Ok, you’ve just turned on your R5, switched to video mode, and are ready to shoot. But as per standard practice, you double-check the settings and see that the camera is not shooting RAW video. And in fact, there’s not even an option to turn RAW on. It’s as if the option does not exist for this camera.
Why does RAW not show up on the R5?
Like the Canon C300 Mk III, there’s a trade-off when shooting with RAW. You can’t have all the features, now can you? Or, well, you can, but the camera price would be extremely high. In the case of the Canon R5 (and the C300 Mk III), you can’t shoot RAW when you’re taking advantage of the In-body Stabilization (IS). When this feature is turned on, the RAW is turned off.
With the C300 Mk III, the RAW shooting mode is greyed out. Yet, with the R5, the option doesn’t show up at all, which may lead to confusion.
How to turn RAW back on the Canon R5
To fix this, you will need to ensure that video mode is active, head into the primary camera settings (panel 1), and then scroll to page 7. Select IS (Image Stabilizer) Mode, and it turn it off.
Now, when we head back into video properties, you will see that you can turn on RAW.
Why does the Canon R5 RAW turn off?
Let’s not beat around the bush; Canon’s 8K mode is very data-heavy. A 128 GB card gets you 5:58 minutes worth of recording time. That, readers, is not very much at all. So, there may be situations where it makes sense to film at 4K ALL-I to conserve memory card space. The same memory card now gives me 34:05 minutes to work with when filming at 4K ALL-I, which is a considerable difference, and let’s be honest, 8K RAW is overkill for most situations.
When you jump down to 4K ALL-I, you get the option to turn on In-body Stabilization through the live-view on the LCD, which is named Movie Digital IS, and it’s in this manner that you more than likely have activated the setting without realizing it will remove Canon RAW from the options menu on the R5 itself.
Nothing is broken, and it doesn’t take more than a few seconds to fix, and now you know how.
