HEIF and HDR(HLG) with the S1R II

[CharlesH]

S1RII Firmware 1.2 added the HEIF photo format and the HDR(HLG) photo style. These features were first introduced by Panasonic with the S1II and S1IIE, plus they have already been available in some Sony and Nikon models.

HEIF itself has 10 bits so it has a little more latitude than 8 bit JPEG for post processing. But HLG adds a LOG photo style for photos and this expands the dynamic range of HEIF to make HDR photos. Of course you need a HDR display to correctly view HDR photos. If you have a phone or tablet with a HDR display the photos will display in HDR. Or with a laptop with a HDR display like the MacBook Pro the photos display in HDR with Preview. All these photos can be moved to Photos (Apple) and they will display HDR across all your devices. I'm sure there are Windows and Android ways to do this same thing.

The camera setup is to set the Rec. File Format(Photo) to HEIF (or RAW + HEIF). Then set the HEIF Format to HDR(HLG). The default HEIF Format is SDR, so change it to HDR(HLG). Now the only Photo Styles available are STD.HLG, MONO.HLG, and REAL TIME LUT.HLG. I have been using STD.HLG. With these Photo Styles the minimum ISO is 320.

My experience with this so far is quite good. I have mentioned several times in this forum that I already use LightRoom to process RAW photos into HDR, and at least tentatively I find this HEIF-HLG method is just as good. Also you can further edit these HEIF-HLG photos in LightRoom if needed. In practice you will want to over-expose by at least one stop to get reasonable HDR, possibly more, to take advantage of the dynamic range of the display.

Sony and Nikon users sometimes reported over-saturation of HEIF-HLG photos, especially in the red, although I don't know whether that is a real issue, or it was and is now corrected. My experience is that these Panasonic photis can be just slightly under-saturated in Lightroom, but when viewed directly with Preview or Photos the saturation looks perfect.

I also took a look at how these HDR photos are in a video editor, since a thing I like to do is incorporate HDR photos into HDR videos. They incorporate directly into Final Cut Pro and into DaVinci Resolve and look very good; except with DaVinci Resolve the color saturation was a little too high and I needed to back it off, but this is a minor issue.

A good thing about HEIF is that the file size is quite small compared to JPEG, and minuscule compared to RAW. Since I almost always work in HDR it could be possible I would only shoot HEIF. But I expect I'll do HEIF + RAW for some time so I can compare them if needed.

 

[GeorgeHudetz]

Interesting. Since the high-speed frame rate (40 fps) is limited to 12-bit raw, perhaps it's reasonable to just go HEIF only. It should lower the buffer-clearing time by a good margin.

 

[CharlesH]

Interesting. Since the high-speed frame rate (40 fps) is limited to 12-bit raw, perhaps it's reasonable to just go HEIF only. It should lower the buffer-clearing time by a good margin.

That could be worth taking a look. Could you get more dynamic range with a log format and not need 12 bits? I have wondered about this in the past - this is how video gets wide dynamic range with just 10 bits - why not photography? Also, would you always need an HDR monitor? HLG is an early HDR TV format that came from the BBC with the intent to look good on both HDR TVs and SD TVs. I don't know how this format is deployed for photography but it is sort of like that - if I take the HEIF-HLG photos that I was viewing on my Mac with an HDR display, but look at them on my other Mac with an SD display, they still look pretty good. I don't think it is that simple, there are surely compromises, but it's probably worth some looking into. And some testing to see if the buffer clears faster.

 

[photoworks]

Most people will never see HDR, phones, TVs and Computers all use different standards, on top of that it is challenging to publish online on different platforms and have them switch correctly to a correct profile in SDR, same for photos.

But it is something to keep in mind for future usage of your old photos. Keep your raws and reedit them in HDR.
I will keep using Rec.709 2.2 for the web and sRGB for photos. I even have trouble getting AdobeRGB printed correctly from the lab, Imagine I will send them an HDR

 

[CharlesH]

Most people will never see HDR, phones, TVs and Computers all use different standards, on top of that it is challenging to publish online on different platforms and have them switch correctly to a correct profile in SDR, same for photos.

But it is something to keep in mind for future usage of your old photos. Keep your raws and reedit them in HDR.

All sadly true. We buy these cameras with such amazing image capability and we have no way to share this with friends and on forums like this. Video is in a slightly better position; one can edit and produce an HDR movie and share it as HDR on YouTube; and someone can watch it on their smart TV, or on their computer monitor if it has HDR capability. But still, it is not very common to do this.

There are a number of HDR formats for photos but none of them have achieved much prominence, and there is no standard. With Nikon, Sony and now Panasonic introducing HEIF/HLG for photos, a hope is this can spread and eventually reach a critical mass. Perhaps some day we can even view HDR images on this forum.

In the mean time there are lots of ways to personally view your own HEIF/HLG HDR images from the new S1 series cameras (many are discussed above). Also, if you have an HDR TV, attach the camera via HDMI to view the HDR images with the Playback function