hmm hmm hmm
I understood about half of your post. But do agree with you if we already have Real Lens camera we could use some more parameters with it. Another cool thing would be to have Raw format export for controling exposure later. Doing HDR does help, that’s for sure, but it doesn’t seem accurate to real life (at least not for me). Really good thing about HDR rendering is that you can use programs like Photomatix to tone map your renders.
Cheers!
Sorry to not be clear (my English is terrible). When I say raw output render, I’m referring to a linear render just straight LW (without any gamma encoding). The S-curve and proper exposure can be added over this raw image later in post (if we save it in some FP format), but it’s better than a ‘common’ RAW file since we have a lot more dynamic range to play with.
Gerardo
…Doing HDR does help, that’s for sure, but it doesn’t seem accurate to real life (at least not for me).
That’s because changing the exposure doesn’t affect any other aspects of the image. That’s more similar to changing the film speed. Exposure’s values increments are however accurate.
I was refering to all the tech stuff in your post.
Sorry for that too. Technical terminology is inevitable to keep short some posts:
EVs= Exposure Values (amount of light that hits the film)
LCS= Linear Color Space (by working in linear workflow)
S-Curve= S-shaped curve or DlogE curve (film density vs. log of exposure)
Log2= logarithm (base 2) - don’t worry about a log10 conversion, take a look at this calc
Btw, Blochi explains that terminology in a very understandable and practical way in his HDRI HandBook (very good reading for CG professionals and photographers) 
Seeing how LW works now, we can suppose that it has all requirements to implement a physical camera without any problem. 'Till then, people won’t be able to solve all that within LW only (in several cases is even desirable to solve all that in post). But in both cases and as you have noticed, we need observation (and if it’s possible, some understanding) about how these things work in reality to make some consistent adjustments in LW and post.
Gerardo
I wrote a simple lscript that puts fstop 4.0 at 0 exposure and then exposes brighter and darker with fstop changed. It also has manual mode to raise and lower exposure in stops. I haven’t polished or finished it, but it works as a proof of concept.
That’s sounds like an interesting lscript, Jezza 
That’s a prove that is possible to have something like that as a built-in feature in LW. Do you think is possible to choose the f-stop to set up the 0 exposure (a kind of offset) and tie this with mblur amount accordingly (or vice versa)? if that’s possible (and though is still arbitrary), any change of these parameters would be even more consistent. Btw, what LW parameter are you using to vary the exposure value?
Gerardo
So that’s like bracketing in LW. hmmm.
Seems very interesting. What I would like to do (that was my original idea) is to take these 3 images and combine them in something like Photomatix into HDRI to see the final result and tone mapping possibilites of it!
Any chance we see that script.
Cheers.
P.S. Jezza, sorry for not giving you any feedback on passport but I no longer work there.
What Akademus wants is to adjust images exposure globally, in steps increments. Globally means by affecting highlights and blacks in the same way (like when we change the f-stop or shutter speed of a real camera). HDRExposure works by way of an S-curve filter (similar to Curves filter in PS), so that we can expand or compress the ratio between highlights and blacks, in the limited range of our monitor space, by using whole dynamic range of an HDR image.
Gerardo
Pretty much. I want to see image rendered in exposure steps like in real camera so I can combine them and get the HDRI like i would from real life photos so I can tone map them. I bet these results would be something quite interesting in CG world (or a total miss/mess)
akademus, I haven’t forgotten my script, but for what you want it is extraneous. LW can render directly to HDR, saving you the steps you mention above.
If it’s about to change the exposure only to tonemap, yes (Artizen and other apps can do both), but if we want to change the exposure and affect, at the same time, mblur (for the shutter speed), or simulate film speed, etc. A plugin or script would be great
Gerardo
I was merely wondering will the results with such processing give different (or probably more realistic) results than tone mapped HDRI directly exported from LW FP renderer. That was my goal.
We can make a kind of logarithmic tonemapping within LW, or by using the local operator method, or both.
Gerardo
Well, the auto-mode one is unlikely to happen due to time constraints. So here’s a simple one with manual stops control.
Hey! thanks, Jeremy. I guess the same thing would be faster as a plugin compilation, right?
Gerardo
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