What is HDR?

HDR means High Dynamic Range allowing for more vibrant and clearer pixels. Photography and videos both use HDR and they use them differently. In high-end cameras and smartphone, utilise HDR by combining several photos during a single burst. The photos are captured at different exposures and then all the images are combined to get a clear, detailed and vibrant image. For a video, on the other hand, is dependent on how the image is displayed on the screen and the source video. Even though the process is different they both produce the same result. Colours are more representative of the real world and the dynamic range of colours are significantly improved allowing a more immersive viewing experience.

HDR is widely available on smartphones however for televisions they are available at an expensive price for the time being. Combined with 4K the quality of images will be clearer, television panels have a rating of a contrast ratio in terms of ‘nits’. Nits are a term to indicate the brightness of a display, 1 nits are approximately equal to the light from a single candle. Most screens offer between 300 and 500 nits but a premium HDR panel has at least 1,000 nits and less than 0.05 nits black level.

HDR is slowly made available on mobile via streaming with Youtube making HDR videos available on certain mobile phones.