BIG NEWS - Hands on with CONTINUOUS raw recording on Canon 5D Mark III

[kedbear]

If you ever shot some Fuji Velvia 50 and such that was pretty contrasty and wildly saturated.

I was referencing 35mm motion picture film, not stills film. Specifically the kodak stocks such as the 18/19.

[Andrew Reid]

Come on guys.. There's enough on topic stuff to discuss about. I noticed someone is working on 14 to 12 and 10 bit compression in camera. Sounds interesting to me. Would help the 5D2 and slower cameras to be reliable at higher resolutions.

Apparently 12 bit is 15% compression and 10 bit 29%

http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=5601.0

 

Interesting. How would it impact dynamic range though? If you look at the dreadful DR in the H.264, I think a lot of that is due to 8bit compression.

[ScreensPro]

12 bit will still be very, very good for all aspects of the image (RED One is 12 bit, irrc)

 

I've never heard of 10bit raw, but a 10bit log file holds DR very well (F3 is a good example), so could still be great.

[Julian]

Interesting. How would it impact dynamic range though? If you look at the dreadful DR in the H.264, I think a lot of that is due to 8bit compression.

 

I never saw a big difference in 14 and 12 bits raw in dslr's, photography wise. Probably it makes a bit of a difference if you make extreme corrections. Still 10 bit will be better than the 8 bit H264 and if the contrast is manageable I suppose 10 bit will be pretty good.

[cameraboy]

canon c500 have 10 bit raw with baked-in ISO and white balance ...

[Andrew Reid]

I never saw a big difference in 14 and 12 bits raw in dslr's, photography wise. Probably it makes a bit of a difference if you make extreme corrections. Still 10 bit will be better than the 8 bit H264 and if the contrast is manageable I suppose 10 bit will be pretty good.

 

14bit to 12bit makes a lot of sense to me. I hope they find a way to do it.

 

14bit to 10bit I think would be trickier - wouldn't you have to remap the dynamic range to avoid clipping?

[yupmouthteeth]

Turmoil! Disaster! Drama! Raw for free.

 

What a hardship. Better image quality than a $15,000 camera on your $3000 DSLR and the first ever full frame camera to record uncompressed raw internally to compact flash card.

 

FOR FREE.

 

I don't call that turmoil I call it a miracle.

 

 

 

That's the thing, though... it's NOT free. Not everyone owns the 5D. Most I would say actually don't. And if it's a choice between buying a $3,000 camera that shoots a few seconds of unstable raw and buying a $2,995 or $3,995 camera that shoots stable raw at a higher resolution, I'd say that Blackmagic still wins when presented to undecided customers.

 

If anything, I'm still tempted to buy the Blackmagic Pocket over this. 1080p raw for $999. Take the two grand you've saved over the 5D and go out and buy some nice m43 glass to go with it.

 

I agree this is a nice treat for folks who already have a 5D, but I still don't believe the raw abilities of this camera as it currently stands warrants a $3,000 purchase.

 

But again, if Magic Lantern can actually make this stable and eliminate those image-tearing motion and vertical line issues (that I notice Andrew keeps conveniently ignoring) AND gives us TRUE continuous recording that last for several minutes before dropping frames (which by the way should absolutely make it a total dealbreaker) then I'd be happy to drop the money and buy it.   

 

It's getting there, but it's not quite revolutionary yet. 

[nahua]

That's the thing, though... it's NOT free. Not everyone owns the 5D. Most I would say actually don't. And if it's a choice between buying a $3,000 camera that shoots a few seconds of unstable raw and buying a $2,995 or $3,995 camera that shoots stable raw at a higher resolution, I'd say that Blackmagic still wins when presented to undecided customers.

 

If anything, I'm still tempted to buy the Blackmagic Pocket over this. 1080p raw for $999. Take the two grand you've saved over the 5D and go out and buy some nice m43 glass to go with it.

 

I agree this is a nice treat for folks who already have a 5D, but I still don't believe the raw abilities of this camera as it currently stands warrants a $3,000 purchase.

 

But again, if Magic Lantern can actually make this stable and eliminate those image-tearing motion and vertical line issues (that I notice Andrew keeps conveniently ignoring) AND gives us TRUE continuous recording that last for several minutes before dropping frames (which by the way should absolutely make it a total dealbreaker) then I'd be happy to drop the money and buy it.   

 

It's getting there, but it's not quite revolutionary yet. 

You do have a good argument, but you're only looking at the 5D.  Did you know they are hacking all the rebels too?  550D, 600D, 50D, 60D?  Those are easily less than a $1000 used. 

 

It's still early days but there's room for a lot of improvements.  I think all these cameras will be shooting consistent RAW soon enough.  And that'll give you more than enough options for under a $1000.

 

EDIT: My mistake that was just a regular video.  There are videos being posted using ML RAW for the 550D and 600D

[MORGANSHEI]

Hello, can someone help me ?

I have a problem with raw, when I shoot on my screen, the exposition os good, the color space it's ok too, I put all my image in flated mode.

But when I export my raw files on photoshop, the rushes they so dark and so yellow 

I d'ont understand why ,can someone help me ? 

 

here the jpg, raw not retouched, she's so dark and yellow

 

http://www.sheitanphotodirector.tumblr.com/image/51170007310

[Julian]

That's because you are shooting in a flat mode, you have to expert the raw 'flat' as well. You are not going to get the same image you get on your screen, you get a raw file, the 'look' is applied when you convert the dng's. Use the histogram to expose your shots correctly.

 

On another note:

 

Someone wrote a cool windows app to generate quick proxies from the .raw files: http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=5557.0

It also unpacks all your raw files into different folders.

[Andrew Reid]

The look isn't applied when you convert from raw to DNG, it is applied in your grading workflow, be it with Adobe Camera Raw controls (After Effects) or in Resolve.

 

The new Windows app looks good. A LOT of development to come on the workflow front.

 

Today Andrew Wonder's team and myself included are trying to get Resolve to eat the DNG files. Same issue right now as the Nikon 1 NEF burst mode stills converted to DNG. They don't work. Metadata isn't right and they're not Cinema DNG files.

[Julian]

The look isn't applied when you convert from raw to DNG, it is applied in your grading workflow, be it with Adobe Camera Raw controls (After Effects) or in Resolve.

 

Thats what I ment, when you convert the DNG to the next step.

 

Here's some discussion on CinemaDNG: http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=5618.0

Seems like they are working on it.

[Andrew Reid]

 

Here's my research... Resolve is taking the reduced-resolution image metadata for the Magic Lantern DNGs.

 

Cinema DNG has different EXIF data to stills standard DNG.

For a start no reduced res image EXIF.

 

Resolve seems only designed to read the Cinema DNG EXIF data.

 

Since DNG and Cinema DNG are practically the same format aside from metadata, if they make the metadata Cinema DNG standard in Raw2DNG I think that might fix the problem.

[Ilias Giarimis]

Interesting. How would it impact dynamic range though? If you look at the dreadful DR in the H.264, I think a lot of that is due to 8bit compression.

 

It is not because of 8 bit, proved by the conversions of our RAWs to jpeg 8bit. An 8bit video with a rec.709 gamma can support 10 stops DR while retaining acceptable tonality without posterizations and with robustness  enough for (up to) middle gradation.

 

It's due to silly contrasty tone curves used by Canon/Panny etc which clip highlight/shadows.

 

14bit to 12bit makes a lot of sense to me. I hope they find a way to do it.

 

14bit to 10bit I think would be trickier - wouldn't you have to remap the dynamic range to avoid clipping?

 

Yes with 10bits linear there could be a problem, we have to use log (or just rec.709 gamma) encoding. This way It's pretty robust for gradation, proved by the use of 10bit log as a standard for Digital Intermediates.

[Ilias Giarimis]

 

Here's my research... Resolve is taking the reduced-resolution image metadata for the Magic Lantern DNGs.

 

Cinema DNG has different EXIF data to stills standard DNG.

For a start no reduced res image EXIF.

 

Resolve seems only designed to read the Cinema DNG EXIF data.

 

Since DNG and Cinema DNG are practically the same format aside from metadata, if they make the metadata Cinema DNG standard in Raw2DNG I think that might fix the problem.

 

For examining the influence of the in DNG embedded jpeg preview you can try converting the ML DNGs with Adobe DNG converter (disabling "skip source image if destination already exists)  to new DNGs with a) full preview b) midsize preview c)no preview and load in Resolve.

 

Added bonus will be the DNG lossless compression applied which shrinks the file size from 3.5MB to around 2.3MB on average.

 

One more option is to use DNG lossy compression which shrinks 3.5MB to about 1.0MB exporting a file with 8bit log encoding. It will be interesting to check the robustness of this format in gradation.

[Andrew Reid]

Without the JPEG preview, the problem appears to be that the raw data / EXIF is still stored in a subfile within the DNG, not like Cinema DNG where there's no subfile.

 

Does anyone know how to re-jig the DNG file so that it perfectly resembles a Cinema DNG file?

 

Cinema DNG is the answer. No preview, no subfile crap.

[OlofStorm]

https://vimeo.com/66890720

[ScreensPro]

Nice shots OlofStorm.... Good to see someone who doesn't mind pushing the blacks up in the grade.

 

Too many people are desperate to show every last drop of DR, rather than actually trying to create a great look.

[Julian]

I think it's a bit dark on the face though :)

[HurtinMinorKey]

I think it's a bit dark on the face though :)

 

A consequence of trying to get all the sky/clouds without clipping. If he brought the light on his face too much, i bet we'd see a bunch of noise.

 

Nice job, Olof.