This forum seems to be full of technical minded people, I'll post my query here.

I am interested in the DRO mode which applies processing to both still images and during video mode within Sony Alpha/ Nex cameras. From tests it seems to lower the contrast of the captured data meaning sky is less beached out and darker areas are more exposed. The result is a flatter profile (even flatter than setting your picture profile to flat -3-3-3).

The camera has 6 DRO modes from 'off' to 'level 1' through to 'level 5'. meaning you can adjust the amount of processing / exposure swing the camera applies to the captured footage.

Does anyone actually know how this process is working? Is the camera changing the ISO of different parts of the sensor in order to lower sensitivity in the brighter areas of the frame, and raising the iso to get better exposure in the darker areas? In still photography mode the resultant image when looked at in playback mode is brighter than it looked when you actually take the image, but the change is clearly visible in realtime while recording which would suggest to me that there is not a post processing type process going on during movie recording mode. - what you see on the monitor during recording is the same as what you see when you play it back.

Could it be that it is the camera ramping or lowering ISO depending on the brightness of the details in the frame or is it more likely to be similar to the processing a picture profile would be imparting on the picture?

I want to get some theories so I can start to look at ways to make best use of this process. EOSHD sstate that DRO adds a lot of noise/colour artifacts to the picture in movie mode, but could this be that if the camera were set to iso 800, the DRO might be ramping things right up to 3200iso in the darker areas? If i set the camera to iso100, it will mean the DRO wont ramp to as high ISO (assuming the DRO is playing with ISO.

Some clips about the process:-

I think this feature is yet to be properly understood and up until recently i thought it were just a feature available in still mode. If it is applying at sensor ISO level this could be something Sony havn't thought to advertise as a benefit to using their consumer grade products like NEX5n within indi film making.

Thoughts???