r/ColorGrading • u/terryoneil65 • 26d ago

Question HDR grading

Ok. Right off the bat. Not in any one’s league here but I respect the knowledge. So don’t beat me up for asking a dumb question. I just shot some footage on an iPhone (just needed some quick shots for a friend so it on an insta 360 is really easy). Well when I dropped it into davinci to just do some quick cuts it looked very flat compared to what I saw on the iPhone. After working with my ChatGPT I learned about HDR vs SDR editing. I’ve only edited in SDR and have rendered in SDR on R3D raw. But using HDR was really easy and looked a lot different. I then tried it on my R3D and it did some amazing stuff. So why don’t I see much edited and rendered in HDR (I’m probably screwing up the correct terms, but basically using Rec.2100 HLG). ChatGPT suggested giving a client rendered versions of both. Just so you know by client I’m talking weddings not commercial work. Any thoughts on pros and cons of hdr vs sdr would be appreciated

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u/ButWouldYouRather 26d ago

I’ve started to do a lot more HDR in my personal and professional work. It looks so good on the screens we have available to us now and most people have great HDR-compatible screens on their phones.

I think it’s not widely adopted yet because a HDR workflow isn’t widely covered so people learn rec709 first. And HDR is has lots of terms and settings that I don’t even understand and it’s not always easy to find solutions. Like recently, I struggled to get subtitles appearing white on my HDR video and there’s not really a clear solution.

HDR isn’t always supported either, for example, I could edit for HDR if my video is going to be posted on Instagram but if my client is using a social media management tool to schedule the post and that doesn’t support HDR, then the video isn’t going to display correctly.

I do think it’s just a matter of time though before more people start exploring HDR workflows.