Why don’t sports events use HDR cameras? Watching Euro 2020 it’s impossible to see anything in the shadows since the camera is exposed to the sunlight.

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Why don’t sports events use HDR cameras? Watching Euro 2020 it’s impossible to see anything in the shadows since the camera is exposed to the sunlight.

In: Technology

3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Pretty much all cameras are HDR. SDR is what video is stored and displayed as after processing. So either the video is processed wrong, or your TV settings are not configured correctly

Anonymous 0 Comments

Here in the UK it’s being streamed in 4k hrd on the BBC channel.
They’ve been using it in big events for the last couple of years, football, Wimbledon tennis etc.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Here’s a highlight clip:
https://youtu.be/jroU9C4tSRM

Definitely a large range of light to cover, but it’s watchable.
I would highly suggest making sure your tv settings are good, without going very in-depth, the movie preset is usually good (it may look bland and yellow to start off with, if so then you are just used to inaccurate screens.

As for HDR, we first have to recognize it can mean two things:

• Post-processing: Your camera takes multiple (usually 3 for automatic) of different exposure levels and combines them into a single photo.

• Capturing: The camera’s sensor utilizes an HDR format and is able to capture a wide dynamic range such that it can capture shadows/highlights without crushing/blowing them out respectively.

The latter is what is now becoming common for tv/movies, and is pretty much always for 4K video, and there different types of HDR as well, the 3 main ones being HDR10 (HDR10+ for dynamic metadata), DolbyVision, and HLG.

As stated above, HDR goes with 4K, and less than 1% of tv stations broadcast in 4K, and the cable providers would also need to support it. When the Olympics was shown in 4K HDR, I believe it could only be viewed after the fact and not live. Also, most lower end tv’s are not HDR, and even higher end tv’s don’t all support the 3 main HDR formats (Dolby Vision is less supported than HDR10).

Now, better sensors themselves can have a wide dynamic range and not shoot in HDR format; an iPhone 12 Pro Max shooting in 4K with Dolby Vision HDR still won’t have as wide of a dynamic range as a $30,000 film camera shooting in 2K SDR.