Canon was busy at NAB showing how its cameras can capture HDR content that can be used in movie as well as broadcast production. It had a number of cameras set up including an Arri Alexa camera, the Grass Valley LDX 86 with HDR HLG and SDR outputs and some Canon cameras. Some of Canon’s new cameras support the Canon Log3 OETF.
In a darkened room on the side of the cameras and HDR monitors, was an HDR projection demo. The projector was the ReaLis 4K 5000ST projector (retail is $54,999) projecting onto a 70” screen that created an image with 600 cd/m² of peak luminance and 0.45 cd/m² black level. We were told that the EOTF of the projector was adjusted to match the PQ curve for HDR using some manual adjustments.
Canon’s contrast of 1333:1 for this LCOS-based projector is quite low and it did not look like a very compelling HDR image. Plus, it is lamp-based and can only support the Rec. 709 color gamut so would probably not be considered an HDR projector – if there was a definition of one. However, in another part of the booth they were showing a prototype projector with a DCI-P3 color gamut.
Canon is also working on an 8K lumen laser phosphor projector using a DLP engine. It will sell for $15K in July and offer coverage of the sRGB color gamut with a 20K hour lifetime to 50% of initial brightness.
