Fulldome HDR Timelapse Experiment (2010)

Shot at Cradle Mountain National Park, Tasmania, Australia.

Basically a test of our self-designed-and-built motion-contolled (moco) camera tracking system, using a Canon 5D MkII, with custom intervalometer.

This is genuine HDR using triple exposure (-2,0,2 f-stops) aperture-controlled with moco synchronisation. No fHDR or tone-mapping from LDR here.

This was done in a mad rush on the last day of our impromptu walk/shoot weekend (December 2010). Hence the brief sequence – I had to rush off, unfortunately. It was windy. Things wobbled. We fixed it. More experiments to come.

Nevertheless, it established that ultra-high-definition Fulldome moco timelapse HDR is feasible, processable and could prospectively solve the internal Fulldome illumination problem of bright landscapes/exposures (particularly skies.) Plus it can look great too – there’s so much post you can do with HDR. The main problem with 3.7k images is that each frame as an exr/hdr is between 40-70MB. So at 30fps (which this isn’t) you’re dealing with at least ~1.2GB per second (~4.3 Terabytes per hour). That’s a lot to store and process. Interesting.

Artefacting has been introduced by pixel-motion time-remapping in some replays – but looks quite nice, serendipitously. The trick will be to selectively control it.

DOP and HDR post by Peter Morse; Engineering by Chris Henderson with assistance by Sally Hildred.

Music gratefully absorbed from Philip Glass’ ‘The Hours’ – an inspiration.

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