Busy day... Canon EOS R6V, for your phone Portrait 7K RAW footage

[Andrew - EOSHD]

The clearest sign yet that people's critical thinking might be in a dodgy place...

7K RAW on a content creator's camera with a tripod mount to shoot in portrait orientation.

Now let's remind ourselves:

Why do people shoot vertical video - because of phones

How big is a phone screen - Erm, about 7 inches tall

How much resolution is 7K in vertical format... 1000 dots per inch!

What DPI are the best flagship phone displays? Well, iPhone 17 Pro Max is 2868 ×1320, so about 450dpi, and that is overkill already because to make out the individual pixels you need a microscope.

Those Instagram stories never looked so good.

[kye]

The battle of Resolution vs Common Sense was over long ago and us consumers were the losers.

[eatstoomuchjam]

There are a bunch of weird 🔨 limitations on the R6 V.  Nowadays, I'd expect a $2,500 video-centric camera to have shutter angle, at least.  I'm not sure if a dedicated timecode port is a reasonable expectation, but in my mind, it should have one.  Those would go al long way to making it a proper B cam to one of the cinema line cameras.

[Andrew - EOSHD]

Indeed, hard to see what it offers over the Nikon Zr other than a different badge.

[Ilkka Nissila]

3 hours ago, Andrew - EOSHD said:

Indeed, hard to see what it offers over the Nikon Zr other than a different badge.

Presumably, the h.265 quality is better on the Canon.

The vertical mounting hole is so you can use as much as possible of the sensor (for the lowest noise and shallowest DOF, if desired) when 100% committed to vertical video. The extra resolution is for when you want to shoot both horizontal and vertical content and crop the latter from the content. Presumably billboard screens can display higher resolution video content if they are really 4K TVs mounted vertically. Of course the extra resolution is not really necessary and the vertical orientation in 16:9 aspect ratio is quite badly suited for video but for narcissistic content showing only the creator rather a person in an environment, it is what seems to be used. In my opinion, a less narrow vertical aspect ratio would work much better but the pocketability, hand-holdability, and availability of devices seems to dictate the aspect ratio.

 

Above all, the manufacturers need increased specs to sell more cameras than are truly needed for any practical purpose, and they don't care about the e-waste, because they are not forced to care.

[Andrew - EOSHD]

The dual crop from open gate is a legit use of it of course but unless you're shooting the portrait shot for a massive portrait orientated ad screen, you'd be better of shooting the camera in landscape orientation so that the cropped image is portrait, and the highest quality non-cropped image is landscape.

Phones the by far the dominant destination for portrait formats.

I really think it's massive overkill, and the file sizes in RAW are nuts.

If you are making disposable slop and are happy deleting the original files, then I suppose it doesn't matter - but imagine archiving so much data just for social media content. It makes my head hurt just thinking about it

[Andrew - EOSHD]

Oops

[Emanuel]

Forget it. We humans now have two eyes after all: one on the forehead and one on the chin...

[MrSMW]

10 hours ago, Emanuel said:

Forget it. We humans now have two eyes after all: one on the forehead and one on the chin...

Oh, you have met some of my family then?

[MrSMW]

14 hours ago, Andrew - EOSHD said:

Phones the by far the dominant destination for portrait formats.

I really think it's massive overkill, and the file sizes in RAW are nuts.

 

It is nuts isn't it?!

I'm shooting 4:3 ratio, 4.7k APSC 300mpbs on my S1RII's, specifically so I have the biggest box for both orientations with 50p.

That is 3552 pixels tall so even with a 9:16 end product, plenty of scope to punch in if needs be.

2x crop markers, one set at 2.4:1 landscape and the other at 9:16, 75% blackout.

No need to tilt the camera 90 degrees and no need for a dedicated social media camera.

The only 'compromise' is visually composing for shooting for 2.4:1 and 9:16 within the same frame, but I personally like being able to make 2 entirely different end products from the same original footage, - there is both continuity yet difference.

But 7k raw files? Nuts!!

[Ilkka Nissila]

On 5/14/2026 at 11:34 PM, Andrew - EOSHD said:

The dual crop from open gate is a legit use of it of course but unless you're shooting the portrait shot for a massive portrait orientated ad screen, you'd be better of shooting the camera in landscape orientation so that the cropped image is portrait, and the highest quality non-cropped image is landscape.

Phones the by far the dominant destination for portrait formats.

I really think it's massive overkill, and the file sizes in RAW are nuts.

If you are making disposable slop and are happy deleting the original files, then I suppose it doesn't matter - but imagine archiving so much data just for social media content. It makes my head hurt just thinking about it

 

I think it's inevitable that the original footage is not kept and only the edited and exported video is stored for the long term. If you want to be able to re-edit footage in the future then the intermediate storage format has to be selected to accommodate this. The 7K comes from use of a sensor that has sensible resolution for a broad variety of still photography applications and saving costs by re-using the same sensor in a bunch of cameras. A camera that is genuinely made for video and only video would likely be more expensive, and so video users have to deal with the large files if they want to shoot original files with the best quality. But one can presumably choose to shoot 4K or even 1080p and the problem is alleviated. It's a bit like with cars: top speed helps to sell them even if it can never be actually used.