Magic Lantern os firmware

MLscreenshot

(Probably old) News for owners of a Canon Eos 5d Mark II camera who want to use their still image camera as a videocamera, there is the open source firmware upgrade MagicLantern. Installing ML gives the choice to boot the camera into either the Canon factory software or the firmware.

“Magic Lantern is an open platform for developing enhancements to the amazing Canon 5D Mark II full frame digital SLR. This camera is a “game changer” for independent film makers: it turns your 5D Mark II into a 5D Mark Free. We’ve written extensions and widgets that fix many of the annoyances in working with the 5D Mark II on a film or video set. Our first set of fixes are targeted at the audio limitations of the camera, but there are some video enhancements included, too:

* On-screen audio meters
* Manual gain control with no AGC
* Zebra stripes (video peaking)
* Custom Cropmarks for 16:9, 2.35:1, 4:3 and any other format
* Control of focus and bracketing ”

Magic Lantern firmware introduction from Trammell Hudson on Vimeo.

Since the firmware is Beta it should not be a surprise that on the Canon 5d forum there are people who experience some trouble. But again: the firmware does not touch the factory software, it just adds functionalities.

Canon made their own firmware which makes shooting in 1080 p 24 fps video possible. But the AGC is still present and of course it is not open source so no code can be developed based on this. The Canon upgrade replaces the default software on your camera, so beware: there is no way back.

Look a bit online and you will find plenty of users reporting on their experiences with MagiLantern. Filmmaker Philip Blooms blog is a good start.

Posted on: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 by: in category: Films and Projects, Hardware, News