To Raw Or Not To Raw? - When To Shoot Raw Video On The 5d Mark III

Recently at Friday's Films we've been testing out the Magic Lantern Raw hack. We love the look and flexibility that Raw gives us, but Raw also adds a lot of time, storage, and processing to our workflow. So we designed some tests to get an understanding of which shots or projects would benefit the most from shooting Raw, and which shots and projects Raw is probably over kill for.

We shot a series of different scenarios simultaneously with Raw and H264, then brought those shots into Davinci Resolve, and applied some aggressive, stylized color grades to the Raw shots. Then we tried to match the look of the Raw shots on the H264 files as best as we could.

This gave us a feel for where Raw really shines, where the standard H264 falls apart, and where the difference between the two probably isn't enough to justify the cost and time Raw adds to a project. In the end we are pretty excited about the results and the possibilities

Raw gives us, and we have a much clearer idea of where Raw fits into our productions, and where it doesn't.

Editing and Narration by Sigismund S. Pikul

Shots by Sigismund S. Pikul & Mike Kelly

Text and video via fridaysfilms.com