Tuesday, May 14, 2013

RAW video for the 5D Mark 3

About 3 weeks after I bought my 5D Mark III, one of  the most amazing development in recent video-years has been realized by the magicians from Magic Lantern. They have been able to unlock full potential from the camera's fullframe sensor, enabling RAW video to be output directly onto the card.
I am not a technical person and definitely not a pixelpeeper but the amount of information that becomes available not only in terms of dynamic range and color space but also in terms of detail is absolutely phenomenal for every shooter.
I was going to write a piece about my initial experiences with the 5D Mark III, which were not too positive about a few findings that will most likely be completely alleviated by this development: mushy images and dynamic range. There's so much information being pumped out of the sensot at such rates that my Class 10 SD cards won't be able to keep up. I needed a CF card for backup anyway so I picked up one of these cheap Komputerbay 64GB CF cards that can apparently digest the RAW files without exploding... Here are the first RAW video's shot with the 5D Mark III:
Canon 5D Mark III Continuous Raw Video with Magic Lantern (1920x1280 24p) from Andrew Reid on Vimeo.

14-bit RAW on Canon 5D Mark III vs. factory default - Night Image Quality & Dynamic Range from Saad Rabia on Vimeo.