Demystifying High-Dynamic-Range Technology: A new evolution in digital media

High-dynamic-range (HDR) technology has attracted a lot of attention recently, especially in commercial trade shows such as the Consumer Electronics Show, the National Association of Broadcasters Show, the International Broadcasting Convention, and Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin. However, a great deal of mystery still surrounds this new evolution in digital media. In a nutshell, HDR technology aims at capturing, distributing, and displaying a range of luminance and color values that better correspond to what the human eye can perceive. Here, the term luminance stands for the photometric quantity of light arriving at the human eye measured in candela per square meter or nits. The color refers to all the weighted combinations of spectral wavelengths, expressed in nanometers (nm), emitted by the sun that are visible by the human eye (see Figure 1). The human eye can perceive a dynamic range of over 14 orders of magnitude (i.e., the difference in powers of ten between highest and lowest luminance value) in the real world through adaptation. However, at a single adaptation time, the human eye can only resolve up to five orders of magnitude, as illustrated in Figure 2. Dynamic range denotes the ratio between the highest and lowest luminance value. As reported in Table 1, there are different interpretations for dynamic range, depending on the application. For instance, in photography, dynamic range is measured in terms of f-stops, which correspond to the number of times that the light intensity can be doubled.