EDIT: Obviously this was an April Fools’ Day joke, but one day much of this may come true. Humour is a very important part of life and if we cannot laugh at ourselves then who can we laugh at! 
We have been hearing mutterings of this for the past few weeks. “Top DPs in Europe testing out RAW recording on Canon 5Dmkii”. It all sounded like nonsense didn’t it? Well I can exclusive reveal today (we are ahead of the US in time zones here in the UK) as the embargo I was given 0001 BST 1/4/10 has now passed…Canon have done exactly what we wanted. RAW baby, RAW! New firmware will be released imminently for every camera from the Rebel T1i/ 500D through to the 1DmkiV giving it the much desired RAW recording on the memory cards. Not just that, but they have also finally unlocked the HDMI out to give us an uncompressed feed so we can plug in our Nanoflash or KiPro and record into a format that we have dreamed of!!
Yes, your video can now look as good as this! RAWWWWW!!!!
The RAW recording on cards (Class II for SDHC cards, 10mb/s for CF cards) I understand is limited to 120 seconds per clip due to heat accumulation. Personally I am a bit disappointed in this, I would have been happy with ProRes in camera rather than RAW as this may have reduced the heat issues but I guess they couldn’t license it. Thankfully though, uncompressed HDMI out can run as long as you want! Here are some of the options that will let us unlock the true potential of this camera! 
and here are some exclusive shots of the new firmware’s menu options…
As you can see from the 5DmkII version above we have a massive sized image now available in 24p video mode and not just that but we can overcrank to 160 frames per second in 2K. This is absolutely huge!
Of course this truly is a “game changer” and will mean we lose the aliasing and moire issues of old and gain an immensely powerful filmmaking tool for the price of a nice TV! I have yet to use the firmware but I understand the much requested 1080i 50i/ 60i interlaced mode has been added for the coveted “video look”. I have been missing this as am sick of that mock “film look” progressive nonsense!
I also understand they have fixed the rolling shutter issue by adding a new feature which the Japanese boffins in Tokyo have dubbed “beer goggles” which senses when the image is skewed and fixes it in camera! Awesome!
Other new features included a “digital ND” in which a translucent dark pixels are mapped over the sensor and the intensity can be dialled in so everyone can shoot with depth of field as shallow as Hal. This will make a lot of people very happy!
Also it appears if you install the firmware on any of the Nikon DSLRs it runs a Canon emulation mode. Great news!
Acclaimed DSLR users like Shane Hurlbut ASC and Vincent LaForet have been reportedly frothing at the mouth with excitement over this news. Unfortunately Shane was mistaken for having rabies and is now in quarantine for 30 days. His Elite Team are apparently working on a breakout…
This announcement just days before the start of NAB in Vegas is surely going to upset a lot of people. Red’s notoriously tight lipped Jim Jannard has released the following official statement regarding this news…”Shit.”
I have just downloaded the firmware and installed it on the 12 Canon bodies that I have, tomorrow I will release an edit together of some trees, leaves, flowers, water and ducks shot in RAW edited to some Vivaldi…stay tuned I will upload the video as soon as possible (unfortunately one side effect of the new RAW recording is we lose the ability to do timelapse due to the removal of the camera’s stills function, which as you know I adored, so I will probably keep one of my Canon’s on the old firmware)…In the meantime here is the official sexy poster that Canon have released, epic!!
Here is the download link to the new firmware. You will need to register to get the firmware. Please do not skip this step or you will be unable to enjoy RAW!
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