Anyone who has even dabbled in professional photography can tell you the benefits of shooting RAW. Sure, the files take up significantly more space, but the ability to access all the untouched data and dynamic range before it gets crushed into a JPEG is priceless. Sometimes, having that access can save an otherwise ruined picture.
When it comes to movie recording, the same is true. Shooting RAW frames in a video recording gives you much more freedom and control over the image quality in post production versus traditional compressed video recording formats. However, the tremendous amount of space and processing power required to record 24 RAW frames per second in real time is too daunting for most video cameras to handle. In fact, only extremely pricey Hollywood production cameras have the ability to shoot RAW movies, with the exception of a certain prosumer movie camera from Black Magic Design. It should come as no surprise then that common DSLR cameras such as Canon’s iconic 5D don’t offer RAW video recording, even though they can and do shoot RAW photographs on a daily basis.
But that’s all changing. With the speedy new Digic 5+ chip in Canon’s latest 5D mark 3 model, the good folks behind the hacks reverse-engineered tools of Magic Lantern have been asking whether or not the hardware can actually handle RAW movie recording. A couple of weeks ago, those same people turned heads by releasing samples of raw bursts taken on a 5D. The clips were more or less proof-of-concept, but it appears that just yesterday the ability to record RAW 24p with variable frame sizes became available in an alpha release.
Andrew Reid of EOSHD has an excellent hands on test. While shooting higher than 1080p seemed to have bugs, shooting normal full HD at 24 fps and RAW on a super fast SD card apparently works well and, as Reid points out, didn’t blow up his camera.
This is big news. Not just because it’s super cool to see folks hacking new features into hardware, but because the 5D is now the only full-frame sized RAW video recording camera commercially available. There’s also the added bonus that the 5D costs a fraction of the expensive Hollywood production cameras.
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