Canon 5D mark III 24p RAW test – A RAW in the park

by Johnnie BehiriMay 14^th, 2013

Yes, the source for the video above is a 1080p 14bit RAW shot with the 5D mark III!!! Here’s a framegrab. And a comparison to the Blackmagic Cinema Camera is in the works (give us some hours to finish the editing). But we can already say: The 5D mark III RAW module hack blows the BMCC far away!

Yesterday the developers working on the Magic Lantern hack for the Canon 5D mark III posted about their progress on a RAW hack that enables the Canon 5D mark III to shoot continuous 14bit RAW at 24 frames per second (!!!). The results are totally breathtaking, make sure you download and watch the source at vimeo: LINK

For a complete dummies GUIDE on how to achieve the RAW hack on your Canon 5D mark III see THIS ARTICLE.

TEST NOTES:

First and most important, I would like to thank the ML team for what they did. Adding RAW recording to a very popular camera and the plan to add RAW recording for most of Canon HDSLR family is earth shaking news. It is as big as allowing HDSLR cameras to shoot video.

This short test we did was shot in an hour and meant to test the following:
-The quality of footage coming out of the Canon 5d markIII in RAW shooting mode.
-Workflow from shooting to delivery (see the related article here:http://www.cined.com/news/?p=17898)
-Cleanness of footage in ISO 1600 (see from minute 00:51:05)
-Comparison of few shots between this camera and the BMCC (coming soon)

RAW recording in this camera price range was till now only possible with the Blackmagic cinema camera which has a relatively small sensor, and unsatisfactory low light performance and in some conditions a major amount of moire. By introducing a RAW recording possibility for the Canon 5d MarkIII you can now enjoy full frame image, Canon’s extremely clean high ISO performance and almost moire free footage.

The high quality footage coming out from the camera in RAW mode is simply INSANE!. I recommend downloading and watching it on a big screen in order to appreciate what ML did. Yes, there are still some glitches like horizontal color lines popping up un-expectedly in the footage (you can see one at 00:53:22 ) and the actual digging in the ML menu in order to activate RAW recording can be a pain but all in all this feature implementation is huge!

If you buy a Canon 5D mark III, please get it HERE to reward our efforts and PLEASE ALSO MAKE SURE YOU DONATE TO MAGIC LANTERN FOR MAKING THIS AWESOME DEVELOPMENT POSSIBLE: LINK

Notes:
Tokina 11-16mm 2.8 used on 16mm focal length
Camera picture profile: Neutral

UPDATE:
The files are really strong. Some DNG RAW files if you would like to test it yourself (open in Photoshop):
000123.dng
000169.dng
38000310.dng