I am in Hawaii on the beautiful Island of Kauai with my family on vacation. well, I'm supposed to be on vacation. Here's why I'm making this video: we recently got a Canon c100 Mark 3 for our professional as well as in-house work. That camera is pretty bad-ass. Most of our videos before have been using the Canon 5D Mark 3 and as our primary and some b-roll with the Canon 70D.
Since we have the C100 does that mean that our 5d Mark 3 goes back into the drawer? No, absolutely not. We still use it for primary video but I'm a hacker and I like to hack things. So one of the things I did was I built a Hackintosh, which is a PC running Mac OS. Another thing that I did was I installed the Magic Lantern software on our 5d Mark 3.
Magic Lantern Software
Quick story about Magic Lantern is the developers of Magic Lantern have managed to open up capabilities in the 5d and many other models of Canon cameras that really push it to its limits. One thing is that it includes RAW recording, which basically takes the image right from the sensor and stores it on your car so you're getting 14-bit and as opposed to 8 bit in the 5d Mark 3. There's some metering that you can bring up on the display like audio-meters, RGB parades and wave forms. Let's just say it's a bleeding edge upgrade for your Canon camera. If your camera supports it take a look at it on Magic Lantern’s website.
Some Test Shots
So what I did was I installed Magic Lantern, came to Hawaii and decided to do some picture quality test for myself. I used my Samsung Note 4, the 5d Mark 3 internal recording and Magic Lantern RAW. So without further ado, let's take a look at some of the results.
You're going to be able to achieve a higher dynamic range using the 14-bit Magic Lantern RAW format but that high dynamic range comes at a bit of a cost. Once you're done recording these really huge files you have to bring them into your computer and then convert them all into something that's usable by your editor. I use a couple of utility programs that do this but remember it's going to take time and you're not just going to be able to throw it into your editor and be done.
Since using Magic Lantern pushes the camera to its limits we've been able to achieve 1920x1080 at 24 frames per second with no dropped frames. Some people achieve higher resolutions and higher fps but it really depends on the camera and your memory cards.
So there you have it. Some comparisons between my phone, 5d Mark 3 and 5d Mark 3 using Magic Lantern software in raw recording mode.
The Bottom Line
So what does this mean? Well we're still going to use our C100 for most of our recordings in-house and with clients. We'll still be using the 5D, probably with an Atomos Ninja external 10-bit recorder. The workflow for the RAW recording of the 5D may not be worth it for most of our work, but every once in a while we might use it for green-screen for better composites or for some beauty shots. Give Magic Lantern a look if you have a Canon camera. Make sure your camera is supported, make sure you follow all the instructions on their site. You don’t want to brick your camera, so be careful.
Magic Lantern Website:
magiclantern.fm
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