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2018: is it wise buying a camera without HLG / HDR support?


liork
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8 hours ago, liork said:

As HDR becomes a standard on 4K TV's, is it wise to buy a camera without even HLG support?

Nikon Z7/Z6 does not have it for example.

Nikon Z7 and Z6 both support HDR. They output 10 bit N-Log...  I believe the Sony's support HDR also... but only 8 bit. Your computer likely does not. Some TV's do. I know my OLED supports HDR1000.... most flagship smartphones also can. The HDR workflow is more complex. I don't think I have yet created anything HDR, even though all my cameras support it. When my laptop can fully support editing 4K HDR, I will then start putting out footage in that format. Mac OS does not support it. I don't think anything they make that would be useful in post does. Granted they added HDR options to FCPX, but the display cannot show true HDR footage... even if you connect a HDR monitor, and have a GPU that supports the spec. There are, I believe two PC laptops that do. But neither of them can go anywhere near 1000 nits... let alone 2000 nits. Most laptops that are able to show HDR only meet the minimum requirements. Lenovo makes a couple models that support the middle tier of HDR. There are three HDR standards:

HDR400 - Requires 400 nits brightness and 8 bit color depth - result: virtually no visible difference to non-HDR footage. But hay... It's HDR damit!
HDR600 - Requires 600 nits brightness and 10 bit color depth - result: visible difference, but not extreme. It's the kind of thing a pixel peeper will notice.
HDR1000 - Requires 1000 nits brightness and 10 bit color depth - result: this is the HDR you have been waiting for. In your face, something looks different sort of image.

As you can see, the 8 bit cameras (Sony A7III... etc...) only meet the requirements for the entry level HDR format. Cameras with 10 bit Log profiles (Nikon N7, N6, GH5/S, X-T3... etc ) meet the requirement for all of these standards. At present, there are only two full frame hybrid cameras that can capture 10 bit log... and both of them are made by Nikon.

The bottleneck is not the cameras... it's pretty much everything but the cameras.

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1 hour ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

Seems like most 8 bit camera footage would look fine on an HDR TV. 

I somehow got along prior to HDR and thought the images looked great. 

3 hours ago, AlexTrinder96 said:

Some TVs can actually produce up to 4000 nits btw! (Dolby Vision, HDR 10)...

 

I think Dolby Vision can actually do near 10000 but it seems like overkill! 

At some point sunglasses will be needed just to watch television.

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9 minutes ago, DBounce said:

I somehow got along prior to HDR and thought the images looked great. 

At some point sunglasses will be needed just to watch television.

Seems like the biggest requirement of HDR is dynamic range, and every modern mirrorless I know of does over 10 stops, even without log. I am pretty sure 10 stops is what HDR displays.

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As some people here have already covered, any camera with a good enough codec and dynamic range can deliver good HDR results. Here's the best article on the internet detailing everything a shooter needs to know about HDR.

https://www.provideocoalition.com/a-guide-to-shooting-hdr-day-1-what-is-hdr/

But as a quick reality check, HDR delivery is still fairly rare. Especially if you work in TV, low budget narrative, web series, commercials, music videos, or anything but huge budget features, you are not likely to deliver in HDR for years yet. Hold on to your masters just in case, but let's not for a second pretend that lack of HLG or Rec 2020 support in-camera is really going to hold you back.

 

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I'd say you could buy one without HDR support, Though most cameras can already do HDR. The thing with HDR is that the industry is still trying to catch up a bit I'm finding. If you edit in Premiere, you can't really even grade for HDR unless you export it to Resolve (Premiere viewports only support up to 120IRE and apparently doesn't add the HDR Flag in the metadata), then there's the fact that barely anyone has HDR monitors to grade with. On top of that, there's a lot of youtube tutorials of people who think they are doing HDR  and teaching how to do it when in reality they have no idea of what they are talking about.

 

Camera body's come and go, and if you're going to buy a new camera within three years, you don't really need HDR. If you're going to keep the camera body for a long time, then it'll be worth it, But SDR won't be phased out for a long long time. Master SDR Rec 709, and then you'll have a much better-starting ground for HDR when it becomes more standardized.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/14/2018 at 4:40 AM, DBounce said:

As you can see, the 8 bit cameras (Sony A7III... etc...) only meet the requirements for the entry level HDR format. Cameras with 10 bit Log profiles (Nikon N7, N6, GH5/S, X-T3... etc ) meet the requirement for all of these standards. At present, there are only two full frame hybrid cameras that can capture 10 bit log... and both of them are made by Nikon.

 

Is worth repeating. Nikon doesn't get enough credit for this. Looking forward to the next generation of Nikon Z mirrorless! They're already at the front of the pack for their niche. 

 

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