may vary.. what I mean is the lazy method. if you don’t want to carry around tripod all the time. What I do is in Lightroom you can choose a picture that you want to apply hdr to and create multiple virtual copies of that picture and under exposing it by going down two f-stops and over exposing by going up two f-stops on the other virtual copy. After that you can take those pictures to an hdr software of your liking.. works pretty good for the most part but like I said results vary and is a pseudo method.
I came across this while Googling what HDR meant after noticed it for the first time on an iPad that's in my home. I wasn't to sure what it did when I took a picture of my Shih Tzu with it (who is black, and on a black couch). Normally the pictures don't seem as interesting as this one was, but I wasn't to sure what it exactly did...but after watching this video of what it is. I have a better understanding of it now. I'm thinking of taking it out and seeing what I could get with the iPad (its the only product I currently own that has this option, lol). I haven't taken pictures around my neighborhood in quite awhile, and the neighborhood has changed a bit since the last time I did that...could checkout some new and old places get some pictures for memories. But I am liking the idea of how it can make an "unrealistic" look to an image, I've seen how some images looked and I've thought they were pretty cool that I'm assuming were done like this. Maybe I could get some cool ones I could use for coverart or things I put up on my website.
i like to use HDR not to make hyper-realistic photos but to use its affects on the light and other settings to get photos to look a different way usually like two settings disagreeing and changing the photo dramatically.
Gone are the days of muddy mid-tones and eye-watering halos, HDR has undergone something of a Renaissance. The results are so natural they're not even noticeable
i use HDR on my phone all the time, ive never had a problem, my phone isnt the best in low light so this helps, also the flash makes things look horrible
Living in 2022 where HDR monitor is common, even more common in smartphones, I thought Linus was going to talk about 10-bit HDR video, as supposed to 8-biy SDR. Apparently it's HDR in general which was based on photography uses. I often use HDR technique lately with my mirrorless camera even though sometimes it's not necessary, just to learn the hoops and loops of it, and of course seeing how it would look like more true to life. I can fairly make them look real but what I found is I rarely going hard on the shadows of the bracketed image (the blended 3 or 5 differently exposed images) because the contrasting edges on the shadows would look weird and in the end "surreal". That's what I don't like with photos taken with iPhones these days, yes they look "nice" because the HDR is on by default, but the postprocessing got hard on the shadows.
Simple. Take a Picture from a tripod that is Metered to your liking (Metering 0 or 0.3 -0.3 whatever)(Have your moving subject in frame. The only photo with your moving subject). Now go down a stop and take a picture (No Subject). Continue going down 1 stop and take pictures. When you are happy doing it 3 to X number of times go back to your original Metering (The 0 or 0.3, -0.3). Now go up a stop and continue taking pictures. If you did it 3 stops down and 3 stops up you have a total of 7 images (1 Original, 3 over, 3 under). Now Head into Lightroom and then Photoshop. Take the 3 over and 3 under exposed images and make your HDR. now add a layer and add your subject. Play with the colors and get it to the way you like. Clean the images. and your done. I do this all the time (If I have the time to setup) to get detail in my blacks and bring my whites back. I like the natural look.
Techquickie Wow I am actually impressed and rescind my previous snide statement. I should never have questioned the almighty Linus, who has now taught me two things in one video!
Here’s hdr for dummies (the only thing you need to know about is iso also I’m about to explain very basic hdr but it can get more advanced than just 3 pictures) hdr is picture of a low iso, normal mid range iso, and high iso and blend the highest details of those images together and cut out the under and overexposed areas
But what I dont get is that when you have low f-stops you get those very white backgrounds when there is a lot of light. Doesn't having less stops mean that you have a lower limit of the light level difference between the dark and light spots, thus the contrast between those 2 would have to be lower, so how does it make sense that these spots are so crazy light, instead of capped more neutral?
Im a Photographer and HDR is actually pretty unnecessary with the screens that are viewing the images that I output, so most of the time ill just end up under exposing by 1 or 2 stops and using the detail of the low ISO Raw image of my D7100 to push the shadows, revealing detail but not removing too much contrast.
I was playing a game with a lot of vibrant colors and shadows, but was feeling like my eyes couldn’t focus properly and was having trouble playing and seeing things. Turned hdr off and omg, that is so much better, that lead me here to know wth I was turming off and it all makes sense now
Has a similar effect though. You will find that when you turn HDR on when it is night time, it makes objects easier to pick out in the dark. So I guess a similar principle. Not sure if that is 100% correct but certainly what I take from it.
It probably just means that it has a similar effect, though through different means. Just that it would bring out the darks and lights better, but I doubt it produces the same image multiple times to get that, it would be too big a hit to anyone's FPS.
HDR in a game is the same theory, though a different application. As with a game, the game camera doesn't take an "image" of the world, the game knows a lot more about the scene than what the player see's. Because of this, it means that the scene lighting can be changed appropriately. So, in a game like DayZ, it uses a piece of software, normally a pixel shader to determine what the scene should look like. If a particular area of the scene appears to be too dark, then the colour range will be shifted to give more colour detail to the scene. This is to give more contrast. so for example, if we rate black colours from 0 to 255, if all of the base colours of objects are between 0 and 32, that will be quite hard to make out objects, as that is a pretty dark scene. This colour range can then essentially be stretched, so that those 32 colours get shifted into a 0 to 96 range for example, to give a greater contrast. The same applies for light scenes in reverse. This technique is also sometimes referred to as pupil dilation, as it will give the impression of the players eyes adjusting to the lighting. Dark places, you start to see better in the dark, then when you go into the light, it is extremely bright, however if you have been in the light, the shadows appear darker to the player, until you are in them. In games, it is not about taking multiple snapshots of the scene, as all of that information is already present and can be calculated. The result of the images produced in games only have a limited amount of data, however as you know information about every specific pixel / vertex on screen in a game, you can essentially do whatever you need with this data, and will allow you to locate / pick-out different objects, even if their colours are exactly the same. Something which is not possible with a camera, or even with your eye for that matter.
I take pictures around the campus I work at for reports that my office produces. I often times use my Samsung NV11 to shoot 3 different exposures (Built in HDR mode sorta) and combine them in Photoshop. I live in a desert and the sun is very bright. It washes out a normal photo, anything not captured in HDR looks like garbage.
I tried taking a photo in a room with bright LED lighting using HDR and it came out really washed out. That room does not have any bright or flourescent colors either. I just was not aware that HDR would have an opposite effect in that lighting. I know HDR can produce stunning images.
This isn't actual HDR, this is so-called "tone mapping" to squish a HDR image into a standard range while still preserving detail. No wonder it looks surreal. Cameras capture light and write the values into a file, and monitors then read the file and try to reproduce the light as precisely as possible. It would make sense to use an unbounded number for this purpose (there is an absolute black, but not an absolute white in real life), but most cameras clamp it into an interval of [0,1] and encode it in either 8 or 10 bits of precision. I don't know exactly why they do this, but my guess is that it has something to do with the sensors not being able to provide much resolution when they're exposed so much. The point is, they give you information about the light intensity in a certain range, and just return 0 or 1 when it's beyond that range. The "HDR" Linus is talking about is just artificially shifting the extremes down to the midtones, which totally ruins the realism. It's not high dynamic range, just detail preservation. You could just squish the HDR range linearly, but that would make it really dim, and despite our eyes' impressive adapatation abilities, the detail just won't be visible due to that (unless you have an ideal monitor set to a massive brightness). You *can* make a true HDR image by fusing exposures, and it's actually the standard way of doing it. You just don't "borrow the dark details from the bright image and the bright details from the dark image", you use a *completely different image format* to encode it. Radiance RGBE and OpenEXR are common ones. They encode the true light intensity without any ugly shifting, they take the bright details from the dark image and *shift it into the brighter range*, not just overlay it over the midtones like an idiot. However, these images can't be directly displayed on most monitors. An ideal monitor should take in an array of RGB brightnesses and output anything from 0 to infinity. Obviously, we can't have infinite brightness in real life, this is HDR, not IDR. LCD monitors have a problem with the blacks, becuase they use light-blocking pixels in front of a backlight, which can't block all light completely. They generally look ok in bright scenes because the sheer contrast makes it look black to our eyes, but you can definitely notice when watching a space scene or something. A few solutions to this could be local backlight dimming and ultra-bright OLED displays where pixels emit their own light (both hard to make). The monitor also needs a massive bit-depth to sample the huge range adequately. So in order to display it on a regular LCD potato monitor, you either simulate what a camera does and pick a range and clamp it to that (which kinda defeats the purpose of using HDR), or use a tone mapping operator (TRO) to squish it down and retain some of the detail. The challenge here is making a TRO that doesn't look like crap. Anyway, enough rambling, I just wanted to say that there's more to HDR than merging 3 images like that.
I think cameras just have to get faster for making HDR shots with slight movements in them. if you can take all 3 images in a fraction of a second, the motion doesn't affect the picture as much. Smartphones just need to get faster at shooting photos. They should overclock their CPU when you turn on HDR inside your camera app and then shoot photos faster.
With the way camera technology works, you can't just "shoot photos faster" the way you imply. You should perhaps read up a little on how photography works. It's about gathering light, so just bumping the CPU speed won't really make a difference. See, in order for the camera to snap a photo it needs to use a shutter mechanism, during this period the sensor gathers light. Basically, like your eye, the sensor reads what it can see through the lens. On your average DSLR, the time this light-gathering process goes on for anywhere between 30 seconds and 1/4000th of a second (0.25 ms). Higher end cameras can go down to 1/8000th of a second (0.125 ms). Usually your camera sets this automatically in the default mode, but if your app/phone/camera supports manual adjustment, this can be manipulated for creative effect. Now why don't you just set it all the way to the fastest setting? Under the right conditions, sure you could. But even just a fraction of a millisecond is enough for the slightest bit of motion to be noticeable, depending on how closely you look. with 3 images at just 1/8000th a second "shutter speed", that still is a 0.375ms time frame in which motion can be captured, equivalent to about 1/2667th of a second shutter speed for a single image. This should be enough to eliminate any motion (1/1000th is usually considered minimum for sports and vehicle-photography) but in extreme cases might be "just enough". The total time for 1/4000th of a second per shot is 1/1334th of a second or 0.75ms. The next problem is getting the proper exposure. Faster shutter speed means less light (= darker image), so there needs to be enough ambient light or you need a powerful enough flash. Luckily, we have two more variable that we can control; Aperture and ISO. In short, aperture is the size of the hole inside the lens, opening this up to the widest setting means more light (but will make the focus shallower on cameras with bigger sensors) and ISO is the sensor "gain". Increasing ISO will ultimately increase the brightness, however this will introduce a -lot- of unwanted noise depending on how much. Mostly it becomes a matter of noise vs speed when you're up in these high shutter speeds.
2:02 *Au'to-magically* hahah, is that a reference to Biz Markee in the Tune Up commerical with Andy Milonakis? i catch some of those *suuper* nerdy references sometimes and Linus, if you ever read this, just know that theyre appreciated 💙
I think you can do some great things with HDR, but I think a lot of people tend to overdo HDR and I just don't like the look of extremely obvious HDR. I think pictures look the most refined when you apply HDR in a subtle manner.
I think that goes for many more artistic mediums than pictures. Almost anything is better when done subtly, rather than there in your face, so yeah, I agree :p
pure HDR is suspiciously close to SDR
@@freevbucks8019 - I notice a difference with HDR. It's like SDR but with a non destructive contrast range. Colors pop more and SDR black fogginess is pushed back too. It kinda feels like the bright version of OLED for VA panels.
As always, whenever Linus says "speaking of" that means that you can stop the video.
Having a subscription for youtube Premium im starting to ignore these kind of video's... in paying not to get commercials now you get them in the videos like this. Linus has some nice videos but I'm starting to get fed up by his sponsors.
@@sygys bruh you just responded to a 5 year old comment.
@@pegasus_2137 ikr
Insomniac Millennial hello
I can't believe 5 years went by since I left this comment.
Did he just say 'automagically'? Awesome
😂😂
Considering that it's a real word, I'd say yes, he did say it.
@@MacDaddyDev hello im from the future
Walid Fakhfakh 😂
@@walidfakhfakh3660 lol
Thanks for the free HDR Wallpaper linus at 4:49. I took a printscreen and removed the logo from techquickie. I appreciate our work.
The video isn't uploaded in HDR.
@BonkedByAScout I'm not sure you understand how this works...
LOL He deffinetelly doesnt understand how HDR works :D
I'm quite sure how it works. This video isn't uploaded in HDR. HDR shows up as a separate play option for the videos, it says something like '2160P HDR'. I've watched other HDR videos on YT. Do you know how HDR works?
BonkedByAScout you clearly have no idea what you're talking about and how this works.
Any video can show HDR.
HDR in this context, means that the shadows were brightened and the highlights were darkened. This is all. The procedure is called tone mapping.
250 DOLLARS A MONTH?! Ehhhh, Google is still fine
Samantha03 NASA couldn't invent a telescope that could see how far my joke went over your head
MarioDragon Actually, due to the time it takes light to travel long distances, we could build a telescope so far away that when looking at his head, we would see the joke just as it was going over his head.
Samantha03 don't worry, you already gave TWO fucks
***** No we couldn't unless you can travel faster than light which is impossible. And you couldnt see it from that far with NASA's telescope anyway.
FINDarkside If we were already far back enough, we could.
Would love to see a video about HDR in video games. this does a good job of explaining the concept in still photography, but what about digitally rendered 3d environments that you move about in? how practical is HDR in a video game?
HDR in VR gaming is absolutely insane. It really helps with immersion cos the world around you looks much more tangible, especially with an OLED screen with proper blacks, then for instance the sun glints in the corner of your peripheral vision almost making you feel like you need to squint. Awesome.
@@shenmeowzo 7 years late, but I agree
Just a little correction: dynamic range is measured in stops not f-stops. F-stops exclusively refer to the aperture of the lens. Stops however can be used for exposure (i.e. two stops overexposed) or dynamic range with there being say 15 stops of dynamic range between the darkest and brightest part of the image.
THAT WAS A GOOD ADVERTISING SEGWAY!
One of few good ones lols.
I loved the "how to basic" one for the shave products
Linus needs to do a "how to do a good sponsored segway as fast as possible
*****
Actually, Follows * according to Translate. :D
***** What if he's just segueing into a Segway ad?
Sometimes motion can make the image look really nice. I did some HDR in 6th form and found that motion can be really nice if you are patient enough to take the same photos 100's of times to find the one you were looking for. HDR works really well in macro blakc and white which was my final photo.
2:02 "audomagically"
Yes, Mistakes happen.
I don't know why these videos are too damn good. I finished the main segment and Linus started talking about Shutterstock when my girlfriend called - I paused the video, had a chat, and once I was on the phone I resumed the video to listen to the rest of the advert. I didn't have to... I mean, I'd already learned what I needed to. But I did.
... I willingly listened to an advert. Man, this channel's crack.
Man this guy's great, he should start his own company
LOL I thought HDR meant High Definition Resolution xD, well thanks for the lesson Linus =D
HDR is basically the visual equivalent of the way radio stations compress their audio dynamic range so that everything plays at the same volume. Both techniques have practical benefits, but can ruin the fidelity of the source material when overused.
Well put... its "garbage out" without the garbage in...
no?
"Hit that dislike button at least twice"
XDDDD
I hit it only once, sorry, twice just takes you back to nothing
Andres Hernandez no fucking shit
atleast twice ,right. i will press it 3 times then
XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
If you hit it fast enought it will be counted as Dislike lol
For the next as fast as possible, can you please explain what single/double precision is and floating point ops? I have a vague idea but I would really like to know what these are further.
LTT has come so far! I'm so happy to have found this old but still (mostly) relevant video. Kudos guys, crushing it for more than a decade isn't easy.
+Techquickie Crazy how far this has come, especially with the current state of 4K on various devices including Smartphones.
In vfx, HDR means something different. What Linus describes in this video is the "consumer" version of HDR which is often referred to as "tone-mapping" (ie crushing everything into low-dynamic range so that you can see the details in both underexposed and overexposed areas).
In the industry HDR images we use are NOT tone-mapped and stored as "linear" or "scene-referred." Meaning the pixel values recorded correlate directly to the amount of light captured (which isn't the case with everyday photos which operate in perceptual space). These HDR images may appear funny when you look at them without any conversion, but they're super useful for all kinds of applications such as compositing and staging CG lights.
Linus literally has a video for every single topic
Whats the Goal with TVs?
do people want to recreate real life?
or make TV look better than real life
or you see blacks greater than oled lol
What happened to your Pebble?!?! I also have a red Pebble, and a lot of people say it's silly, and literally just 2 hours ago I used the argument "Linus has one and he's awesome, therefore I'm also awesome."
I switch to whatever I'm reviewing at any given time.
May be 4+ years old but I got a new phone with HDR and at 3.27am I wanted to know what it actually was. Thanks for making this really easy to understand!.
I would love to see 8bit dithering HDR vs 10 bit native HDR comparison
I was actually expecting an explanation of HDR as in TV's or gaming like 4K HDR , but also made me realize that yes my iPhone when taking pictures says an HDR option to on and off toggle !
HDR is extremely useful for taking pics of my DIY projects!
Oh and, finally a useful sponsor!
This one is quite informative particularly. It makes a lot of concepts regarding HDR clearer that previous explanations didn't for me.
So glad i found this video I have a motorola moto e5 plus and the HDR was snapping two photos instead of one while using front camera with led flash. I thought something was wrong with my phone but I am thankful I found this video... Anyone else ever have this same issue as me and thought your phone was broke?
Nice explanation for starter photographers, and i recomend using HDR only for cold colour landscapes or just for having crazy unreal imager for your wallpaper. :3
I miss Linus without a beard.
And his voice sounds higher-pitched in this video, than in his recent videos, like he went through puberty later in life.
*TL;DR:*
- Notice how it's hard to take a picture of landscape AND sky both visible on a sunny day? Solution:
- Your camera takes multiple photos with different brightness and blends them together:
1) Camera takes photo with lowest brightness (so the sky is actually visible, but everything else dark)
2) Camera takes another photo with normal brightness (sky partially visible, everything else partially visible)
3) Camera takes last photo with max brightness (sky completely white, everything else clear as a day)
4) Blend these photos together digitally to get both blue sky AND everything else looking sharp and clear!
Thanks for the explanation! Is there a way to do this manually with two separate photos?
Additional question if you feel like it: is it possible to take pictures of a micro object without blurring with a mediocre camera?
HAHAHA hit the dislike button twice, I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE
how has no other youtuber said this!?
haha i will like your comment button thrice...
Bishu15 Death I liked your comment Frice...(five times)
It actually disliked when I did that
i dislike then like and dislike again.
I've always liked looking through photo books of surrealistic HDR photos. Sometimes reducing the barrier between reality and imagination is a healthy exercise.
Great explanation of HDR. It sums up what the average smartphone user needs to know in order to make informed decisions about when to turn the feature on.
So basically this is what we needed in the moon landing to be able to see the stars in the back ground ;D
It would probably help if they didn't film it on a set too lol
Well, I do use HDR sometimes in order to get more contrast and/or color out of my pictures. But I do it on my computer where I can better manage f-stops. Also, if you don't want blurry images, usually caused by moving objects, it's better to take only one shot (also good for the storage, if you don't have much) and multiply it by 3 or 4 or as many different exposures you want, on your computer, then post process them to get the desired result. This way, since you're basically working with a single shot, and assuming the initial shot was good one, you've got no chance to get blurry pictures caused by overlapping different stages of moving objects.
watched you a few times on purchase advice. glad i found you! subbed :D
HDR is great on a phone like the Galaxy S5 since you can preview it live instead of after taking the picture. It makes it easier to take pictures of people outside with bright sunlight without having to worry as much that their face will be too dark.
But it also explains why a bunch of my pictures of moving objects came out so horrible and weird.
Daniel Copeland Yup, that's why it can be turned off. That's the compromise, but usually HDR is for pictures of still objects. If you plan on fast moving stuff, you better also plan you lighting and camera location.
I've been using HDR for photos. It's not so much the expanded dynamic range that gets me; in fact, it's the tone map features available in HDR programs. You can create very stylized accents, and create your own style. I look at vivid, grungy, and/or overly detailed images as a great basis for art, while I think that for photography is quite overwhelming.
I'm a hobbyist photographer, so take what I say as such; I'm no pro.
But in general I like HDR technology. There are times when it's handy, and times when it's not. I think learning to use it in appropriate situations is perfectly fine. And while it may make some images look surreal, I don't think that's necessarily always a terrible thing.
I think Linus hit all the points about how HDR works, problems with using it, and situations it is better for.
Umm, that’s Linus...
I think the un-natural look that HDR rings is so beautiful, I mean, It's just so good!
watching this videos on an HDR monitor today shows how FUCKED the old color management was during 2014 techquickie editing.
The best explanation for HDR I have ever come to see
Thanks for the video,can't believe that after all these years i stiil didn't looked up what HDR was.
I was kinda annoyed when it said 'as fast as possible', but by the end of the 4 minutes (I'm excluding the end spruik) I was happy. You really did explain the whole of it well, including the nuances of it - things that might usually left out (to the loss of the viewer). My trust in committing attention to you talking has increased dramatically. Thank you for isolating the advert to the end of the video, because I don't want to watch it :) Cheers.
HDR looks to me like a panel with brightness and contrast cranked up a bit. Like we suddenly just discovered brighter colors on monitors! Monitors were just in a stagnent market and they needed something to market. I can't believe how much all of the tech RUclipsrs bought into it.
I personally love HDR from a personal art standpoint, however I understand the arguments against it. I love that surrealism you can achieve, but I am also the kind of photographer who loves tilt-shift.
You can somewhat cheat the hdr system but results may vary.. what I mean is the lazy method. if you don’t want to carry around tripod all the time. What I do is in Lightroom you can choose a picture that you want to apply hdr to and create multiple virtual copies of that picture and under exposing it by going down two f-stops and over exposing by going up two f-stops on the other virtual copy. After that you can take those pictures to an hdr software of your liking.. works pretty good for the most part but like I said results vary and is a pseudo method.
i didint expect linus when in here
You guys should do a Fast As Possible on Hardware Acceleration. I always see that on browser settings but I have no clue on what it actually means.
I just learned how to do hdr.. I am hooked! Thanks for your video!
I came across this while Googling what HDR meant after noticed it for the first time on an iPad that's in my home.
I wasn't to sure what it did when I took a picture of my Shih Tzu with it (who is black, and on a black couch).
Normally the pictures don't seem as interesting as this one was, but I wasn't to sure what it exactly did...but after watching this video of what it is. I have a better understanding of it now.
I'm thinking of taking it out and seeing what I could get with the iPad (its the only product I currently own that has this option, lol).
I haven't taken pictures around my neighborhood in quite awhile, and the neighborhood has changed a bit since the last time I did that...could checkout some new and old places get some pictures for memories.
But I am liking the idea of how it can make an "unrealistic" look to an image, I've seen how some images looked and I've thought they were pretty cool that I'm assuming were done like this.
Maybe I could get some cool ones I could use for coverart or things I put up on my website.
+Chaz PsyKoticz All cameras can do HDR.
I just discovered the HDR button on my phone. Did a search to find out more about it and found this video.
i like to use HDR not to make hyper-realistic photos but to use its affects on the light and other settings to get photos to look a different way usually like two settings disagreeing and changing the photo dramatically.
hahah! 'au'd'o-magically' dude its so good *every time!*
Paul Meranda heyyy 2019
.....indeed, friend.
"hit the dislike button at leat twice" lmao
lol it's a trap
Lol, loved this
I did it on my phone and the video got 1 dislike!
Gone are the days of muddy mid-tones and eye-watering halos, HDR has undergone something of a Renaissance. The results are so natural they're not even noticeable
i use HDR on my phone all the time, ive never had a problem, my phone isnt the best in low light so this helps, also the flash makes things look horrible
a segway that actually connects well. Great video too! :D
FINALLY . . . I wondered what those (HDR) options were for Oblivion and Skyrim.
alot of us use HDR via a later on added effect for creating a somewhat color correction for images, but that is more to the "art" part of HDR
Thanks…this helped me understand the HDR on my new iPhone. I loved how you presented this, too!
Just a suggestion. But would Brandon or Edzel be interested in doing Camera topics as fast as possible? That would be interesting.
Thanks for the video,HDR looks like the colors have been washed off ill stick to the dynamic mode
20 seconds into the video and I already paused because I know I'll need snacks for this one
No royalties? Thats pretty sweet as long as you can use a decent amount of images in that one month subscription.
You just won a subscriber, what a nice way to explain all this weird things
Living in 2022 where HDR monitor is common, even more common in smartphones, I thought Linus was going to talk about 10-bit HDR video, as supposed to 8-biy SDR. Apparently it's HDR in general which was based on photography uses.
I often use HDR technique lately with my mirrorless camera even though sometimes it's not necessary, just to learn the hoops and loops of it, and of course seeing how it would look like more true to life. I can fairly make them look real but what I found is I rarely going hard on the shadows of the bracketed image (the blended 3 or 5 differently exposed images) because the contrasting edges on the shadows would look weird and in the end "surreal". That's what I don't like with photos taken with iPhones these days, yes they look "nice" because the HDR is on by default, but the postprocessing got hard on the shadows.
Simple. Take a Picture from a tripod that is Metered to your liking (Metering 0 or 0.3 -0.3 whatever)(Have your moving subject in frame. The only photo with your moving subject). Now go down a stop and take a picture (No Subject). Continue going down 1 stop and take pictures. When you are happy doing it 3 to X number of times go back to your original Metering (The 0 or 0.3, -0.3). Now go up a stop and continue taking pictures. If you did it 3 stops down and 3 stops up you have a total of 7 images (1 Original, 3 over, 3 under). Now Head into Lightroom and then Photoshop. Take the 3 over and 3 under exposed images and make your HDR. now add a layer and add your subject. Play with the colors and get it to the way you like. Clean the images. and your done. I do this all the time (If I have the time to setup) to get detail in my blacks and bring my whites back. I like the natural look.
You mean “Hit the subscribe button atleast twice” LOL
Thank you for this video. I have HDR on my iPhone 5s. But I never got round to googling it!!
thank you for this awesome video !
absolutely love your videos. very imformative
0:33 "rated at 6 f-stops" (holds up 3 fingers) okay Linus...
That's six in American sign language. Bam.
Techquickie Wow I am actually impressed and rescind my previous snide statement. I should never have questioned the almighty Linus, who has now taught me two things in one video!
Liked for that hilarious "hit the dislike twice for every moment that bored you" comment... Gold!
Here’s hdr for dummies (the only thing you need to know about is iso also I’m about to explain very basic hdr but it can get more advanced than just 3 pictures) hdr is picture of a low iso, normal mid range iso, and high iso and blend the highest details of those images together and cut out the under and overexposed areas
Love your videos man. Thanks for this!
But what I dont get is that when you have low f-stops you get those very white backgrounds when there is a lot of light. Doesn't having less stops mean that you have a lower limit of the light level difference between the dark and light spots, thus the contrast between those 2 would have to be lower, so how does it make sense that these spots are so crazy light, instead of capped more neutral?
I needed to know all of this. Explains a lot of blurry images I've taken.
Im a Photographer and HDR is actually pretty unnecessary with the screens that are viewing the images that I output, so most of the time ill just end up under exposing by 1 or 2 stops and using the detail of the low ISO Raw image of my D7100 to push the shadows, revealing detail but not removing too much contrast.
I was playing a game with a lot of vibrant colors and shadows, but was feeling like my eyes couldn’t focus properly and was having trouble playing and seeing things. Turned hdr off and omg, that is so much better, that lead me here to know wth I was turming off and it all makes sense now
leaves blowing in the wind action was awsome
----leavessss blowing in the windddd----
So how does this work in DayZ? :)
HDR in games is a different beast.
Has a similar effect though. You will find that when you turn HDR on when it is night time, it makes objects easier to pick out in the dark. So I guess a similar principle. Not sure if that is 100% correct but certainly what I take from it.
It probably just means that it has a similar effect, though through different means. Just that it would bring out the darks and lights better, but I doubt it produces the same image multiple times to get that, it would be too big a hit to anyone's FPS.
iVulgarThrust Yup, that's what I thought.
HDR in a game is the same theory, though a different application. As with a game, the game camera doesn't take an "image" of the world, the game knows a lot more about the scene than what the player see's. Because of this, it means that the scene lighting can be changed appropriately.
So, in a game like DayZ, it uses a piece of software, normally a pixel shader to determine what the scene should look like. If a particular area of the scene appears to be too dark, then the colour range will be shifted to give more colour detail to the scene. This is to give more contrast. so for example, if we rate black colours from 0 to 255, if all of the base colours of objects are between 0 and 32, that will be quite hard to make out objects, as that is a pretty dark scene. This colour range can then essentially be stretched, so that those 32 colours get shifted into a 0 to 96 range for example, to give a greater contrast.
The same applies for light scenes in reverse. This technique is also sometimes referred to as pupil dilation, as it will give the impression of the players eyes adjusting to the lighting. Dark places, you start to see better in the dark, then when you go into the light, it is extremely bright, however if you have been in the light, the shadows appear darker to the player, until you are in them.
In games, it is not about taking multiple snapshots of the scene, as all of that information is already present and can be calculated. The result of the images produced in games only have a limited amount of data, however as you know information about every specific pixel / vertex on screen in a game, you can essentially do whatever you need with this data, and will allow you to locate / pick-out different objects, even if their colours are exactly the same. Something which is not possible with a camera, or even with your eye for that matter.
Thank you to the authors of the report on human development. So put your goals in life, one photo.
Hrm. I never knew what the HDR option meant on my iPhone. This is helpful.
I take pictures around the campus I work at for reports that my office produces. I often times use my Samsung NV11 to shoot 3 different exposures (Built in HDR mode sorta) and combine them in Photoshop. I live in a desert and the sun is very bright. It washes out a normal photo, anything not captured in HDR looks like garbage.
I need more of these
I tried taking a photo in a room with bright LED lighting using HDR and it came out really washed out. That room does not have any bright or flourescent colors either. I just was not aware that HDR would have an opposite effect in that lighting. I know HDR can produce stunning images.
why is this on my feed 7 years later?
this is a great video. thank you. you make some solid videos!
f-stops are a measurement of aperture not dynamic range. dynamic range is just measured in stops
905 VISUALS rekt
Technically it can be measured in f stops as DR is the difference between the highest and the lowest
This isn't actual HDR, this is so-called "tone mapping" to squish a HDR image into a standard range while still preserving detail. No wonder it looks surreal.
Cameras capture light and write the values into a file, and monitors then read the file and try to reproduce the light as precisely as possible. It would make sense to use an unbounded number for this purpose (there is an absolute black, but not an absolute white in real life), but most cameras clamp it into an interval of [0,1] and encode it in either 8 or 10 bits of precision. I don't know exactly why they do this, but my guess is that it has something to do with the sensors not being able to provide much resolution when they're exposed so much. The point is, they give you information about the light intensity in a certain range, and just return 0 or 1 when it's beyond that range.
The "HDR" Linus is talking about is just artificially shifting the extremes down to the midtones, which totally ruins the realism. It's not high dynamic range, just detail preservation. You could just squish the HDR range linearly, but that would make it really dim, and despite our eyes' impressive adapatation abilities, the detail just won't be visible due to that (unless you have an ideal monitor set to a massive brightness).
You *can* make a true HDR image by fusing exposures, and it's actually the standard way of doing it. You just don't "borrow the dark details from the bright image and the bright details from the dark image", you use a *completely different image format* to encode it. Radiance RGBE and OpenEXR are common ones. They encode the true light intensity without any ugly shifting, they take the bright details from the dark image and *shift it into the brighter range*, not just overlay it over the midtones like an idiot. However, these images can't be directly displayed on most monitors.
An ideal monitor should take in an array of RGB brightnesses and output anything from 0 to infinity. Obviously, we can't have infinite brightness in real life, this is HDR, not IDR.
LCD monitors have a problem with the blacks, becuase they use light-blocking pixels in front of a backlight, which can't block all light completely. They generally look ok in bright scenes because the sheer contrast makes it look black to our eyes, but you can definitely notice when watching a space scene or something. A few solutions to this could be local backlight dimming and ultra-bright OLED displays where pixels emit their own light (both hard to make). The monitor also needs a massive bit-depth to sample the huge range adequately.
So in order to display it on a regular LCD potato monitor, you either simulate what a camera does and pick a range and clamp it to that (which kinda defeats the purpose of using HDR), or use a tone mapping operator (TRO) to squish it down and retain some of the detail. The challenge here is making a TRO that doesn't look like crap.
Anyway, enough rambling, I just wanted to say that there's more to HDR than merging 3 images like that.
1:03 always smart to end explaining current technology with “today”
Excellent presentation, Techquickie: Informative, entertaining and speedy. ¡Thanks!
then why we need HDR display to view HDR content? isnt it just some software refined image?
I think cameras just have to get faster for making HDR shots with slight movements in them. if you can take all 3 images in a fraction of a second, the motion doesn't affect the picture as much.
Smartphones just need to get faster at shooting photos. They should overclock their CPU when you turn on HDR inside your camera app and then shoot photos faster.
With the way camera technology works, you can't just "shoot photos faster" the way you imply. You should perhaps read up a little on how photography works. It's about gathering light, so just bumping the CPU speed won't really make a difference.
See, in order for the camera to snap a photo it needs to use a shutter mechanism, during this period the sensor gathers light. Basically, like your eye, the sensor reads what it can see through the lens.
On your average DSLR, the time this light-gathering process goes on for anywhere between 30 seconds and 1/4000th of a second (0.25 ms). Higher end cameras can go down to 1/8000th of a second (0.125 ms). Usually your camera sets this automatically in the default mode, but if your app/phone/camera supports manual adjustment, this can be manipulated for creative effect.
Now why don't you just set it all the way to the fastest setting? Under the right conditions, sure you could. But even just a fraction of a millisecond is enough for the slightest bit of motion to be noticeable, depending on how closely you look. with 3 images at just 1/8000th a second "shutter speed", that still is a 0.375ms time frame in which motion can be captured, equivalent to about 1/2667th of a second shutter speed for a single image. This should be enough to eliminate any motion (1/1000th is usually considered minimum for sports and vehicle-photography) but in extreme cases might be "just enough". The total time for 1/4000th of a second per shot is 1/1334th of a second or 0.75ms.
The next problem is getting the proper exposure. Faster shutter speed means less light (= darker image), so there needs to be enough ambient light or you need a powerful enough flash.
Luckily, we have two more variable that we can control; Aperture and ISO.
In short, aperture is the size of the hole inside the lens, opening this up to the widest setting means more light (but will make the focus shallower on cameras with bigger sensors) and ISO is the sensor "gain". Increasing ISO will ultimately increase the brightness, however this will introduce a -lot- of unwanted noise depending on how much.
Mostly it becomes a matter of noise vs speed when you're up in these high shutter speeds.
As a photographer, I already knew all of this, I was hoping it'd be about HDR in video games.
I came here looking for what HDR might do on a monitor, TV, or my playstation since it is a setting, but I guess this works too
2:02 *Au'to-magically* hahah, is that a reference to Biz Markee in the Tune Up commerical with Andy Milonakis? i catch some of those *suuper* nerdy references sometimes and Linus, if you ever read this, just know that theyre appreciated 💙