As most of you are probably aware, the past few months have been an exciting time for Canon DSLR owners (especially those with a 5D MKIII). The ingenious team at Magic Lantern have developed new firmware for Canon DSLRs that now allows you to shoot raw footage in the DNG sequence format (not to be confused with Cinema DNG) on the Canon 5D MK III. Not only can you shoot Raw, you can choose from a variety of new frame sizes and even shoot with anamorphic lenses in 4:3 2560 x 1280 mode.
While the firmware also works with other Canon DSLRs, to get the most out of it, you really need a 5D MK III. For example, if you are using this firmware on a 550D or 600D, you will only be able to shoot at the maximum resolution of 960 x 540 (if you are not in crop mode). The option to shoot raw on these cameras is still great, of course, but it’s a lot more practical than having the full HD raw capability.
Since the Magic Lantern team has been working on this for a while, I wanted to wait until the dust settled before writing about it, as I wanted to have a better idea of where exactly it was headed. Before I start thinking about ML firmware, I should start by saying: I truly believe that what the ML team is doing is a miracle. They took a prosumer-grade camera that was designed only to shoot highly compressed h.264 video and gave it the ability to shoot stunning raw video. This is simply amazing. Even more impressive is that their firmware allows the Canon 50D to also shoot raw, which previously had no video capabilities at all! That being said, I don’t think this development is necessarily a game-changer—at least not directly. Let’s introduce it in detail below.
I’ve shot countless times with Canons (especially the 5D/7D) over the years. They paved the way for other film-oriented digital SLRs and have proven to be amazing tools time and time again. Even though I’ve always been biased towards the GH2/GH3 over any Canon DSLR (mostly based on resolution/IQ), once the original hack was announced I started to wonder if it was worth investing in another DSLR kit designed specifically for shooting raw on the MK III . In the end I decided against it for the following reasons:
Practicality
The practicality of any given camera is extremely important to me, and a 5D using a raw hack is far from practical at the moment. I regularly work with raw workflows from EPIC/Alexa/Blackmagic etc. and have no issues handling raw materials. But generally when I shoot with a DSLR as my A camera, lower budget productions benefit more from easier setup during production and faster turnaround times in post. We know that all cameras have their pros and cons, and different cameras are best suited for specific types of work. For 5D (or any digital SLR), the sweet spot is where high-quality film production needs to be small, and it needs to be low-cost and efficient both on set and in post. Unfortunately, the raw quality you get with 5D hacking loses the practicality of shooting cheaply and efficiently with a DSLR. For this reason alone, this camera is not suitable for most of my digital SLR-based work.
cost
Media costs are another big issue for me. If you want to shoot in raw mode on the 5D MKIII, you’re going to need the best CF card money can buy. Each card costs about $300 – $600 (for a 128GB CF card) and you only get about 15 minutes of footage per card. For smaller productions this will be a problem, as the cost of media and storage (and later reproduction) can be very, very high. Usually when I bring this up to people, they offset it by pointing to the high cost of shooting a Redmag on a RED. But the fact is that for productions that can afford to shoot RED, the cost of media and storage is not an issue. While the original 5D MKIII looks great, it is not and never will be a RED camera. Large productions rarely choose native 5D raw imagery over Alexa or RED. So ultimately this is still a camera for low budget independent filmmakers, rather than a camera for mass production. And those independent films need to be very careful about where their money is spent.
Image quality
Next I want to talk about the image quality, which is a huge improvement over the compressed h.264 you usually get from the 5D – but to me it’s not enough to justify the workaround and extra cost. Don’t get me wrong, I think the quality of the MK III in raw mode is the best lens available on a digital SLR today, and it’s very beautiful. There is no doubt about it. However, a well-framed shot on an MKIII raw isn’t going to make a huge difference to a well-framed shot on any other semi-decent DSLR (unless you’re in an extremely poor light situation). This is especially irrelevant to customers buying DSLR grade products as they will never know the difference. Check out the recently released comparison video of native 5D and h.264 compression. The differences definitely exist, but it’s up to you to judge whether they will make or break your project:
reliability
The final point I want to make is the reliability of the camera. So far I’ve heard very positive things about the reliability of the firmware hack in day-to-day use, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable using the camera on any paid shoot because there’s at least a risk of camera failure. The risk may be small, but I’ve learned the hard way. On one particular shoot a few years ago, I was using a hacked GH2 that I had been shooting with for hours on end without any issues. But for some reason the hack gave me live issues where I couldn’t record for more than a few minutes at a time. Luckily I had a backup camera or we wouldn’t have been able to complete the shoot. Since then, I have only used cameras with cracked firmware in my own projects and have never done paid work. There will certainly be plenty of people who find it worth the risk and will pay to shoot with their hacked cameras, but in the long run, as far as I know, no professional shooter has hacked their 5D yet.
in conclusion
So that brings me back to my original point as to why I don’t think this is going to be a huge game changer in the independent film world. While many would disagree with me above and address all issues to fully utilize 5D’s potential, currently the numbers are not big enough. As I mentioned above, professionals who make a living using a 5D are currently unlikely to hack it and risk losing the camera due to overheating issues or other unexpected issues that may arise. If hacking proves to be stable over a long period of time, I’m sure many DPs and photographers will eventually succumb to hacking, but despite the very rapid development, they are still evolving and are still very powerful. Too early. Just a few days ago, ML unlocked a way to get nearly 14 stops of dynamic range in cameras (as seen in the video above). Again I think this is unbelievable. But it will most likely cause permanent damage to your sensor or cause other problems with your camera. We just don’t know yet.
A year later, by the time the firmware has stabilized and everyone knows it’s safe to use, I think it’s too late to have the impact many people were hoping for. By then, there will be many other original cameras that are not only better quality, but also cheaper and more practical. I’m not just talking about cameras like the Blackmagic Pocket Camera that currently exist, I’m talking about cameras that we will see released within the next year. Whether it’s a Digital Bolex, a new GoPro camera, one of the big manufacturers shaking things up, or a brand new company, there’s going to be more original cameras in the coming year. Budget raw cameras are now clearly a thing, and there are plenty of manufacturers willing to capitalize on the fact that the independent film community needs affordable raw cameras.
Only time will tell, but as talented and talented as the ML team is, they are still using hardware that was never designed to capture raw data and will ultimately be limited by camera stability, which will inevitably impact capture speed (if at all ) which is adopted by the general filmmaking community. I just wish Canon would take notice of what Magic Lantern is doing and design the camera with these features and capabilities in mind from the start. If they don’t do this soon, they’ll be out of luck, as other smaller manufacturers are now starting to make Canon products look overpriced and in some cases even outdated.
If all this hacking/tech talk is making you feel a little under-geared, read one of my recent non-gear related posts – The Importance of Stories
