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Now call me crazy, but there seems to be a major flaw in HDR photographs : You have to take multiple shots, and that might just be a problem when things that move are involved...

In games however, the HDR is done in real time (i know totally different kettle of fish) now what I'm wondering is, has anyone made some type of HDR sensor, one which can reproduce in the camera, almost instantly, a HDR image,

OR

Is there a way to do it with just one RAW image file, putting the exposure up on some then down on others and merging them.

OR

Is there some other way to deal with moving subjects?

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There is (at least) one insanely expensive HDR-sensor. Mind you, not in a camera you can buy at your local photo shop (I have to find the source for this one)
And, yes, you can (or let Photomatix do it for you) construct a HDR pic from a single RAW. So you'll have no prob with moving objects. But sometimes there are some strange side-effects. See here.

The prob today is that the sensors may cover 12bit per color but jpeg does not chowmore than 8bits and many monitors don't do more than 8bit per color. So you already capture more HDR than can be normally displayed wihtout tone-mapping (or other) tricks.

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

14 bit per colour sensors and converters are rumoured to be in the pipeline and I presume, but don't know, that if the images are saved as RAW then HDR processing with just one image would produce results almost as good as the current three exposure technique. Any thoughts, anyone?

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

Prob is - as always - noise. As you can see from my various forays into single shot HDRing you can certainly recover -2EV from todays RAWs but at an amount of noise that is impractical to make a good looking HDR without further tweaking.
So it would be certainly nice to have an extended dynamic range sensor, but only if the s/n-ration is improved at least by a factor of 4. And that will certainly stay a dream for some time...

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

Good point. I hadn't thought of it in this context until your reply but in deep sky astrophotography it is quite common to stack multiple images both to reduce noise and to increase dynamic range.

Keith Wiley has written a great summary of the benefits of this technique at How Image Stacking Works. He makes the point that stacking isn't limited to astronomy (hence the HDR connection).

For CCD read CMOS in the DSLR world.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

so no 128-bit HDR then?

I know my graphics card can render 128-bit HDR lighting (i know its a slightly different thing that photography wise) so 14-bit doesn't sound like much...

I watched a keynote on the MacPro and OS X 10.5 doing some lighting stuff in photoshop, white balance correction on a HDR image that was like 4Gb in size, and it done it in like 20 seconds. But no idea what the HDR specs were.

I seen HDR TFT screens a little while ago aswell, 64Bit screens or something, but they looked like 3 x the thickness of a normal TFT, and had a bigger than normal trim round the edges.


As for your image with the wires, I personally think its a problem with the application its self, I usually do everything in Photoshop manually, so i'd be layering the 3+ images, then doing all the stuff to make them HDR myself, no idea how it would turn out but i'll get a RAW file tomorrow and try it out.

_________________
Canon EOS 5DmkII + BG-E6 + Canon EOS 40D + BG-E2N + Canon EOS 33
Canon 17-40 F/4L USM + Canon 24-70 F/2.8L USM + Canon 28mm F/1.8 USM + Canon 70-200 F/2.8L USM IS + Canon 85mm F/1.8 USM
Canon Speedlite 580EX II + Canon Speedlite 540EZ + 2 x Nikon SB-80DX
Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger - 5 x Cactus V2s Wireless Reciever

MY FLICKR!