Features

Photo mode writes a RAW negative and a picture you can see

Can I take RAW photos with it, or does it only record video?

Log Cam: RAW 4K Video Camera records log video, and Photo mode also takes photographs. One press writes two files: a RAW negative that holds what the sensor measured, and an ordinary picture you can see and send. Both land in the same gallery as your clips.

A negative is to a photograph what log is to video. It holds what the sensor measured, before the camera decides on contrast, color and sharpening. Those decisions are yours afterwards, in an editing app. The negative gives you room to change your mind about an exposure or a white balance. It is also larger than an ordinary picture, for the same reason a ProRes clip is larger than an HEVC one.

The second file exists so that you can see the photograph without opening the negative. A negative is not much use on a phone screen. So the app writes an ordinary picture beside it, from the same press and the same exposure. Send that one, and keep the negative for the edit.

Photographs go where your clips go. They land in the app’s own gallery, in the same place and the same list. Share hands you both files, picture first. A photograph also writes to an external drive, exactly as a recording does. So a day of photographs leaves the phone the same way a day of video does.

The look setting you use for video reaches your photographs as well. Import your own .cube LUT and you pick where it goes. Monitoring shows the LUT on screen and keeps the plain signal in the file. Baked writes the LUT into what the camera saves, and that holds for a photograph as much as for a clip.

You cannot undo a bake. The negative is unaffected all the same. A bake writes into the picture, and the negative stays the plain one. So bake for the photographs you want finished, and you still keep a negative to work from.

Photo mode appears where your phone can write a RAW photograph. That is a question about the camera you selected, and the app asks it every time. Some lenses answer no. When one does, the app returns to Video and names the lens, rather than offering a shutter that refuses every press.

Photo mode and Video are separate modes, and the camera holds one at a time. You cannot record in Photo mode. The switch is also frozen while a take rolls or a photograph saves, which is deliberate. A camera that changed mode halfway through either one has a file to explain afterwards.