Wolverine-Hawkeye Telecine

[Bruce Davis]

Stan have not looked at Live frame rate before in IC Capture v2.5 with this camera, it is only displaying 6 to 7 fps and on black screen 4 to 5 fps.

Hi Kamel was getting a lot of light flaring (not sure if its called lens flaring) so decided to print your "Hawkey Gate-Mask S8 v05", that has made a huge difference. Had to adjust the dimensional location of the opening for the UX178 camera but its unbelievable the difference, thanks for going to the trouble of designing this, its very practical and thanks to Stan for the original idea of masking.
Regards - Bruce

[Stan Jelavic]

This indicates that the camera image capture is OK and it is probably either the USB or computer internal processing. But anyway, the test app should tell more.
Here is the test app Bruce.
https://github.com/vintagefilmography/HDR3-BW-TEST
Have not tested it with the camera. Let me know if it works. Use the BW Test button to display the stats.

[Bruce Davis]

Thanks Stan, very handy to have a frame cross reference, BW Test starts counting frames as soon as the Start button is pressed, so comparing numbers recorded on HDD do not match with the number of frames shown on BW Test display, would be better if BW Test only counted the number of frames per trigger, but that may not be possible.

BW Test has not shown any frames missing for the five variables (the "Frames Delivered", that number is always higher than that recorded on HDD).

On purpose, I ran the capture at the two higher speeds (for the first time) and the monitor + recording of frames to HDD is not able to keep up with the high frame rate.

This leads me to believe that the usb3 connection is not fast enough as the SSD is not working overtime, data rates are 2MB/sec for JPG and 9MB/sec for TIFF files.

Tried using Bit64, but the program crashes, does not matter as I would never use it anyway.

Regards - Bruce

P.S. Have noticed, IC Capture in live mode, the brighter an image the slower the frame rate, e.g. very bright 4-5 fps, dark 60 fps, you probably know this but it was interesting for me.

[Stan Jelavic]

Yes, I believe that is correct. The image loss is with the USB. As a quick check you can store the images on local drive.
I am aware of frame rate dependency on exposure but thanks for the heads up anyways.
Some other people may not be aware of that.
Regards

[Kamel Ikhlef]

Hello everybody,

Hi Bruce,

For the 3D mask design, at your service, very happy if it helps.
For my part, I was busy (in spite of myself) and I really fell a lot behind my tests with the integrated focus slider.
I will resume as soon as I can. very soon I think...

[Bruce Davis]

Hi all, nice to hear from you Kamel.
Just in case others might be interested, still playing around with 3 exposure HDR.
Using jpg files for 3 exposure capture, tiff file transfer, on my system, is unreliable (occasional dropped frames) and to be honest I can not see any difference in image quality on my 32 inch BenQ_PD3200U monitor. The jpg files can be converted to a combined HDR tiff file, if needed, with Enfuse.

Stan provided a basic script batch file to process 2 exposure HDR files in separate folders using Enfuse v4.2.
http://enblend.sourceforge.net/index.htm

I find it is better to have all these files in one folder, thank you to Stan for providing the "HDR-UX178-3-Exposure-ONE-FOLDER-main" program, he has also provided a 2 exposure version. To process the files/frames I am using EnfuseGUI v2.1.3, this gui uses Enfuse v4.0 and makes the process very simple.
http://software.bergmark.com/enfuseGUI/Main.html

If one wanted to use the later command line Enfuse v4.2, there are included Droplets v0.2.1 by Erik Krause, there is also a newer v0.4.2 available, with added extra options like EXIF copy feature (not needed for this simple application). Because some changes have been made to Enfuse over time, these Enfuse droplets no longer function as they are, but with a very minor one line change, they still work.
Change line from:- set enfuse_additional_parameters= --wExposure=1 --wSaturation=1 --wContrast=0
To :- set enfuse_additional_parameters= --exposure-weight=1 --saturation-weight=0.2 --contrast-weight=0 --hard-mask
http://www.erik-krause.de/enfuse_droplet.zip
https://groups.google.com/g/hugin-ptx/c/3VuXOjVqZPk

Regards - Bruce

To save the resulting images/files to another folder add a line:-
move "*_enfused.tif" "<Your Path>"
e.g. move c:\Enfuse_Test\*_enfused.tif C:\Output
to the very end of the batch file.
The older v0.2.3 droplet uses the file name *_fusioned.tif

[Stan Jelavic]

Good to hear that you are still at it Kamel.
Good work Bruce. I will add your note to the HDR readme.
Regards

[Stan Jelavic]

Updated the readme files with Bruce's notes. Thank you Bruce.

[Bruce Davis]

Stan great job re-write and additions, the line by line and paragraph separations have now made it much easier to read/follow your guide, thanks for the stellar effort.
Regards - Bruce

[Stan Jelavic]

Thank you Bruce.

[Bruce Davis]

Hi Stan, has been quiet here, with HDR single folder 3 EXP, under the Exposure tab, Exposure Auto should be ticked, when testing this (have been spending all my time updating computer) I find that the tick disappears when I have stopped transferring images and open Settings, is this supposed to remain selected or not. Also if I set it manually (no tick) to say 1/500th of a second and start image transfer the exposure automatically changes, does it do its own thing regardless? I do not understand how it is supposed to work, seems as though there is no constant to the exposure. Leaving settings as they are except for the auto or no auto tick, I can not achieve constant exposures, sometimes images are bright and blown out and then again the same image series end up dark. In the dialog box there is an update button and an apply button does one need to use both.
Thanks Stan
Edit: Would WDR be affecting the none consistency in exposure, should it be turned off with 3 exposure.

Top Row of images is with exposure auto ticked before starting transfer and bottom row of 3 images is with exposure auto un-ticked, both started with the same exposure level 1/54th second and auto reference 54, HDR was selected.

[Stan Jelavic]

Hi Bruce. The app turns the exposure to auto for one image and then turns auto to off and lowers the exposure from the auto reference for the second and third images. Then it switches the auto to on and so on. This worked ok for me for 2 exposures but maybe there is an issue with 3 exposures.
So when you stop the app the auto exposure may be turned off.
I did it this way to maintain the auto exposure.
If you want to disable the auto mode completely I can do a build for you.
One more note. I had an issue with the brightness going up like that even with 2 images if the scan speed is too fast. The next picture comes in too fast and does not let the camera stabilize and then it runs off. You can try lowering the scan speed.

[Bruce Davis]

Hi Stan, thanks for the explanation, the images I posted above are out of sequence, for two exposures it is light/dark even though 3 exposures are presented on screen.

Two Exposure:-
It looks as though the auto exposure is the starting point (as you mentioned) then the 3 stops (or whatever the preset is) lighter image is taken and recorded, then strangely another image appears on screen that is only fractionally darker (does not seem to be a full stop and is not recorded) then the 3 stops darker image is taken and recorded.

Three Exposure:-
As above, except that the very slightly darker image in the middle is also taken and recorded, this is not a normal exposure image.
If I understand 3 image HDR the middle image should be of normal exposure with images either side +&- the number of stops.
The normal exposure image would therefore be the Auto Exposure (when ticked) seen on screen, but that image is never recorded.

One thing I have noticed, when the two exposure program is used, the Auto Reference needs to be set to around 100.
When the three exposure program is used, the Auto Reference needs to be set to around 54, these numbers vary a bit with film.

You originally wrote the HDR program for two image exposure only, so I am wondering where this very slightly darker than 3 stops lighter image in the middle comes from. I appreciate that you went to the trouble in creating a 3 exposure version for me, and I do not want to give you a headache but it would be good to know.

Sorry this is so long and drawn out, did not know how reduce the size.

Regards - Bruce

[Stan Jelavic]

Hi Bruce, for 3 exposures I may have a bug. Still checking. But for 2 exposures
, this is the sequence of events.

- sequence 1 - first time in, exposure auto save image. Turn off auto and decrement exposure.
You will get normal auto exposed image
- sequence 2 - take image with lower exposure from previous sequence, increment exposure, turn auto on
You will get darker image
- sequence `1 again... etc

That was the intention of how this is supposed to work.

With 3 exposures it should be similar.
- sequence 1 - normal exp
- sequence 2 - dec exp
- sequence 3 - 2*dec exp
- sequence 1 - normal again
But it looks like I forgot the to send the exposure update to the camera for sequence 2. I will fix that today.
Regards

[Stan Jelavic]

Updated the 3 exp build Bruce:
https://github.com/vintagefilmograph...-ONE-DIR-3-EXP