
Chapter 11
High dynamic range video and tone
mapping
11.1 Introduction
The ratio between the brightest and the darkest values that a camera can
capture is called dynamic range, and most cameras take low dynamic range
pictures, spanning only a few orders of magnitude. As a consequence, if the
light coming from a scene to the camera is of high dynamic range, then using
a short exposure time, the camera will render correctly the details in the
brightest parts of the image, but it won’t be able to capture details in the
dark regions. Conversely, using long exposures we are able to see the dark
regions but the bright ones become flat white (overexposed or