Capturing reality with Florian Friedrich
Jan 21, 2026
4 min read
On careful attunement, colour perception, and the search for perfect verisimilitude.
Written by Genevieve Michaels
Illustration by Lívia Prata
Florian Friedrich’s work serves one goal: capturing a scene so perfectly it’s as if the viewer were actually there. He started with a Hasselblad medium format in his teens, but it’s not image composition or storytelling that captivates him. It’s what happens from camera to pixels.
That’s carried him from analog photography to ultra HD video, and up the delicate chain of technical tasks that pull subjective reality into a perfectly calibrated display. “I loved making moments into high-end photos, but I wanted that same experience in something that moves,” he says.
Florian has consulted with manufacturers to develop displays that show the widest possible dynamic range of high-fidelity color, and built advanced systems to fine-tune and calibrate them.
Over the years, I’ve been involved in every step of the imaging chain: capturing light with sensor technologies, post-processing and editing, HDR color grading, encoding, final delivery for UHD Blu-ray and streaming, and display technology.”
States of high attunement
Florian is known for original display footage, shot in nature, that showcases what advanced displays are capable of. “Without carefully designed content, even the best display technology remains abstract,” he says. In 2015, at the dawn of consumer HDR, he worked with Samsung to create the first UHD Blu-ray with test and demo material.
Florian finds nature scenes are the best vehicle to translate technology into human experience. “Years from now, footage of a lake or flowers still has the same relevance,” he shares. “Once you add people or urban infrastructure, the question becomes why is that person there? What’s the story?”
Shooting these scenes, outdoors with his camera, is a form of meditation. “You have to be highly observant, of both your tools and what’s happening around you. There are so many small errors you could make, from slightly defocusing to over- or under-exposing,” he says.
When I’m out there, everything slows down. I have the tools, the experience, and the workflows to capture a moment as completely as possible: the full arc of a sunset, the finest details far in the distance, subtle color combinations that make you feel small in the best possible way.”
The butterfly effect
Shooting in nature is just the beginning. This raw material will be processed in post-production, and displayed on advanced HDR devices. At every stage are tiny, impactful decisions and tradeoffs—dozens of technical feats all influencing the final image.
Converting SDR to HDR too directly can result in a dim, undersaturated picture. Failing to account for limitations in viewers' screens can cause subtle colour gradations, like those in white clouds, to be flattened away.
It was never my goal to have experience with so many parts of image capture. But when you see your final result has certain issues, you go back to address them. That end-to-end perspective has shaped how I think about displays.”
Florian’s expertise spans this entire process. At the post-production stage, he developed the InnoPQ display analysis environment. Combining a colorimeter, spectrum meter, ambient light sensor, power meter, and more, InnoPQ testing methods reflect how displays are actually used. For example with dynamic moving test patterns rather than the standard blocks of colour.
“It does things no other measurement system I’m aware of is doing,” Florian says. InnoPQ HDRmaster software complements the tool with technical features, like advanced HDR10+ metadata editing and statistical HDR Gamut Rings analysis. Such features aren’t about adding complexity – they’re about helping technicians make better choices by revealing how colour actually behaves.
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Understanding perception
Florian’s latest line of inquiry is metamerism, or individual variance in colour perception.
This variance happens both in measurement, at the device level, and in individuals’ perception. Florian can’t influence these variables, but he’s currently exploring ways to reduce metamerism without sacrificing colour integrity through spectrum design.
Color isn’t a scientific value, it’s a perception. We understand that perception based on a model from 1931, which measured the spectral sensitivity of different observers.”
Imagine sunlight, which contains the full spectrum and appears as white. As we narrow in on tones of red, blue, or green, we use a more limited spectrum to convey them. Super-saturated colors—neon tennis ball, turquoise Caribbean sky—require the narrowest spectrum.
That makes them more challenging to display, and more susceptible to metamerism. Optimally designed spectrums are narrow enough to show vibrant colour, but wide enough to stay consistent for different viewers.
“Until recently, people haven’t understood that a spectral design can have quality,” Florian explains. “There’s a lot of confusion around what a good color gamut is, and how displays with narrow primaries should be calibrated.”
This is where, recently, Florian’s work has intersected with Nanosys. Quantum dots lend themselves to narrow, roughly bell-shaped spectrum design, which supports the delicate balance between wide color gamut and observer agreement.
In this video, quantum dots bring saturation and a near-luminescent quality to red, green and blue liquid, shifting under UV light. Florian contributed post-production and color analysis to this original footage, shot by Nanosys’ Jeff Yurek.
Ultimately, this technical esotericism serves a human goal—capturing a moment with accuracy and nuance. “If there is one thing that motivates me, it’s the gap between what a display is supposed to do and what people see on screen,” Florian says. “This gap isn’t caused by a lack of innovation. The challenge is translating science into images that make sense to real viewers.”
If a better display brings you closer to what it felt like to stand there, then I know I have done my job. Often, watching this material later brings me right back to that moment. You could call it a very specific kind of meditation.”
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