![]() It’a worth noting that Cinema DNG can be compressed and resized in post with SlimRAW.Ĭompression 7:1 to 2.8K might be an interesting option when it comes to off-loading your 12bit recordings from the SSD. ![]() It’s definitely worth checking out if you want to convert the RAW files to an easily editable format. A choice in 4K between ALL-I and Long GOP, from 440Mbit/s to 120Mbit/s.įast DNG Processor is a Windows transcoding tool exclusively for NVidia CUDA capable graphics cards. Thankfully the Sigma Fp offers a very good MOV H.264 codec. Compare this to the consumer 4K data rate which is 100Mbit/s on Sony A7 III. The 4K 12bit Cinema DNG files are even larger, at 12.7MB per frame to SSD drives and 2400Mbit/s… You are going to burn through a 500GB Samsung T5 very quickly. You could save a lot of space by transcoding the Cinema DNG footage to ProRes LT, at the same time as keeping overall high image quality and fine noise grain. Obviously this is a very high data rate indeed. Internal 4K Cinema DNG on the Sigma Fp clocks in at 8.5MB per frame to the SD card, which works out at 1632Mb/s (megabits) per second for 24p. Far better to maintain your dark shadows, your true blacks, true whites… and let the occasional window or sky blow out gracefully. Sometimes natural light can give you a bit of a challenge and it’s up to you to respond to it… It depends on the filmmaker…In my experience, cinematic images need contrast. Unless you are getting your exposure completely wrong in-camera, the only reason you’d want to do this is to preserve maximum highlight and shadow detail in natural light. Straight off the card the 4K 8bit RAW looks identical to 4K 12bit RAW video recorded via USB C to an SSD, and even a 14bit RAW still frame shot in photo mode. On a shoot I tend to prioritise either the highlights or shadows in-camera, not both, then I keep a good amount of contrast in the grade… So 8bit RAW quite suits me. I feel that Sigma can further improve the firmware to remove the strange green noise floor in 10bit and 8bit RAW. I can see why Sigma dropped the 10bit RAW to SD card as it doesn’t really offer the obvious benefits to the image of 12bit, whilst pushing write speeds past the limit of what’s reliable. I’d rate the Panasonic S1 and S1H V-LOG as having a bit more dynamic range than the Sigma Fp’s 8bit and 10bit RAW. All you need to do, is avoid raising the shadows too far… If you are happy with your exposure in-camera and just want uncompressed image quality with a fine film-like noise grain, along with the colour grading benefits of RAW as well, the 8bit 4K to SD card is going to give you beautiful results. ![]() The fact you can with the 12bit RAW however, says a lot about the quality of that! ![]() You cannot rescue something which is completely black, like you can with, say, a medium format 16bit RAW file. So, whilst it’s not true to say you can’t push the 8bit RAW files around to a dramatic degree, you do need to get a decent exposure across the frame in-camera for 8bit. I rate that result in 12bit as professional-standard cinema. Whereas with 12bit, the image maintains almost the full dynamic range of the sensor without issues… The results can be seen below… You’ll see a lot of false colour and banding in the deepest blacks. When a region is VERY darkly exposed, it falls into the jaws of the 8bit clipping point where data gets lost. When a region isn’t too darkly exposed, like the fox picture in the shot below, you can raise the shadows without too many issues in 8bit. It’s the 12bit that makes all the difference and performs closely to 14bit RAW stills in terms of dynamic range. I found that the 8bit internal 4K Cinema DNG RAW and 10bit external performed similarly. If you don’t need to boost the shadows by 3-4 stops, or under expose by 3-4 stops to prioritise a particularly bright part of the frame, the 8bit RAW to SD card offers beautiful results. With the Sigma Fp it is definitely worth shooting 12bit RAW to a USB C SSD drive to make full use of the dynamic range.
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