Magic Lantern Dual ISO vs RAW Comparison Video Released

Anthony Thurston

Yesterday I told you about the new Dual ISO Magic Lantern hack which adds an impressive 3 stops of dynamic range capability to the Canon 5D Mark III and Canon 7D. At the time of my publishing that article there were no examples of it in use available.

Today Vimeo user Michael Anthony Visuals posted a great video showing the drastic difference between standard RAW video from the 5D Mark III and the Dual ISO video produced. In the video, which was purposely shot in terrible conditions, you can see that the base RAW video is totally unusable while the Dual ISO footage is still very usable. Check it out below:

Magic Lantern – Normal Raw vs Dual ISO Raw from Michael Anthony Visuals on Vimeo.

According to the Vimeo Description the video was shot with the following method:

  • Camera: 5D Mark III (shot 24fps at 1080p)
  • Dual ISO was set to use 100 and 1600 ISO.
  • Normal Raw ISO was set to 100.
  • Footage was shot in a dimly lit room with both a tungsten lamp and dark areas in the frame.
  • Shot handheld to reveal any moire or aliasing which may increase using Dual ISO feature.
  • Raw was converted to DNGs using the newest rawtodng.exe.
  • Postprocessing via Adobe Camera Raw using identical settings for both Normal Raw and Dual ISO shots…
  • Exposure was brought up a bit to +2.8
  • Highlights -100, Shadow +70, Sharpening 0, Noise Reduction 0, All other settings were at 0 or default values
  • Exported via After Effects to intermediate AVI files (Cineform 444 Filmscan 1)
  • Edited in Premiere Pro CS6 and rendered to H.264 1080p (10Mbps).

I think this is pretty impressive. The video produced in these terrible conditions is still pretty usable in a pinch, and so I can only imagine the benefits in a properly setup shot. This will not be for everyone, but for those who need the extra dynamic range then this should give you hope.

What do you think? Are you impressed by the results? Let us know in a comment below. 

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