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Maybe this has been discussed before, (Or maybe people don't care about such things at this point in technology), but I just discovered this app for my Pixel 7 Pro called Motioncam Pro that can do C4K raw CDNG, and to an external SSD at that. Again, maybe this app has been around for awhile and I'm late to the game, and I know its just a tiny sensor, but for someone broke like me, who can no longer afford my old GAS lifestyle, this is a pretty fun and cheap way to get back into the grueling fun of raw video. The app can even export gyro data for use in Gyroflow, for stabilization. Nothing too exciting here-

Just to share a little personal story - the S5 II really restored my fun in shooting little personal video's. I shoot almost daily for work and I always swore by large cinema camera's. I'm one of those crazy people that thinks an Ursa mini is the perfect body shape. (part of this is copied from a Reddit comment I made earlier but I thought it would be interesting to share here). For the longest time I was really torn up between having a kit that is able to capture what I consider to be professional quality and something that I actually would WANT to bring with me on a walk or a day out. I carried a little Pocket 4k (GREAT camera) with me, but by the time you rig that out to shoot comfortably with a monitor/filter holder/NDs/mic, you’re still carrying something that takes up most of your bag and it just sucked the fun out of it for me. On a job, no problem, for home video’s it just wasn’t worth it for me. I was really looking for something I could just pull out of a bag pack and shoot. So then I bought a Canon R6, and honestly that camera’s video quality was such a massive step back from even the Pocket 4k that it just wasn’t worth it for me (esp. dynamic range but also the out of camera colors). Also just awful awful video assist tools on that camera. The S5 II kinda hits all the marks for me: very small, good enough dynamic range, good colors, good monitoring tools and good AF (better than the R6 in my opinion) on my EF lenses. That last thing (combined with it being newer, so longer firmware support) pushed me over the edge when compared to the S1H by the way. I don’t mind pulling manual focus at all, but if I’m shooting on a 3 inch screen, the AF is really nice to have. Never felt like I could really trust it with the R6 but the S5 II has really really good autofocus. Here's somethign small I shot with it:

Anyway... Nice work, Brian. The sound of a lawn mower going over branches brings back many memories of my childhood. I liked the quality and can really see the raw look, especially in your dog's hair. Since I've exclusively shot raw video for years, I'm curious to hear how the post process is? I could see this being a great B-cam when I need to go incognito. Did you use the gyro function?

I mean, ok. I said it could shoot C4K, which it can, I just chose a different aspect ratio for this particular video. It can shoot raw up to 60fps, I choose 24fps, I don't consider either a low frame rate. The face is blown out I guess at some point, I need to go back to find it, but likely user error, I overexposed. I also owned the EOS M to use the magic lantern hack, and that DID suck, bc you didn't get a realtime preview, or if you did it was insanely cropped, and the Dr sucked. This looks much better than that, we can agree to disagree, and it has optical stabilization, focus peaking, realtime preview, 4K, 60p. I'm not claiming this is somehow better than a modern mirrorless, but very few modern mirrorless shoot raw, hell most are just now getting to 10bit. This looks better than the videos I get when using the stock video app. And I'm fucking poor and can't afford a modern mirrorless, so yeah, I have this (relatively cheap) phone that all of a sudden can shoot raw, I'm going to enjoy it.

I'm confused as well... as someone who posts test shots, I understand what it's like to put yourself out there on a public forum. So I applaud anyone on this forum that is willing to share. Since you post a lot of shots from your camera(s) of the week, I'd think you may have the same reservations and extend the same courtesy. Truth is, I loved everything about Brian's post and despise almost everything about your reply... It's a shame that with all of your money, you can't seem to afford common courtesy and manners.

Fantastic video! The quality of RAW on a light, slim phone, plus grading software, compared to the gigantic VHS camera my dad had in the 80s is absolutely unbelievable. I love using motioncam on my Pixel 6a for a 15fps 8mm feel. It's really fun and freeing in the sense that I don't stress about getting a perfect image with it like I do my mirrorless cameras. I just get the exposure as close as I can and let 'er rip. It's easier to focus on framing when you aren't worried about exposure or focus. Though I do wish the focusing had a better, less chaotic, feel with the slider. I like the feeling on the focus ring in my hand. The only other thing I find frustrating with Android phones in comparison to an iphone is the lack of good accessories due to the inexistence of standardization between manufacturers. I would love to be able to get a nice variND for my phone that doesn't seem janky or third party. I'm not a fan of fluctuating shutter speed for exposure.

@Brian Williams welcome to motioncam man, I find it very nice and I am skint like you. I cannot invest money into expensive cameras since I am not in this video business, so I am enjoying it as it is. Developers are working on this app to improve it and solve some of the bugs and is getting better and better, keep sharing your videos!

I knew it. I went to Perth WA for an entire week once and it was just too quiet. You could pull up for instance and park right outside a restaurant on a Friday evening without a problem. There was a big movie being filmed around the same time elsewhere and they needed a lot of extras, so it makes sense now why the artificial city of Perth was so quiet. My brother lives there now. Says he does but now I realise that is a lie. My own family lie to me. What is this world coming to? Must dash, I have Aslan and Mr Tumnus coming round for breakfast shortly. Conspiracy theorists 🤣

Just a recent discovery. I think I still had an iPhone the last time I even thought about raw video on a phone, and there wasn’t a useable app anywhere at the time (esp. not on the iPhone, I assume there probably never will be). The closest I got was the iPhone 13 Pro with ProRes, but after dropping close to $2k for the 1TB version so that it could hold all that ProRes, I started to think it wasn’t worth the money, for what I was doing at least (which is filming my kids basically). So I was kind of floored yesterday when I just happened to discover Motioncam, especially the fact that I could dust off my old T5 ssd and plug it into the phone to record straight to the ssd. Such a cheaper setup, and I’m getting 4K raw. I kind of thought I was giving up on mobile filmmaking when I went over to android, but I guess not!

Hey all - Back in my 20s I was very much into video. I was living in Japan and traveling around Asia and would make videos/music videos with all my travel footage. I had a Sony handycam with a Carl Zeiss lens that I bought for... prob $600. I feel like I definitely got the most I could out of that camera at the time. After my travels, I came home and started a career, and 15ish years passed just like that. I have really neglected the creative side of my life, and now I want to get back to it. I really loved creating videos. I do have 3 youtube channels at the moment, nothing crazy in terms of size, around 500-600 subscribers on each account. I just use an iPhone and a HD logitech cam because it's mainly talking head stuff. But I really want to expand and get back into making fun videos. Additionally, I do "walking tours" where I visit cities/parks/hikes and do 1-2 hrs of straight shooting with me walking around the location, sometimes with commentary (DJI mic). I currently do this on an iPhone 13 with a gimbal. I really want to upgrade at this point. So after researching quite a bit, I've narrowed it down to either the fx3 or the fx30. I have a lucrative career (planning to retire in my early 40s lucrative), so the budget is flexible. This makes me want to just go for the fx3, because I have the money, but I know very little about videography at this point. No experience using RAW or log.. or even know what to do with the footage once I have it. I have done color correcting on my previous videos but very amateur. So basically I'd be learning from the ground up. So the fact that I have very little experience makes me lean more toward the fx30. But a lot of my walking videos are at sunset, so having spectacular low-light performance is important. I've watched a ton of youtube videos on fx30 vs. fx3.. and a lot of the fx30 footage looks amazing.. but something in me just wants to go big and get the fx3.. I think having the money is part of it but I also really want the best end product possible in that budget range (not looking to upgrade above the fx3). So.. I'm at a bit of inflection point on what to do. Here's an example of what I was doing around 2007ish.

For those who are interested in using smartphones as video cameras, check motioncam and Sebastian Merca's youtube channels. There are some great examples and also comparisons with BMPCC 4K and Panasonic S1H. And you can download source file too ! I downloaded one clip shot by Sebastian Merca at night (challenging lighting) on Samsung S22 Ultra main camera and applied some fine grain, film emulsion and blooming with Dehancer plugin. Total 15 min. of work. Here is the result (file in the link will stay for few weeks, then it will be gone): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15blxv9w_8nsOdTWgZbLKsCwTkVi9f1Bm?usp=sharing and here is the original with download link to a much bigger Prores source file https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1_TSYpYFBU For me picture quality is better than iPhone 13/14. I would say much better. Also shot few clips at 18 fps on my Samsung S10+. I am impressed ! This year some flagship Android phones from Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo are with 1 inch main camera sensor size and the other cameras are with bigger sensors too. According to some initial reports and reviews on Vivo X90 + all 4 cameras are available to motioncam application and can shoot at 60fps with just few dropped frames. Same for Xiaomi 13 Ultra and Pro although on main camera 60fps are only at 4K DCI aspect ratio. At 24 and 30 fps you can shoot at 4:3 or so called open gate. Keep in mind this is not my personal experience, just what I read in forums and what people testing those devices report on youtube. Those smartphones for me are the Super 16 digital cameras of the year not EOS M in crop mode. Downside are tiny lenses and 23mm equivalent focal length on main camera. One solution would be to crop in post 4000:1.5=2666 to get to 35mm which is much better focal length. Still decent resolution and with Davinci Resolve Super Scale to 4K picture will look very good IMHO. For smartphones where cameras are in circular block like Xiaomi 13 Ultra and Vivo X90+ there are special cases where filter can be attached (screwed), similar to the Xiaomi 13 Ultra photo case which takes 67mm filters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UVQ5jK-Ygw For all other phones look at third parties solution like smallrig. They have universal cages where in similar fashion you can use regular circular ND or VariND filters on top of the camera block. Like this one: https://www.smallrig.com/SmallRig-MagEase-Magnetic-1-4-Effect-Black-Mist-Filter-Kit-52mm-4217.html

Really appreciate the reactivation of interest for raw video with a smartphone. Thanks for restarting the already nice discussion in this thread. @Brian Williams Some of my favorite colour palettes presented on youtube have been shot with Eos M Raw btw, rivaling the best available light shots presented on this forum, bettering most. Raw images from 1/1.7-1.8 sensors in compact cameras have displayed some tasty colours, that from 10 year old cameras such as an Oly XZ2 or XZ10. The latter even with a smaller 1/2.3 sensor. So I imagine a modern sensor in these and larger sizes will put out a nice RAW image for video to work with. I have had success with processing Jpegs from old 6MPix cameras. So, looking forward to see this thing gaining momentum. Would love some manual focus fun and ND options and nice handling as well. 😊 @billdoubleu

H265 looks worse than ProRes HQ or N-RAW but only in terms of texture, the dynamic range should be the same. I haven't done any side by side tests but it looks like the DR in N-log is the same as on Z9 or Z6II. Are you shooting in N-log? What are you using to transform the footage to REC709? The official LUTs are pretty harsh, even the updated ones for Z8. That might be your problem.

I don't think so. It looks like zoom lens for Canon XL1 camcorder. It has 3X 1/3 inch CCD sensors and "an exclusive XL lens-mount system". You can put EF lenses on that camera (with special adapter) but You cannot put this lens on C100 camera.

Thanks. Shot 4k log, Dehancer did most of the heavy lifting. Lens was a Sigma 18-35 with a 1/8 promist, mostly at 35mm. That lens actually ‘covers’ 16:9 full frame from around 25mm onwards, I really like the little abberations and falloff you get around the edges. So you basically end up with a nice, very sharp 25-35 1.8 with a lot of character.

Interesting. I'm curious, how are you converting to rec709? Are you using Nikon's 3d LUT? I shoot in NLOG frequently on my Nikon Z6, and i find that Nikon's 3D LUT has pretty bad highlight rolloff. I get significantly better results if I use Davinci Resolve's Color Space Transform to go from Rec2020/NLOG to Rec709/Rec709. Seriously, looks wayyy better than the LUT. You should be able to get great results from NLOG; give Davinci's CST a try.

I bit the bullet and bought a z8. I've done a bit of testing and couple of shoots. First impressions are not great. I need to do some more scientific testing this weekend, but the highlight rolloff and lack of dynamic range make the 10 bit h.265 look worse than my 8bit z6ii. I was keen to get the raw video for those times where I wanted the best possible quality, but kinda hoping and expecting (from the general comments/videos/raving I've seen) that the h.265 would be a step up from the z6. The stills dynamic range isn't quite up to my 11 year old d800 either. And today I found the autofocus hunting a bit in low light. Seeing as my bread and butter shooting involves low light and very high contrast I'm not sure it's the right fit for me so far. I've tried ramping up the d-lighting but meh. Anyone know if the highlight rolloff improves with pro res? I really don't want to shoot raw for my little shoots - $7K AUD to make my life harder 🤦 I really love high dynamic range stills cameras, I don't think there's one hybrid camera in sony's line up that is a good fit either. It's kinda depressing knowing that I could increase the quality of my output by shooting stills consistently with that 11 year old beastie.

Australia doesn't exist. That's why it confused @MrSMWthat someone could be posting from that timezone.

film color > digital color

I agree about the time lapses. Indeed, a lot of the high-resolution "video" TV 4K and 8K demos (Samsung, LG, Sony) shown in stores are time-lapses, because I suspect at least early on there were no 4K and 8K video cameras of good-enough quality.

No worries! A little bit of excess enthusiasm is the least of our issues!! What are you planning on using the RAW for? or is it just a recent discovery?

My understanding of it was that a colour timer would take the negative and make a positive print using a special machine where each frame of the film was exposed via a separate light for Red, Green and Blue, and the machine allowed the exposure time for each to be adjusted. Thus the phrase "colour timing". Adjusting all of them would raise/lower the overall exposure and adjusting them in relation to each other would adjust the WB. The controls from that operation live on as the "printer lights" controls in Resolve and other software, as they literally adjusted the lights of the printer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_grading#Color_timing

@Brian Williams On the contrary.. Lots of interest, as expressed in this thread! Smartphone sensors have enormous potential if we could just get all the ridiculous over-processing out of the way to get to the image. I've developed a powergrade that matches my iPhone to my GX85 to suit the work I do, but RAW would be the far easier option, that's for sure!

I think maybe they work better for weddings where you are sniping shots. I have to do focus pulls on dollys and such for take after take so more precision is required maybe.

@kye do you ever sleep? Or are you a vampire or at least something of a night owl because I thought you were in the US but post regularly during our Europe daytime?!

Production process: Shot on Panavision Cameras and anamorphic lenses Using Kodak and Fuji negative films and Kodak projection film No digital intermediary - editing was done on the negative The image quality that blew you away was the state of the art in colour science in 1989. Here we are in 2023, 34 years later and we have 8K RAW but it still doesn't look even remotely like that. It's a pity everyone wanted more pixels instead of better pixels.

ah, I forgot last, but not least: One Sony PMW-F3 for the locked off unmanned angles. (as it doesn't matter what lens is being used here, if the camera is unmanned)