The Nikon ZR / Sony FX5 / Canon R6 V Fallacy – Why RAW Video Isn’t the Magic YouTube Says It Is

The RAW video workflow iceberg: what you see vs. what’s really underneath.

The YouTube RAW Video Illusion

YouTube is once again overflowing with camera reviews promising that the latest “baby cinema camera” will turn you into Spielberg, Roger Deakins, or at least the next moody B‑roll influencer. Nikon has the ZR, Sony has the FX5, Canon has the R6 V — all proudly waving their shiny new 12‑bit (or 16‑bit!) RAW formats like golden tickets to Hollywood.

And every review follows the same script: gorgeous sunset B‑roll, slow‑motion silhouettes, someone staring meaningfully into the distance, and a rented anamorphic lens to make the footage look as “cinematic” as possible. The creator shoots for two days, hands off several terabytes of footage to an editor, and never once deals with the ingest, storage, or the pain of actually editing RAW.

A week later, they upload the inevitable sequel: “I Was Wrong About the {Insert Camera}.”

Because — shocker — RAW video comes with massive file sizes, hardware demands, and workflow realities that don’t fit the run‑and‑gun solo‑creator lifestyle they’re preaching to.

This article is about those realities. The ones nobody talks about.

My RAW Reality Check With the Nikon Z9

I’ve been shooting with one of the first hybrid mirrorless cameras to offer internal RAW video for years now: the Nikon Z9. I didn’t buy it for RAW, but when Nikon dropped the firmware update, I jumped at the chance to treat video like a giant sequence of RAW photos — tweak white balance later, adjust exposure later, fix mistakes later. The dream.

Reality arrived fast.

The first thing I learned was the difference between intermittent and continuous write speeds on CFexpress cards. My Z9 would record a few seconds of 8K60 N‑RAW, then freeze, throw an error, and stop. The card I was using could handle high‑FPS photo bursts, but it absolutely choked on the sustained data rate RAW video demands.

Cue the hunt for CFexpress Type B cards that could actually keep up. Cue the 1,000‑euro bill for cards that didn’t melt under RAW workloads. And this was before AI drove storage prices into the stratosphere.

But finally, I could record RAW video. A glorious 39 minutes of 8K60 N‑RAW on a 1TB card — in Normal quality.

Naturally, I switched to High quality because “more is better,” right? Recording time dropped to 23 minutes and 21 seconds. Perfect.

But who needs 8K anyway? Well… a certain agency (which shall remain nameless) was very happy to receive 8K footage. More on that later.

Dropping down to 4K120fps gave me a comfortable 1 hour and 12 minutes in Normal quality, and honestly, I couldn’t see much difference. Or I might have seen a difference — if my computer had been able to play the files back without stuttering like a dying tractor.

RAW Requires Hardware YouTube Never Mentions

That was RAW reality check number two: these files require serious hardware.

A big, slow HDD? Forget it — it can’t feed RAW footage fast enough. A GPU with less than 16GB of VRAM? Also forget it — it can’t load multiple RAW clips into memory. Windows’ shared system memory? Useless. VRAM is all that matters.

It’s slightly better on a Mac thanks to unified memory, but even then you’re looking at 96–128GB+ if you want to edit 6K/8K RAW without watching your timeline turn into a slideshow. And don’t cheap out on the CPU either.

So I spent another 4,000 euros on a computer that still ended up on the “barely adequate” side for 8K RAW with color grading and a bit of noise reduction. “Barely adequate” meaning an export speed of 1.5 frames per second when converting N‑RAW into Apple ProRes 422 HQ — the industry standard.

Proxies: Smooth Timelines, Hidden Costs

Using proxies does make the editing experience less painful — DaVinci Resolve suddenly feels smooth, timelines stop stuttering, and you can actually scrub through footage without your computer begging for mercy. But proxies are only a temporary illusion. The moment Resolve switches back to the original RAW files for final export, you’re right back to that glacial 1.5 frames per second. And proxies come with their own hidden cost: storage. Generating 1080p ProRes proxies for a few hours of 8K RAW can swallow 50 to 100 GB of SSD space on its own, and if you leave Resolve’s default render‑cache settings untouched, it will happily dump hundreds of gigabytes of uncompressed cache files onto your internal drive before you even finish cutting the intro.

The Codec Fallacy: RAW vs ProRes 422 HQ

And here’s another thing YouTube reviewers never mention when they rave about REDCODE RAW (R3D), Sony’s X‑OCN, or Canon Cinema RAW Light:

No agency I’ve ever worked with accepts anything other than Apple ProRes 422 HQ

So I ended up re‑encoding all my N‑RAW footage at a glacial 1.5 fps, keeping both the original files and the ProRes versions. Which, of course, meant upgrading again — fast SSDs for editing, and a mountain of storage for backups.

After all that, I became very selective about when I use RAW video. These days, I only shoot RAW for paid client work where the client specifically asks for it — and pays for the privilege.

RAW Isn’t Built for Solo Creators

RAW video, in my experience, simply isn’t made for quick‑turnaround, solo creators. Just like the YouTube hype crowd dropped RAW the moment they finished filming their reviews, I stopped using my Z9’s RAW modes almost immediately. The old saying still holds: content is king. It doesn’t matter how perfect your colors are if you don’t have a story to tell — and on social media, nobody will see the difference anyway. RAW isn’t a magic upgrade; it’s a workflow most solo creators don’t need and can’t justify.

When RAW Does Make Sense

To be fair, cameras like the Nikon ZR do have one genuinely interesting angle: they can act as a stepping stone for creators who actually want to learn real cinema workflows. The ZR’s RED RAW implementation isn’t just marketing fluff — it’s a chance to dip your toes into the world of RED cameras without spending the price of a small car. You get to experiment with RED’s color science, understand the quirks of RAW grading, and get familiar with the workflow that real cinema cameras demand.

The same is true for Sony’s FX5 and Canon’s R6 V. Their RAW formats mirror the workflows of their respective cinema lines, giving newcomers a way to practice the craft before committing to a full‑blown cinema rig. If your goal is to eventually move into RED, Sony CineAlta, or Canon Cinema EOS, these “baby cinema cameras” can be a legitimate training ground.

The Hidden Hardware Iceberg

But that’s the key: you need to actually want to learn the workflow. RAW isn’t a shortcut to cinematic results — it’s an introduction to the discipline behind them. And if you go down this route, you have to be ready to upgrade your hardware. The Nikon ZR’s 2,200‑dollar price tag is just the bait; the real cost comes later. Once you start working with RED RAW, or Sony’s X‑OCN, or Canon’s Cinema RAW Light, you quickly discover that the camera is only the entry ticket. The workflow behind these formats demands fast storage, powerful GPUs, massive RAM, and a backup strategy that costs more than the camera itself. The ZR might be the cheapest way to dip your toes into cinema‑grade RAW, but it’s also the first step into a hardware ecosystem that will keep you spending.

And the irony goes even deeper when you look at cameras like the Sony FX5 or Canon R6 V. They push these fancy, complex internal RAW formats, but they don’t even give you internal Apple ProRes 422 HQ — the exact 10‑bit workhorse codec the industry actually uses for final delivery. So you’re stuck choosing between massive RAW files that crush your timeline or heavily compressed H.265 files that choke your CPU, completely skipping the one codec that would make the workflow manageable.

Nikon, to its credit, does include internal ProRes 422 HQ on the ZR, which makes it the most practical of the “baby cinema cameras” for anyone who wants a real production‑friendly codec without jumping straight into full cinema hardware. But for Sony and Canon, the gap is obvious: they give you their cinema‑line RAW formats, yet leave out the efficient middle ground that real productions rely on every day.

N‑RAW is actually smaller than ProRes 422 HQ on the card — and the same is true for Sony’s and Canon’s compressed RAW formats — but all of them become twice as painful once you take post processing into account.

RAW Is Powerful — But Story Wins

RAW video is incredible — when you actually need it. It gives you flexibility, dynamic range, and grading options that compressed codecs can’t touch. But it also demands hardware, storage, time, and a workflow that most solo creators simply don’t have. Cameras like the Nikon ZR, Sony FX5, and Canon R6 V promise “cinema” in a compact body, but what they really offer is a doorway into a world that’s bigger, heavier, and more expensive than the marketing suggests.

If you’re learning cinema workflows, these cameras can be a fantastic stepping stone. If you’re shooting for agencies, RAW might even be required. But if you’re a solo creator trying to make content consistently, RAW is more likely to slow you down than elevate your work.

In the end, cinematic tools don’t make cinematic stories. The workflow matters — but the story matters more.

What’s your experience with RAW video workflow? Have you hit the same bottlenecks, or do you see it differently? Drop your take in the comments.