A question to other users about RAW

Hi,

I recently picked up my BMCC and have been playing with it non-stop since.

I was wondering if the following situation was normal when dealing with RAW.

I would set up my shot, shoot, and when I would look at a DNG on my laptop, it looked nothing like how I exposed it in camera, like night and day almost.

Is this normal? I am definitely new to RAW and may be thinking that I just need to keep tinkering and learning how to do it by doing it. I'm hoping it's not an issue with the camera.

Thank you for any help or clarification.

Are you using Resolve? If so, make sure you select "Cinema DNG" in the Camera RAW settings tab of your project settings, then choose "BMD Film".

Are you using Resolve? If so, make sure you select "Cinema DNG" in the Camera RAW settings tab of your project settings, then choose "BMD Film".

This /\

Depending on what your using to view the file it can look pretty terrible in it's raw form. If you see a really flat green tinted image then that is completely normal. However, once you start tinkering with it then you will the magic of RAW!

You can't judge the image on a non-calibrated monitor – only if you just work for the web and nothing else.

Thank you all so much! <3

When shooting RAW the camera interprets the data and displays it on the screen using one of the two LUTs available in camera (Film or Video). What you see is not the RAW file but the RAW data with a LUT (Look up table) applied.

Looking at unprocessed RAW files in the Finder (Mac) or Explorer (Win) will produce odd results as the system does not know what the source of the RAW files are and so does not know how best to interpret them (what LUT should it apply??). It's just guessing.

When you open you DNGs in Resolve, Camera RAW, or other decoder you tell the decoder how you want that RAW data to be interpreted. In Resolve this is done in the RAW processing panel where you can chose what LUT too apply to the data and set the exposure.