The information on this page was put together using personal experience of owning the cameras and the superb Magic Lantern Raw Calculator to fill in the gaps in my memory. The best cheap cameras are the 700D and 100D / SL1 at approx. The 70D also has another advantage over the 5D Mark III and 7D, in that it has an articulated screen. The 7D is the best value for money at £350 used and the 70D being unique for being the only one with Dual Pixel AF, for a bargain used price of £550.

Of the current cameras the 5D Mark III is the most capable especially for uncompressed 14bit shooting, but it’s also the most expensive for upwards of £1500 used. Magic Lantern have now implemented 12bit and 10bit raw recording which decreases the date rate and acts as a form of raw compression. Raw video has a large data rate especially in 14bit, so the speed at which the cameras can write to the card is the main factor determining resolution. Which should you use and what image quality can you expect? There are 3 performance classes of Canon camera for raw video.

Magic lantern canon eos 7d