It's become increasingly common for cameras to be able to capture Raw video without the need for an external recorder, making it that bit more accessible. Photo: Mitchell Clark Raw video looks set to become increasingly common on cameras, with cameras from Panasonic, Canon and Nikon all offering internal Raw capture options.
We thought it was a good time to take another look at the pros and cons of Raw video, whether it's worth the effort and whether you should consider it an essential feature, next time you buy a camera.
It's not as significant as for stills
The first point worth reiterating is that the benefits of Raw shooting aren't anywhere near as significant as they are for stills shooting. The main reason for this is that the alternative to shooting Raw stills is typically an 8-bit JPEG with a high-contrast S-curve applied to it, ready for viewing which leaves relatively little scope for significant brightness and tonal edits. Whereas the alternative to Raw in video tends to be 10-bit footage encoded with a Log response curve which is specifically designed to maintain tonal flexibility.
"A 10-bit log file can comfortably retain all the meaningful content of a 12-bit linear one"
It also tends to be the case that most video is derived from 12-bit sensor readout, rather than the 14-bit modes used on most large pixel cameras. Reducing the readout bit-depth boosts the readout speed but puts a limit on the amount of DR that can be retained. That said, many modern cameras increasingly oversample for their core video modes, an act that helps reduce noise and boost DR.
Little information is given about most 'Raw' video formats, but if they are encoded in a linear manner, as delivered by cameras' ADCs, it's worth pointing out that a 10-bit logarithmic file can comfortably retain all the meaningful content of a 12-bit linear one.
It's more that there's a well-established alternative to Raw capture, rather than any weakness of the Raw footage, that leads us to stress that the benefits are more modest than you might expect, if you're coming from a stills-shooting background.
So what benefits do you gain?
Control over white balance and ISO
The easiest benefit to spot is that, as in Raw photos, Raw video typically doesn't apply multipliers to its color channels and 'bake' a white balance into the file. This retains maximum flexibility in the edit, as it eliminates the risk that a badly judged white balance has prematurely clipped a channel that you then want to recover.
In practice, there isn't going to be a big difference between this and a 10-bit Log workflow, if you get the white balance quite close at the point of capture.
Raw footage should let you adjust the white balance and brightness rendering of the footage, after the fact. In this instance the interface gives you "ISO", "Exposure Offset" and "Color Temperature" tools. There's no setting for adjusting the Magenta/Green 'tint' axis.
Screengrab: DPReview from Final Cut Pro 11. 1
Another benefit of the better Raw implementations is the ability to change ISO after the fact. Strictly speaking, you can't edit ISO after the fact any more than you can adjust "exposure" in a stills Raw converter, but you can see why they might choose to label the control that way.
Typically what's actually happening is that your camera is shooting at its base amplification setting (or its second gain step) to prevent unnecessary clipping, then brightening the footage in post, based on the "ISO" value to assign in your editor. As with white balance, this lets you second-guess your decisions at the point of shooting, but the end results are unlikely to be radically different to having shot Log in the 'correct' ISO, at the time.
Control over sharpening and noise reduction
What you definitely gain is much greater control over the sharpening and noise reduction being applied to your footage. Even at their minimal settings (and different brands have a very different idea of what minimal processing looks like), most hybrid cameras will apply quite a lot of noise reduction and sharpening to their processed output.
Shooting Raw gives you much more choice about the level and complexity of noise reduction and sharpening being applied. Of course, this also means you need to come up with a sharpening and noise reduction strategy in your workflow.
Support
Support for Raw video has been improving in recent months, with Adobe adding beta support for Nikon's NRaw and related R3D formats. Between plugins from the manufacturers and third-party options such as Color Finale Transcoder 2, you can use most Raw formats in the most popular editing software.
Canon Raw / Raw Light
Nikon
NRaw/R3D
Apple ProRes Raw
Blackmagic
BRaw
Premiere Pro
Yes
Beta support
Yes
Via free Blackmagic plugin
Final Cut Pro
Via free Canon plugin
Via third-party plugins
Yes
Via third-party plugins
Resolve
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
This is particularly useful as, for instance, Nikon cameras derive their native Raw and their ProRes Raw output on different sensor modes, so the quality and available framerates can differ between them.
Lens corrections
Another consideration is that a great many modern lens designs only deliver the combination of angle-of-view, size and price they offer, because they use software corrections as part of their design. Not all Raw video workflows maintain the necessary correction parameters, meaning you'll need to find correction plugins to mimic them, if you want to use many modern hybrid lenses.
The Nikon ZR lets you choose between capturing Nikon's N-Raw or the related R3D NE format. Alternatively you can capture the more widely supported ProRes Raw format, though not at the higher frame rates offered in its native formats.
Screengrab: Mitchell Clark
This isn't an issue if you're adapting manual focus lenses, but it's worth testing whether the Raw format you hope to use will maintain the lens correction information if you're planning to use most systems' native AF lenses. For instance, Nikon writes its lens corrections parameters to its NRaw and R3D Raw formats, but doesn't embed them in ProRes Raw mode.
Canon's lens corrections are provided as part of its Raw files. Premiere honors the lens settings, whereas DaVinci Resolve lets you hack around them, if you prefer. And, although correction support has been added to ProRes Raw, Panasonic's cameras don't yet add the metadata to present its lenses correctly.
File sizes
Raw video tends to be larger than processed footage, not just because of increased bit-depth but also because chroma sub-sampling and sophisticated compression tends to be used on processed files. However, another factor is that truely Raw files are typically created from the sensor's native resolution. Sub-sampling the sensor by line-skipping would reduce the quality of the footage and rendering it then downscaling wouldn't be very raw. Some cameras let you crop in to a 4K region of the sensor but this effectively reduces the sensor size of your camera, lowering the quality of the footage.
This means you typically end up with roughly 6K or 7K footage with modern hybrid cameras. Differences in file size then add up very quickly. Here we've put together some typical bitrates and then extrapolated from that to work out roughly how much footage you can fit on a 256Gb memory card.
Bitrate
Approx footage on a 256GB card
Nikon R3D 6K/24
(ZR)
1520 Mbps
Canon Raw 7K/24
(EOS R6 III)
2150 Mbps
Canon Raw Light 7K/24
(EOS R6 III)
970 Mbps
ProRes RAW HQ 5. 8K/24
(DC-S1II)
3400 Mbps
ProRes RAW 5. 8K/24
(DC-S1II)
2200 Mbps
H. 265 4:2:2 All-I 4K/24
(DC-S1II)
400 Mbps
If you want the additional resolution, many recent cameras can also record processed, compressed 10-bit footage at their native capture resolutions (around 6 to 7K), which is typically captured at similar bit-rates to the 4K footage, though often with 4:2:0 chroma sub-sampling.
But, as the table above should make clear, you can expect to get less than a third as much Raw footage on your memory card. Or, to put it the other way 'round: you'll need to buy at least three times as much media and storage in order to capture a project in Raw.
Is it worth it?
Overall then, is it worth it? Ultimately that's up to you, what you shoot and whether you want to maintain some flexibilty / pass extra work to the editing stage of your workflow.
Increasingly the tools are becoming available to let you work with Raw footage, but it's definitely worth considering whether the additional workflow steps and added storage requirements are worth it for the marginal gains in post-processing flexibility.
As things stand, we don't believe Raw video should be a deciding factor when choosing a camera unless you're absolutely certain that it's essential for the work you plan to do.
. dpreview.com2026-2-4 18:00