!!Con 2017: HDR Photography in Microsoft Excel?! by Kevin Chen
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters recommend it as a fun, short talk that shows how HDR photography actually works through an absurdly playful implementation.
What it is
A short conference talk from !!Con 2017 in which Kevin Chen explains the HDR imaging algorithm from a foundational paper, framing it as a system of linear equations, and implements it in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. No prior image processing knowledge is needed.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2017 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec levthedev · 2017-08 · on “Employer gave me a conference budget for next year. Can I get suggestions?”
You should definitely check out !!con. They have really fascinating and weird talks about all sorts of interesting CS and design topics. Plus, it's pay what you can and is located in New York, so there's lots of interesting stuff to do nearby. My favorite talk from this year was about implementing an algorithm for HDR photography purely in Microsoft Excel - [this video]
Strong rec asafira · 2025-05 · on “What is HDR, anyway?”
I did my PhD in Atomic, Molecular, and Optical (AMO) physics, and despite "optical" being part of that I realized midway that I didn't know enough about how regular cameras worked! It didn't take very long to learn, and it turned out to be extremely important in the work I did during the early days at Waymo and later at Motional. I wanted to pass along this fun video from several years ago that discusses HDR: [this video] . It's short and fun, I recommend it to all HN readers. Separately, if you want a more serious introduction to digital photography, I recommend the lectures by Marc Levoy from his Stanford course: [LINK] . I believe he runs his own group at Adobe now after leading a successful e
Recommends floatboth · 2018-01 · on “Ask HN: What’s your favorite talk from 2017?”
On The Turing Completeness of PowerPoint [LINK] Compiling C to printable x86, to make an executable research paper [LINK] HDR Photography in Microsoft Excel?! [this video] Zebras All the Way Down [LINK] Solving Layout Problems with CSS Grid and Friends [LINK] Console Security - Switch [LINK] Let's move SMM out of firmware and into the kernel [LINK] Bringing Linux back to server boot ROMs with NERF and Heads [LINK] Sharing the Chisel [LINK] (looks like the actual conference video wasn't released)
Recommends Mister_Snuggles · 2019-06 · on “3D engine on MS Excel without VBA (2018) [video]”
My favourite (ab)use of Excel, which is already on your list, is using it for HDR photography[0]. While I'd never use it for day-to-day anything, things like this are a really interesting way to show how things like HDR photography actually work. Excel can be very approachable for stuff like this. [0] [this video]
Cites EvanAnderson · 2018-02 · on “3D engine made of MS Excel formulae”
I just watched a talk this morning about doing high dynamic range photography in Excel ( [this video] ). Looks like now I've got something to watch tomorrow!