# An Easy Magic Lantern How-To from CNET



## Canon Rumors Guy (Dec 12, 2014)

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<p>CNET has posted a video and article about the Magic Lantern software for your Canon DSLR. This software helps to unlock a lot of features not available otherwise in various Canon DSLR cameras.</p>
<p><strong>From CNET

</strong>Magic Lantern is one of the most popular firmware add-ons available, opening up many possibilities for photography and video. It’s free, runs alongside the stock Canon firmware and new features are constantly being added.</p>
<p>Once installed, your dSLR gets useful tools such as:</p>
<ul>
<li>Focus peaking: highlights the area of the image that are in focus</li>
<li>Zebras: flashes to indicate areas of the image that are under or over-exposed</li>
<li>HDR video: boosts the dynamic range of recorded video by alternating the ISO</li>
<li>In-camera intervalometer: useful for time-lapse photography, with no extra remote required</li>
<li>Motion detection: take an image when the camera senses motion</li>
</ul>
<p>These features are just the tip of the iceberg. A full functionality list can be found in the <a href="http://wiki.magiclantern.fm/userguide" target="_blank" data-component="externalLink" data-s-object-id="articleBody">userguide</a>.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.cnet.com/uk/how-to/how-to-unlock-more-features-on-your-canon-dslr/" target="_blank">Read the full article at CNET</a> | <a href="http://www.magiclantern.fm/" target="_blank">Visit Magic Lantern</a></strong></p>
<p><strong><span style="color: #ff0000;">c</span>r</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
```


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## raptor3x (Dec 12, 2014)

I find it funny that the article fails to mention two of the most important features of magic lantern: DualISO and RAW video.


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## candc (Dec 12, 2014)

The article says to make sure you have the latest canon firmware installed. Check that first. For the 6d you don't want the latest version but the prior instead.


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## East Wind Photography (Dec 12, 2014)

raptor3x said:


> I find it funny that the article fails to mention two of the most important features of magic lantern: DualISO and RAW video.



Well it is "just the tip of the iceberg."

Hopefully the extra publicity will help Alex to continue development so we can look forward to a ML for the 7d2 and beyond.


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## Freddie (Dec 12, 2014)

*I used ML for over a year.*

I never explored the more esoteric features. I used the exposure bracketing features on my 5D MK II for real estate HDR and it worked perfectly. I just sold that camera after uninstalling ML because the 5D MK III has replaced it in my bag and that new camera has those capabilities built in. One thing about doing a lot of HDR is the actuation count goes up dramatically. Probably the only thing that adds them faster is time lapse.


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## East Wind Photography (Dec 12, 2014)

*Re: I used ML for over a year.*



Freddie said:


> I never explored the more esoteric features. I used the exposure bracketing features on my 5D MK II for real estate HDR and it worked perfectly. I just sold that camera after uninstalling ML because the 5D MK III has replaced it in my bag and that new camera has those capabilities built in. One thing about doing a lot of HDR is the actuation count goes up dramatically. Probably the only thing that adds them faster is time lapse.



You should look into the ML dual-ISO feature for HDR. Let's you do it all in one shot. Requires some post processing tools but I find its worth it. I can shoot sports and wildlife in HDR to preserve highlights and shadows when shooting conditions are not the greatest.


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## bcflood (Dec 12, 2014)

I am surprised that Canon hasn't taken these features to heart and started including them in current and future camera firmware. It seems to reason that officially supporting many of the options would be a nice boost to a features comparison between cameras.


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## Niki (Dec 12, 2014)

ML=INTEGRITY


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## East Wind Photography (Dec 12, 2014)

bcflood said:


> I am surprised that Canon hasn't taken these features to heart and started including them in current and future camera firmware. It seems to reason that officially supporting many of the options would be a nice boost to a features comparison between cameras.



We are fortunate that ML development has been free and donation based to date. If canon were to include certain features, the cost of the camera would likely be higher than most people could afford. It would be nice to have some of these built in but the development and regression testing costs would make it cost prohibitive.

I believe that Canon actually likes it better this way. With a good part of the market, the ability to use ML on a canon body is a desired feature not available anywhere else. It was on my short list when I decided between Nikon and canon back in the day.


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## Marsu42 (Dec 12, 2014)

East Wind Photography said:


> Well it is "just the tip of the iceberg."



Fyi: ML development is about to hit the iceberg and sink to rock bottom. Alex, the main dev doing 90% of the work is busy atm, and there's only one other really insightful dev working on mlv and audio: https://bitbucket.org/hudson/magic-lantern/commits/all

There are a couple of people submitting patches now and then, but no one has the complete knowledge into the whole thing - remember it's about reverse-engineering Canon's software since our favorite manufacturer fails to release a sdk or even just the fw headers.



East Wind Photography said:


> Hopefully the extra publicity will help Alex to continue development so we can look forward to a ML for the 7d2 and beyond.



Fortunately, ML is working fine just now on the supported cameras, but don't expect fast progress on the other great features in the queue until help turns up. And "help" means being a very good dev (few are), spending a lot of time on it and wrestle with other people when merging code. 

So unless you're a coder at heart, this unpaid work is no fun at all. I stopped contributing when I felt stupid doing unpaid work on camera models I cannot afford, so now I'd rather just code for my personal ml build. But in general that's the great thing about it - it's open source, you're free to modify to it.



East Wind Photography said:


> We are fortunate that ML development has been free and donation based to date.



To clarify: The ML project does *not* take donations, they ask you to donate to the eff instead: http://magiclantern.wikia.com/wiki/Donate

Alex has gotten the 5d3 and 60d as a donation, but he's content with that and doesn't want any more cameras (to work on). And the guy who got the 70d was never seen again after receiving it 



bcflood said:


> I am surprised that Canon hasn't taken these features to heart and started including them in current and future camera firmware.



I'm not surprised - support work would skyrocket and most users would be overwhelmed. ML is not for everyone, at the current state it isn't *supposed* to. But Canon has taken some features from ML into the 7d2: bulb timer and intervalometer.


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## Khnnielsen (Dec 12, 2014)

East Wind Photography said:


> bcflood said:
> 
> 
> > I am surprised that Canon hasn't taken these features to heart and started including them in current and future camera firmware. It seems to reason that officially supporting many of the options would be a nice boost to a features comparison between cameras.
> ...



Some of the video features in ML is so basic that I won't believe it would add very much to the price.

Canon properly don't put peaking and zebras in a dslr body, so it won't hurt the CXX line.

Next time I upgrade my dslr, it won't be a Canon, unless Canon have added basic video features or the good guys from ML find a way to bring ML to future Canon bodies.


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## dgatwood (Dec 12, 2014)

Khnnielsen said:


> Some of the video features in ML is so basic that I won't believe it would add very much to the price.
> 
> Canon properly don't put peaking and zebras in a dslr body, so it won't hurt the CXX line.



I doubt it is even that. The more I study Canon, the more I conclude that the problem is structural, rather than deliberate. Judging from what I see on the outside, I suspect that each hardware product team has a group of software engineers that work on that product, probably in isolation. Each product line probably has a separate code base that doesn't share much except the basic OS.

The result is that their software engineering folks only have sufficient resources to handle bring-up and basic maintenance engineering, without being able to actually evolve their software in interesting ways. Features are designed minimally, in the most basic way possible, because that's all they have time to do. And so on.

I'd love to see Canon build a camera software research group here in the Silicon Valley. I'd apply for a job there in a heartbeat, and I'm sure hundreds of other people would as well—I know most of my coworkers over the years have had strong opinions about cameras and camera UI. Canon's silicon engineering team has a presence in San Jose already, so they could probably share those facilities.

That team could work on building a modern, shared platform for all of their cameras, using a plug-in architecture that would allow the hardware bring-up teams to do their thing somewhat independently of updates to the OS and UI as a whole. If designed correctly, such a model could even allow folks to update the hardware-specific bits for bug fixes separately from the UI software. That way, the pro folks wouldn't whine about UI changes after an upgrade, but folks who want new functionality could still get it.

Food for thought, just in case anybody from Canon actually reads this thread.


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## Marsu42 (Dec 12, 2014)

dgatwood said:


> The more I study Canon, the more I conclude that the problem is structural, rather than deliberate. Judging from what I see on the outside, I suspect that each hardware product team has a group of software engineers that work on that product, probably in isolation. Each product line probably has a separate code base that doesn't share much except the basic OS.



At least for the flash firmware part, that is (nearly) proven by ML's reverse engineering: It's plugged into the main firmware an only activated when the flash is used - unlike all other parts. This results in the annoying circumstance that you cannot program the flash via ML because the settings (the "prop") are not always present.



dgatwood said:


> Food for thought, just in case anybody from Canon actually reads this thread.



Canon might have a certain structure, but their execs won't see it as a problem as long as their cameras sell just fine and their shareholders are happy. I'm 100% certain the Canon devs and sandwich execs are perfectly aware of what would need to be done to make progress ...

... but someone has to say "go!" and take the fall if regressions arise. In another thread, someone wrote that with Japanese companies the first responsibility is to allocate potential blame in advance, that's before actually doing anything.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Dec 12, 2014)

bcflood said:


> I am surprised that Canon hasn't taken these features to heart and started including them in current and future camera firmware. It seems to reason that officially supporting many of the options would be a nice boost to a features comparison between cameras.



Canon marketing declared all those features 'ultra high-end' and doesn't deem the regular Canon DLSR user worthy of such 'beyond advanced' features like focusing peaking, zoomed focus boxes, zoomed video modes, zebra (or even true 1080p while we are at it). That is why. Canon has been taken over by marketing MBA droid types.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Dec 12, 2014)

East Wind Photography said:


> We are fortunate that ML development has been free and donation based to date. If canon were to include certain features, the cost of the camera would likely be higher than most people could afford. It would be nice to have some of these built in *but the development and regression testing costs would make it cost prohibitive.*



Utterly absurd (at least for everything other than the RAW video hack).


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## slclick (Dec 12, 2014)

In a nutshell, I'd like to read the bullet points from actual users here on the Forum on how (besides the few listed above) it would benefit a stills only shooter on a 5D3.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Dec 12, 2014)

dgatwood said:


> Khnnielsen said:
> 
> 
> > Some of the video features in ML is so basic that I won't believe it would add very much to the price.
> ...



I think you are wrong. I think it's clearly deliberate decisions. You can even see where they have even coded some more advanced things and then locked out the written code or removed it and if you listen in detail to all the things their guys say at trade shows and so on....

I mean just look at the games they played with AutoISO. Utterly trivial code. It's 1/100000000000000000000000th the complexity and time of tons of stuff in the firmware but they took FIFTEEN YEARS to dribble it out (and even now only for 7D2 and 1DX in reasonably complete form). And yet the basic code for it is so simple that you teach a newbie programmer (one who had never programmed before) how to code the basics of it (maybe not the modal synching into the knobs and dials, but the main code) in their first week and it would like one page of code.


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## Marsu42 (Dec 12, 2014)

slclick said:


> In a nutshell, I'd like to read the bullet points from actual users here on the Forum on how (besides the few listed above) it would benefit a stills only shooter on a 5D3.



How about

full res silent pictures (w/o moving the mirror or shutter)
auto-ettr metering
focus stacking (for macro or landscape)
dual_iso for 14+ ev dynamic range
bulb timer (i.e. longer than 30sec)
handheld mlu (less shake w/o IS)
audio remote shot (clip your hands = shutter release)
trap focus (useful for handheld macro: focus = release)
key customization
"dot tune" for auto afma
raw histogram, raw zebras and focus peaking (in lv or _*picture review*_)
changing exposure in picture review
unlimited, automatic bracketing

Edit: added some points I forgot, just had a look at my camera.


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## Khnnielsen (Dec 12, 2014)

slclick said:


> In a nutshell, I'd like to read the bullet points from actual users here on the Forum on how (besides the few listed above) it would benefit a stills only shooter on a 5D3.



There is a lot of stuff, which also benefit people, who don't do video much. I can list of few those I use myself for stills.

1. Trap focus. When you are using an old manual lens, with a chipped adapter, it can automatically release the shutter, when you subject is in focus. More or less semi automatic focus.
2. Exposure and focus aids in live-view.
3. Easy timelapses.
4. Advanced bracketing features.


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## Lawliet (Dec 12, 2014)

Marsu42 said:


> slclick said:
> 
> 
> > In a nutshell, I'd like to read the bullet points from actual users here on the Forum on how (besides the few listed above) it would benefit a stills only shooter on a 5D3.
> ...


That plus

Waveform
Vectorscope
Motion Detect
Spot meter
Magic Zoom
Ghost image
Crop marks
False colors


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## slclick (Dec 12, 2014)

Marsu42 said:


> slclick said:
> 
> 
> > In a nutshell, I'd like to read the bullet points from actual users here on the Forum on how (besides the few listed above) it would benefit a stills only shooter on a 5D3.
> ...



Focus Stacking? Hmmm...How would you rate the results compared to proprietary software such as Helicon Focus?

Oh and thanks for the list!


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## Lawliet (Dec 12, 2014)

slclick said:


> Focus Stacking? Hmmm...How would you rate the results compared to proprietary software such as Helicon Focus?



Depends on the lens breathing. If that's well controlled, it saves the whole trouble of using a microstep capable slider. Or worse - doing it manually.


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## Marsu42 (Dec 12, 2014)

slclick said:


> [Focus Stacking? Hmmm...How would you rate the results compared to proprietary software such as Helicon Focus?



Without a macro rail, they're equal. Helicon remote does with laptop tethering what ML can do anywhere, anytime. Of course you still need Helicon Focus or such to assemble the stack. I use it for mushroom photos - lay camera on something, shoot ~20 frames stack, get a beautiful pixel-sharp shot with bokeh behind.


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## slclick (Dec 13, 2014)

Marsu42 said:


> slclick said:
> 
> 
> > [Focus Stacking? Hmmm...How would you rate the results compared to proprietary software such as Helicon Focus?
> ...



I use a rail...damn, now I'm tempted to brick, I mean ML my camera.


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## dgatwood (Dec 13, 2014)

Marsu42 said:


> At least for the flash firmware part, that is (nearly) proven by ML's reverse engineering: It's plugged into the main firmware an only activated when the flash is used - unlike all other parts. This results in the annoying circumstance that you cannot program the flash via ML because the settings (the "prop") are not always present.



Interesting. So they are doing plug-ins at least for certain pieces of optional functionality. In that case, I guess that suggests that the problem is either that A. nobody is seriously interested in improving the core or B. that it sucks so badly that nobody can figure out how to improve it. 




LetTheRightLensIn said:


> Canon marketing declared all those features 'ultra high-end' and doesn't deem the regular Canon DLSR user worthy of such 'beyond advanced' features like focusing peaking, zoomed focus boxes, zoomed video modes, zebra (or even true 1080p while we are at it). That is why. Canon has been taken over by marketing MBA droid types.



IIRC, my last $200 mini-DV camcorder had digital zoom and zebra pattern support. There's nothing ultra-high-end about it. That falls under *ultra-basic* video support, so much so that IMO any camera that can't do zebra patterns is a complete joke, unsuitable for prosumer use, much less professional use.

So if Canon's marketing division truly thinks that these are ultra-high-end features, then they need to find marketing people whose videography experience goes beyond shooting home movies of cats.


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## dgatwood (Dec 13, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> I think you are wrong. I think it's clearly deliberate decisions. You can even see where they have even coded some more advanced things and then locked out the written code or removed it and if you listen in detail to all the things their guys say at trade shows and so on....



Bear in mind that such elisions could also mean that they tried it, but it didn't quite work as well as they had hoped, and they didn't have time to debug it further and make their ship date.




LetTheRightLensIn said:


> I mean just look at the games they played with AutoISO. Utterly trivial code. It's 1/100000000000000000000000th the complexity and time of tons of stuff in the firmware but they took FIFTEEN YEARS to dribble it out (and even now only for 7D2 and 1DX in reasonably complete form). And yet the basic code for it is so simple that you teach a newbie programmer (one who had never programmed before) how to code the basics of it (maybe not the modal synching into the knobs and dials, but the main code) in their first week and it would like one page of code.



Trivial, yes, but it is a feature. That actually strongly supports my assertion that they're basically only making software changes that are driven by hardware changes (and only the minimal changes needed to support those hardware changes), while not taking the time to add even low-hanging-fruit features that are software-only.


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## Marsu42 (Dec 13, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> I mean just look at the games they played with AutoISO. Utterly trivial code.


Trivial, yes, but it is a feature.[/quote]

Auto-ISO is still stupid or semi-broken on Canon:

Flash locked to 400
No way to set min. aperture in Tv
Crippled values for min. shutter in Av
No EC in M except for 1dx (dunno about new 7d2)


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Dec 14, 2014)

Marsu42 said:


> LetTheRightLensIn said:
> 
> 
> > I mean just look at the games they played with AutoISO. Utterly trivial code.
> ...



Auto-ISO is still stupid or semi-broken on Canon:

Flash locked to 400
No way to set min. aperture in Tv
Crippled values for min. shutter in Av
No EC in M except for 1dx (dunno about new 7d2)
[/quote]

AFAIK it has EC in M on the 1DX and 7D2 as well as no crippled min shutter value. But it only took them 15 years! : And again, if those who don't code, only knew how utterly, utterly, utterly trivial the basic coding for AutoISO is. I mean the 5D3 crippled min shutter in Av is just absurd. There is zero technical reason for it and, if anything, it added an extra 15 seconds of coding to implement (and probably wasted 8 hours in product management and marketing meetings).


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## Marsu42 (Dec 14, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> AFAIK it has EC in M on the 1DX and 7D2 as well as no crippled min shutter value.



Interesting - is the flash still locked to 400 on the 7d2?



LetTheRightLensIn said:


> And again, if those who don't code, only knew how utterly, utterly, utterly trivial the basic coding for AutoISO is.



Indeed, that's why I managed to code my own ML auto-iso module 



LetTheRightLensIn said:


> I mean the 5D3 crippled min shutter in Av is just absurd. There is zero technical reason for it and, if anything, it added an extra 15 seconds of coding to implement (and probably wasted 8 hours in product management and marketing meetings).



This is one of the things really annoying about Canon, they don't have a built-in limit when it comes to crippling their own products. The most absurd setting is on the 6d - the min. shutter speed is only up to 1/250s, but down to 1second :-> like anybody would use that with auto-iso.


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