RAW is not log for sure. It's trying to squeeze a higher DR into the range that can be displayed by today's displays.

Log is a kind of lossy compression, actually. It's doing that quite efficiently by redistributing bits to areas where humans have a better perception of tonal changes and dropping some minor differences in areas where we don't see that we'll. But lossy nevertheless, and it was developed for film scans initially in a time when fast storage was still very expensive.

Colorists like it because they can see from the start what was really recorded and what they can play with. But it's their task to turn dull and stale looking log footage into something attractive or expressive.

If you know your camera very well and know how you exposed, you can drop the log conversion and grade from RAW. BTW, log looks different from all major camera manufacturers.

@kholi Thanks.

@vapourtrail You can't go wrong with the VF cage. Best $140 ever spent. And people love the cage!

Hi Everyone

This is a first few days video review of the Raw recording in the Blackmagic Pocket Camera.

On my website there is a link to download some raw footage too.

Chris :)

One stop over or under target exposure. Less noise of course with one stop over, one stop under protecting highlights.

@jrd

What are you differing on, exactly? I didn't say anything about grading RAW without BMD Film as a starting point?

I said transcode directly from the RAW to ProRes to hand off?

But, since you've mentioned it, it's actually pretty easy to grade from the RAW without BMD Film, you just start at a different place.

@kholi Yeah. That last workflow is the one that I'd use most of the time.
Difference between internal ProRes footage and RAW->DNxHD is very noticeable.

FYI RAW is not LOG, two different things.

The RAW DNGs coming off of the camera are exactly as they should be. It's the same for any other camera shooting CinemaDNG. BMD FIlm is BMD's way of moving the DNGs back into a LOGSpace for colorists that prefer to begin that way.

As mentioned a few days back (and, now being discovered), the Pocket Camera's RAW actually comes off of the cards looking fairly accurate if you expose within a one stop bracket, and you could literally just export that as ProRes and call it a day. That's only abnormal to me because the 2.5K's stills often looked unpleasant from the start, I'm finding the Pocket RAW DNGs almost deliverable when shot for the look.

And the footage looks far better than the ProRes Video mode.

A workflow on set could be to have your offloader transcoding to 1080 DNxHD or ProRes right from the CinemaDNG, and discarding the RAW if you want.

There ya go. Thanks V.

I suggest everyone that is new go find Davinci tutorials for RAW online somewhere and watch them before blindly loading footage up and then freaking out. This is a process people. Learn it. I would try and post some links but I'm on location in the middle of the Mojave Desert so I only have crappy cell phone service at the moment.

I'm lost.

Shooting RAW is NOT "the same as shooting in video mode in terms of color/gamma" -- contrast and color will be way off in RAW, because of all the data which is being captured. Those supersaturated RAW images speak for themselves. It's likely to become a style, but this is not how the footage is supposed to look.

Use the procedure that Flanders spelled out, or if you want to do all the clips at once, the Blackmagic BMPCC/BMCC manual explains how to do it for all clips in a project.

Once the data is in this more manageable form (BMD film), then you start grading as you would when shooting in Prores film mode, which means starting from scratch -- applying curves, determining saturation levels, using power windows where necessary, etc. Or using an LUT or add-on to give you a basic grade, which you can then refine.

@Flaaandeeers Many thanks!