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RAW vs ProRes: how much of a difference does it really make?


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  • 1 year later...
On 7/16/2020 at 12:35 PM, AJ Young said:

When I tested the underexposure for Watchman's, I did various cocktails of underexposure with ProRes; some like 800ISO 3 under or 6400ISO and eventually the one I landed on was 1600ISO 2 under. The main reason why was the ability to control how the exposure was corrected in post rather than relying on the camera to correct the exposure when deviating from 800ISO. (Other reasons include how the noise level behaved when underexposing and recovering at various ISO's)

Ashburn was a few years later and for that project I learned from the trial/errors of Watchman's color grade and decided that 800ISO 2 under would work for this short film. Ultimately, it was because I wanted to control how to recover the image and the redistribution of the dynamic range. From what I could tell from the earlier tests, the redistribution of the dynamic isn't exactly 1:1 when changing the ISO of the camera.

During testing, I developed a REC709 LUT that corrects the underexposure for on set viewing and used it for Watchman's. I did the same for Ashburn, that LUT specific to that specific underexposure.

Am I crazy, though? Or am I just adding a lot of extra work that changing the ISO already does? haha

Could you talk about the noise level a little more? I'm finding significantly less noise in Pro Res file vs the raw file. 

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5 hours ago, James Abernathy said:

Could you talk about the noise level a little more? I'm finding significantly less noise in Pro Res file vs the raw file. 

Many raw file types do not go through the imager processor, so there is no noise reduction. 

At higher ISO's, you'd see more noise on raw vs pro res. 

Edited by Tyler Purcell
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I haven't noticed much noise difference between ProRes and Arriraw at ISO 500, which is what I tend to shoot at, but I suppose that it is possible that the camera has to apply some minor noise reduction before compression to ProRes.

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A minor note to this discussion. For the few people who don't know, Red has a process called Advanced Dragon Debayer, or ADD, for the Dragon sensor. I don't know if this is now the default algorithm for newer sensors, maybe it is, I'm not sure.

What it does is quite significant - it's almost like a resolution upgrade. But it's so processor intensive that you can't do this in real time yet. Maybe one day you'll be able to, and eventually RAW will be truly redundant (which is one of the aims of camera manufacturers at the demand of photographers).

Back in the day I used to shoot slide film when I could. Not merely for the colours or contrast, but for the fact that a slide is its own reference, and it requires absolutely zero interpretation. Negative film had the edge on resolution, though.

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