dragons den idea!

[joescrivens]

I had a dragons den moment over the weekend, but since i have neither the funds, time or incentive to pursue anything i thought i'd propose the idea here and see if a) it already exists and b) if it is even possible

ok so graduated ND filters. Everyone knows their biggest drawback is the fact the graduated evenly at a horizontal level and if a scene has an uneven landscape like trees and mountains etc, then the graduation being uniform doesn't really work very well as your exposure at the top of trees or landforms can be out.

How about an intelligent graduated ND filter that could react to light across the scene much like those cool glasses do when they detect light. How feasible would it be to create something that could work like this?

 

[jimmyriddle]

How do you propose it would work? The tech that's in the reactive lens glasses wouldn't work like that, the whole of the lens in the glasses tints, so the effect would be the same as a ND filter.

 

[Jimmy_Lemon]

Interesting one, would obviously have to be controlled by the camera so the glass/resin/whatever knew what area was covering the brighter area, so it would need software as well as the hardware. I would imagine one of the big camera manufacturers have dabbled with something similar before, but who knows I guess! Would imagine it would be possible, but probably insanely pricey!

 

[srichards]

It would be better to build it in camera. Sure some of the details of a new sony compact mentioned it. I'd expect the next generation of SLTs could have something like that built in to boost dynamic range by reducing exposure in certain areas intelligently.

You can have films that go dark with an applied voltage so it would make sense to do it that way.

HDR sort of removes the need for it really.

 

[Trixster]

It would be more effective and a lot easier to mod the Lightroom/ACR nd grad tool to be warp-able.

 

[AJQS]

I thnk it was Canon who experimented with an LCD based shutte sysytem, could possibly be used a as a base for such a thing. Trouble is how would you control it and define where you want to apply garduation to?

I don't think it would be particularly easy to implement, but porbbaly do able.

 

[joescrivens]

yeah, wouldn't be an easy thing to do at all, but i think it would still be better than doing something in lightroom, as doing it that way you always have to have two exposures to merge - or have enough detail captured across the whole scene to reduce highlights and boot shadows at the same time.

agree it would be expensive probably as it would need to communicate with the sensor to find out what to dull and what not to

 

[Forbiddenbiker]

Communication would be the cheep bit I’d suggest, light meters already analyse the light precisely, its not such a leap to use the data to adjust a grad… But the optical variances problems would be the biggest hurdle, what substance, or layers of, can be controlled electronically and is that stuff also optically suitable? ...that would be the expensive end im thinking. :shrug:

Varied ISO sensors might be the solution, their already wired up right.. If a light meter could also adjust the sensitivity ranges in different areas across a sensor to match those of overly bright or dark scenes …then this would eliminate most reasons for a graduated filer.