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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Big New Canon Rumor - RAW Recording Module for 5D2 & 7D?

Would it be possible Canon just announce it is about to enter medium format photography?

v*
 
Evin Grant said:
The announcement is from Canon's business solutions dept., not camera. Might be a cutting edge 4K photocopier though :biggrin:
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I agree. The Canon 9/29 announcement is just as likely to be a home digital media hub as it is a new camera. After all, their latest creation hasn't even hit the streets yet.
 
But it is very likely that they will eventually release something with the 7D's sensor and image, but with faster processing and hopefully faster read for less jello... and probably two models, one fixed and an other with a canon mount. Maybe they'll wise up and buy up Brieger!
 
Tom L said:
...rumor has it that Canon may be prepping to unveil a RAW or sRAW recording module for the 5D2, 7D, etc, which would record possibly via the CF card slot... Don't know about framerates or RAW vs sRAW. And again, this is totally unconfirmed, from a single "high-placed" source....

Just hearing now that it might be sRAW 1080p. Full RAW would obviously be better.

Not sure if it records via Hdmi or CF.
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Hmmm... I'm very sceptical that it would be technically possible to re-configure a 5D2 or 7D via firmware to record 1080p sRAW at video framerates. Remember, the 5D2 uses an ASIC internally for its heavy lifting. And ASICs can't be completely re-configured in the field, unlike FPGAs (which the RED ONE uses). In other words, the 5D2's ASIC is factory-built to do a set of specific tasks (I presume the existing video hardware does something like: quick-and-dirty debayer to full-res 8bit RGB, pixel-skip to get to 1920x1080, encode to h.264). i.e. the h.264 encoding machinery is most likely purpose-built in the factory and re-purposing that machinery via a firmware update to encode to sRAW sounds very unlikely.

Is it possible the source is instead talking about a "Canon lab experiment" which takes the body and sensor of a 5D2 but replaces the motherboard and DIGIC IV with a new, video-orientated motherboard? You're talking about a serious bit of internal re-plumbing to get an existing 5D2 to spit 1080/24p sRAW out of the HDMI port or the Compact Flash slot. I'm very, very sceptical that the hardware of a 5D2 has either the horsepower to do what you're talking about or the ability to be reconfigured in the field to the extent you're asking.

The sensor might well use Low Voltage Differential Signalling to communicate to the rest of the camera. Perhaps some clever Canon techs have hacked a 5D2's internal hardware to spit the LVDS signals out via the compact flash socket (hence turning it into a proprietary interface - it's no longer electrically a Compact Flash socket) and then built an add-on module which takes the data straight off the sensor?

Does anyone have any links to a technical primer on what exactly sRAW is and how the camera produces sRAW from the sensor's output?

But yes - I agree that it's very likely that Canon and/or Nikon and/or Panasonic and/or Sony will start offering "large"-sensor cameras with compressed RAW at video framerates within the next 12 months. I wish they'd adopt CineformRAW given that Cineform already has a postproduction workflow (I have no affiliation with Cineform!)
 
I would think Sony, Canon and Panasonic are certainly capable of building cameras to compete with RED. The question is if the potential market size for such a camera exists to justify the R&D. In Sony and Panasonic's case, they could also devastate their high-end video camera business. But they will need to do something after Scarlet and Epic hit the streets or RED may devastate their business for them :-)
 
I suspect one reason why the "big companies" have steered clear of compressed RAW video recorded so far is not because they couldn't build the cameras but because they are well aware of the workflow headaches involved in editing and grading RAW at 24fps and they are worried that these "headaches" would hinder mass-market adoption. But perhaps those concerns are now evaporating due to high-speed CPUs and editing codecs like ProRes and Cineform.
 
Jack Kelly said:
I suspect one reason why the "big companies" have steered clear of compressed RAW video recorded so far is not because they couldn't build the cameras but because they are well aware of the workflow headaches involved in editing and grading RAW at 24fps and they are worried that these "headaches" would hinder mass-market adoption. But perhaps those concerns are now evaporating due to high-speed CPUs and editing codecs like ProRes and Cineform.
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I agree and I would think they would have to offer an in-camera option of outputting a quicktime version for the mass market. It would work the same way the prosumer DSLRs work now. If someone wants to work in Photoshop then they shoot raw, if not, then Jpeg. That would leave all the headaches only for users that want to work with the Raw data.
 
Codecs for video

Codecs for video

Jack Kelly said:
I suspect one reason why the "big companies" have steered clear of compressed RAW video recorded so far is not because they couldn't build the cameras but because they are well aware of the workflow headaches involved in editing and grading RAW at 24fps and they are worried that these "headaches" would hinder mass-market adoption. But perhaps those concerns are now evaporating due to high-speed CPUs and editing codecs like ProRes and Cineform.
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An alternate suspicion might also be that "big companies" receive substantial patent royalties from DV, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 / H.264 compression ....
 
Jack Kelly said:
I suspect one reason why the "big companies" have steered clear of compressed RAW video recorded so far is not because they couldn't build the cameras but because they are well aware of the workflow headaches involved in editing and grading RAW at 24fps and they are worried that these "headaches" would hinder mass-market adoption. But perhaps those concerns are now evaporating due to high-speed CPUs and editing codecs like ProRes and Cineform.
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One big reason "big" companies are slower to implement these technologies is they have LOTS of customers. LOTS of customers means huge support headaches if they push the envelope too much. So even though they probably have the engineering and manufacturing capability to implement all these things as quick or quicker than anybody - they tend to wait until they are truly ready or, in this case, when the market starts to demand it based on the market (not Canon) being shown what is possible through introductions like the Nikon D90 and the REDONE.
 
Jack, thanks for your thoughts on the technical feasibility of this. I have no way of knowing if this is true or not. I'm passing along this info "as is". :) On the other hand, I don't doubt that Canon engineers are capable of working miracles.

Regarding sRAW, I find this whole thing to be very interesting. I made a post in the DSMC forum back this winter, suggesting that Graeme and Co. consider offering an sRAW option on DSMC, to cut down on recording bandwidth. To make a long story short, Red had already looked at and considered an sRAW type of recording, but found problems with aliasing, artifacts, etc.

As I shot some timelapse tests with the 5D2 in sRAW 1 mode (half resolution) I eventually came to understand what Graeme and Jim and them were warning me about. :blushing: I started catching artifacts in my shots that would not have been there if I shot full RAW.

Here is an example:

fyesr8.jpg


This example is subtle, but it was disturbing to me. Notice the "ghosting" of those lights near the top of the image. I never get that on my 24mm 1.4 prime when shooting RAW, so I was concerned that sRAW itself might have caused it.

In addition (and even worse for me), sRAW "burns in" hot pixels from the sensor. In RAW mode, I can import RAW frames into After Effects and Adobe Camera RAW instantly kills all hot pixels. It can clearly identify them because it's looking at the entire sensor. But, when I shot sRAW 1, and imported to ACR, the hot pixels were totally burned into the "binned" image. The sRAW downsampling engine had assumed that the hot pixels were stars or bright lights, and combined them with surrounding pixels during the downsampling process. So now, ACR and AE were seeing the hot pixels as legitimate parts of the image, and did not remove them. It became very difficult to remove them. Another major factor that caused me to drop sRAW altogether.

Maybe if Canon used a smarter sRAW downsampling technique, hot pixels would not get burned in, so it's not hopeless in that regard at least.
 
Tom... great example of what Graeme was trying to explain.

Jim
 
Yep. It was this whole issue that caused me to really stop and pay very close attention to what Graeme has to say.
 
Thanks Tom. And you've also highlighted on of the best things about REDUSER - it's an education to us all (me included).

Graeme
 
Tom,

I believe those ghosts in the sky are optical reflections within the lens. There is no reason to believe they are a digital artifact, particularly given that their separation is different than the light source depicted at the bottom of the frame -- i.e. analog domain artifact. However, you are correct that scaled RAW will make defect pixel correction much more difficult.
 
David, read his post. He addressed that.

It looks like a 180 degree flipped ghost of the stars against the dark wall. If there were some sort of "light" or partial ghosting it would make sense that it would only be the portion with the highest contrast, right? I know next to nothing about the way codecs work, but I believe Tom knows his Canon glass in and out after being able to shoot as much as he does at such insane resolutions, since they are stills.
 
Note that I did not say for sure that the ghosted lights at top were artifacts. I said I was worried that they "might" be. I've shot lots of similar setups to this, and never seen any similar ghosting from that 24mm prime lens while shooting full RAW.

The hot pixel issue was enough to drive me away from sRAW, given the type of stuff that I shoot.

Graeme, I cannot remember, did you or Jim or someone shoot zone plates with Canon sRAW 1?
 
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