Canon 7D Now Capable of Recording 2.5K RAW Video with Magic Lantern
Magic Lantern RAW video is still a work in progress on the Canon 7D, but a few videos are floating around now showing what the camera can do in silent picture mode, which was also the precursor to 24fps and higher RAW video on the 5D Mark III and other Canon cameras. While the camera is recording below 1080 at a max of 1728 x 1156, it's possible to get all the way up to 2.5K when using one of the crop modes (though the exact resolution may vary slightly). Check out some of the incredible first samples of that mode below.
This 2.5K sample is from Florian (Flofifull):
Silent mode Pics Burst allows me - for now - to capture 41 pictures in resolution of 1736 x 1156 pixels. But it is also possible to produce DNG files with incredible resolution of 2520 x 1200 pixels via crop mode (5x zoom). So yes Canon 7D can really produce small videos in 2.5K raw ! It’s real !
Unfortunately, I could only get 35 frames per shot (1.5 seconds...).
Here is another video of his shooting non-cropped with a Transcend 400x CF card:
For now, I didn't get any pink frames. I can get 40-41 pictures (a little less than 2 seconds). DNG are 1736 x 1156 pixels. Stunning quality compared to H.264... But a little of moire (as usual with the 7D).
Another 2.5K clip, this time from David Flower using the Komputerbay 64GB 1000x card (you can play around with some of the original files by downloading them from the YouTube page):
The 2.5K will likely be more limited in its use than the full mode (probably a lot more), but it's amazing that the camera is even able to put out that kind of resolution for long enough to turn it into video. The samples of the slightly below 1080 mode are definitely impressive, and they will likely still look good even upscaled a bit to 1080. While the 7D is still going to suffer from aliasing and moire, as I said before, the Mosaic Engineering VAF filter for the 7D will remove most of those artifacts and give you images that should look almost as nice as the Mark III (just with the smaller sensor and slightly less resolution).
Development is still underway, but now that silent picture mode is working, it shouldn't be too long before we're getting continuous 24fps RAW recording on the 7D.
Links:
