Is the end of bracketing for HDR nearing?

HDR scenes need to be bracketed just because otherwise, while preserving the highlights, noise appears in the deep shadows eliminating textures.

As long as camera sensors become less noisy, doing several shots at different exposure values will become unnecessary to capture all the scene's DR. Is that time nearing?

A new Sony sensor has recently appeared. It is used on some cameras such as the Pentax K5, Nikon D7000 and Sony A580. This sensor happens to have an amazing DR at low ISO (ISO80/100), specially for being an APS-C sensor.

I did some noise measurements and calculated DR of the Pentax K5 vs some Canons:

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

Wow, thanks for the information!
I always find your web site is a great technical resource.
I actually like the technical aspects of photography also.
Though, I am, and probably never will understand it all, I try.
Thanks again!

"The only reason for doing several captures is noise."
Really? - and I always thought it was to capture a wider range of luminance, Further, I thought noise was a factor of "processing" low light exposures.
Regardless, it is a great read. Thanks for making some of us think about the science.
Perhaps by the time these cameras are mainstream, trendy HDRIs would have gone the way of lens flares and vignettes.

The DR of camera will inevitably increase and I truly hope to see a device that will retain sufficient DR that will result in being able to tonemap a room with a single image. The hours that will be saved ...

You are dead right Guillermo though the timescale will be 5 years+ I think. We need at least one more generation of cameras like the 5DII before we get shadows acceptable for commercial work. I do, however, feel the vendors will be chasing ISO more than DR ; most consumers care little about the latter but have been told the former is important.

Is the Sony sensor achieving the expanded DR by multiple pixels per image site (like the Fuji chip)?

bunyarra wrote in post #11393744
I do, however, feel the vendors will be chasing ISO more than DR ; most consumers care little about the latter but have been told the former is important.

Precisely this new Sony sensor seems clearly focused on improving DR at low ISO, rather than noise at high ISO (in fact, at ISO1600 is far from being an impressive APS-C sensor).

I hope this trend goes on. Camera makers should think about all possible customers, both high ISO shooters and tripod photographers.

BestVisuals wrote in post #11393947
Is the Sony sensor achieving the expanded DR by multiple pixels per image site (like the Fuji chip)?

No, it's a regular sensor. It has taken 6 years to match Fuji Super CCD's DR on a conventional APS-C sensor.

Regards

Very interesting read. Now you've got my mind racing. I wanna test this out sometime.

Good points.

In fact, often we see people write in this forum that "that's not HDR. It's one tonemapped image."

But HDR means high dynamic range, and if a photo contains a high dynamic range, then it's fair to call it HDR.

With Raw you often can get it all. It's just not easy.