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A Wedding I filmed with the 5D MK3 and magic lantern RAW. The remaining 30% is 5D Mk3 and Mk2 h.264 and a Gopro shot for the aerial.

   

Found these two H.264 clips that I accidentally recorded while filming RAW for this video https://vimeo.com/77580463 so I decided to do a quick comparison. Still can't believe the difference!

H.264 was filmed at contrast 0 saturation - 2 sharpness - 2

After five trips to the game reserve, some test footage and a 10 day holiday in Mossel Bay we ended up with 1 terabyte of raw stock footage. I've now edited this down to 3 minutes.

Everything was graded with the new Resolve 10. Finally the pink fringing problem is completely gone with Resolve 10! Another great new feature is a special RAW sharpening tool designed for RAW footage that really improves the quality.

After filming and grading 1 terabyte of footage with zero drop frames or any problems whatsoever I am starting to trust Magic Lantern RAW firmware more and more. I am still running an old build of 27 July. It can only get better from here on!

Once you get to know the workflow, working with RAW footage is a breeze. I think of RAW as Proress 444 with a conversion step in between.

I used the 3x crop mode on a lot of these shots. I discovered that the crop mode has the same effect as the 2x extender in that it magnifies the image, so any imperfections of the lens get more noticeable, although this is hardly noticeable as you will see from the footage. Turning my 200mm 2.8 into a 600mm 2.8 with a click of a button was really great. All the wildlife shots were filmed from a car with a big pillow rested on the window.

Workflow:
Import into Davinci Resolve and export proxies. Edit sequence in FCP. Import xml into Davinci. Automatically relink to original RAW files. Grade and export beautiful proress 4444 sequence.

The part I loved most about Resolve's workflow is that you can apply the BMD Film color space and gamma to all the clips which turns them into super flat gradable footage. An excellent starting point.

For archive of the footage I decided to render all clips in Resolve to Proress 4444 with the BMD super flat color space applied to it and the white balance and exposure set as desired. I did a few tests and applied the exact same grade from a RAW clip on the same Proress 4444 clip and even at 400% there is no difference at all. The only difference between RAW and Proress 4444 is that you can change the white balance and recover exposure, so do this before you export to Proress 4444.
By archiving Proress and not RAW you save 60% on storage. Proress HQ is just not good enough as you can see the difference so be sure to use Proress 4444.

Tech Spec:

Camera: Canon 5D Mark III

Lens: 70 - 200 2.8 IS II & 24 - 70 2.8 II

CF Card: 2x 32gb Lexar & 2x 64gb Lexar (all 1000x)

HDD: NextoDi NVS1501 750gb

Support: Tripod & Pillow
Software:
 DaVinci Resolve 10 & 
FCP

After doing a few random test shots of landscapes etc, I decided to take Magic Lantern RAW and the 5D Mark III to the game reserve to film some animals. This was a very good test to see how the raw hack puts up in various lighting situations.

I used the 3x crop mode on a lot of these shots. I discovered that the crop mode has the same effect as the 2x extender in that it magnifies the image, so any imperfections of the lens get more noticeable, although this is hardly noticeable as you will see from the footage. Turning my 200mm 2.8 into a 600mm 2.8 with a click of a button was really great. I tried a few shots with a 2x extender and the 3x crop mode combined but then the quality is just not usable. All the shots were filmed from a car with a big pillow rested on the window.

Workflow:
Import into Davinci Resolve and export proxies. Edit sequence in FCP. Import xml into Davinci. Automatically relink to original RAW files. Grade and export beautiful proress 444 sequence.

Once you get to know this workflow it gets really easy. It's surprisingly similar to my h.264 workflow which was the following. Transcode to Proress with Mpeg Streamclip, edit in FCP, grade in Color, export. The only drawback is hard drive space but its absolutely worth it when you see the quality.

The part I loved most about Resolve's workflow is that you can apply the BMD Film color space and gamma to all the clips which turns them into super flat gradable footage. An excellent starting point.

For archive of the footage I decided to render all clips in Resolve to Proress 444 with the BMD super flat color space applied to it and the white balance and exposure set as desired. I did a few tests and applied the exact same grade from a RAW clip on the same Proress 444 clip and even at 400% there is no difference at all. The only difference between RAW and Proress 444 is that you can change the white balance and recover exposure, so do this before you export to Proress 444.
By archiving Proress and not RAW you save 60% on storage. Proress HQ is just not good enough as you can see the difference so be sure to use Proress 444.

Tech Spec:
Camera: Canon 5D Mark III
Lens: 70 - 200 2.8 IS II
CF Card: 2x 32gb Lexar & 2x 64gb Lexar (all 1000x)
HDD: NextoDi NVS1501 750gb
Support: Pillow

Software:
DaVinci Resolve
FCP