Bricks in Motion
We are a friendly filmmaking community devoted to the art of stop-motion animation using LEGO® and similar construction toys. Here, you can share your work, join our community of other brickfilmers, and participate in periodic animation contests!
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Has anyone ever tried using HDR (3+ exposures per each frame) to enhance the contrast and dynamic range for their brickfilm? Still photos look absolutely gorgeous using HDR and since Stop-motion is still photography I'm curious if anyone's tried it. And are there any examples of a stop-motion animator successfully using it?
By 3+ exposures per frame, do you mean frames captured with abnormally long exposures per frame, or something else?
Like having maybe a shot where every frame is set to something like a 6 second exposure or something?
For those that don't know what HDR is I'll give a brief rundown:
HDR (High Dynamic Range) is a Digtial Photography technique which the camera will also take a snap-shot with exposure lower and higher to give the photographer as much photo information and detail as possible for post work. This will all for almost surreal looking photos that looks almost better then the human eye.
for example. If you take an interior shot with an open window with sunlight coming in, chances are, you'll have to blow out the light coming in to properly expose the interior. With HDR you will have both the interior AND exterior portioned lit properly.
To look at examples of photos utilizing HDR head over to http://www.interfacelift.com
The reaosn I ask is because I will be doing a lot of dark/night/low light shots with my brickfilms and would love to have the dynamic range in my post processing. I'll try it out and make some tests for all to see. If it works, then it could be a game changer for Stop motion cinematography in general. 
Ohhh... I think I'm starting to get this, maybe...
So, something like taking two photos, like maybe a 2 second exposure, then a small split second exposure?
After that, you combine these in photo shop some special way?
Sounds interesting. 
yes but a two secong exposure would be very long. This is more the difference from 1/400 = normal. 1/100 = over exposed. And 1/1600 under exposed. And the camera has settings to do this automatically so your camera will take 3-5 snapshots really fast.
It's pretty neat!
Ah, okay.
It seems my camera usually needs some rather long exposures than yours though. Even with reasonably bright lighting. My usual exposure for stop motion is 1/5.
Also, I was just looking through some photos I had which I just happened to take with different exposures in the same place, and I'm experimenting with blending them together. looks pretty cool.
I may do some of this for select scenes in my Batman movie 'I am the Night'
Has anyone tested this yet? I would love to see what it would look like.
I just started taking HDR photos myself, and am tempted to try it out. But I would only do it if there's an effective workflow that allows you to batch a lot of it.
I know that some professional capture programs can shoot HDR, but I don't know if it's something that is used frequently in major productions or not. To use HDR in stop motion you would need a program that can batch process HDR images, other wise it would be very difficult to avoid light flicker (and color flicker, which would be weird). There are programs that do this, and I'm actually planning on buying one very soon. Unfortunately I need a copy of my school ID to get student pricing, and I don't know if I'll be able to get it until I'm off to college, which mean I wouldn't be able to animate. I'll probably try it at some point, though, because this would present some pretty interesting opportunities.
Wow that would be awesome...after reading through the thread, I decided to do some research, and the best example I've found is this time lapse. Although it is a time lapse, not stop motion, I think it gives an idea of what can be achieved with this, and boy does it look amazing. Definitely going to have to try that out, thanks for bringing it up, vandy. If anyone finds another video worth mentioning please post it.
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