Thanks to the eagle-eyes of some watchful (and somewhat disturbing) internet denizens, a recent Canon patent application is making the rounds today. Why, you might ask?

Well, because if everyone’s reading it right, it would allow a camera to perform pixel-level HDR calibration by firing a test shot, evaluating each pixel against some heuristic, then re-firing the shot, adjusting the EV at each pixel site to adjust for any over- or under-exposure.

That’s friggin’ cool.

For those of you new to things, HDR (High Dynamic Range) is a general term covering a lot of solutions to one common problem: digital sensors can’t record as much dynamic range as the human eye can see. If you’ve ever wondered why skies and highlights look washed out, or shadows seem too dark and lurking, that’s why. The goal of HDR in any form is to keep highlights from blowing out and still keep fine detail in shadows. Taken to an extreme, especially with a process called tone-mapping, and you can end up with photos with detail and color that the human eye physically couldn’t perceive, and that’s where the raging debate about “HDR” photos being photographs or photo illustrations or outright garbage stems from.

Aaaanyway…

Back to that patent, there might be something about being to adjust just show drastic an adjustment the camera makes when firing the second shot? Something like that. All-and-all, a very intriguing patent app, and should it ever see the light of day and materialize in a real-world device it has the potential to be a game-changer. Will that happen? Who knows? Patent apps are fuzzy things at best, and it’s anyone’s bet if they ever see actual implementation, but at least we know Canon’s engineer’s are rubbing their sexy brain-lobes over the problem, yeah?