Magic Lantern on Canon Cameras

[Jimkirk363]

Has anyone here ever installed and used Magic Lantern on their Canon Camera and if so whats it like?

[Infernal Burrito]

Depending on your camera and your use case it can be very useful, or it can slow you down and get in the way. It can do some janky raw video on the 5d ii, 5d iii, 7d i, and some rebel models, and it can greatly improve the gui for video and adds a few useful photo features. This question can be answered by reading about it on magiclantern.fm 

[Thanatopsis]

as Infernal Burrito Stated its variable if you were running an SL1 its not really worth it, it just doesn't bring anything special to the camera,  its a lateral move for the SL1 but for other cameras it is a night and day improvement.

[at_ML]

Magic Lantern features for 100D/SL1 (incomplete):

 

Photography:

• Advanced bracketing (up to 12 pics in a sequence, 0.5 - 8 EV steps)
• Intervalometer with ramping option (1-5000 pics in a sequence)
• Auto-ETTR (expose to the right)
• Silent pictures (no mirror wear)
• Focus stacking
• Auto Exposure (some kind of P mode on steroids)
• Ghost image (overlay any pic you want)
• Bulb timer (up to 8h in 1 second increment)

Video:

• FPS override (undercranking, great for time-lapse)
• Zebras
• Focus peak
• Magic zoom (Zoom assist)
• Spot meter
• False colour (External monitors (Marshall, SmallHD), green screen check, banding decection)
• RAW recording in 14-10 bit, lossless compressed (optional), up to 57 MByte/s transfer rate (yes, 5D3 does twice) and without 29:59 limit
• Anamorphic lens support.
• Waveform
• Vectorscope

Vlogging:

• No 29:59 limit for HDMI/USB stream.

 

Photography and video

• Dual-ISO mode (improving noise in shadows)
• Up to 4 configurable Liveview screens
• Up to 13 programmable config presets
• LUA scripting language for advanced users (Automating solar eclipse capture for example)
• RAW histograms
• Upside/down and mirror screen modes.

 

EDIT: Own 350D (Rebel XT), 650D/T4i, 7D and 100D/SL1. 7D (Digic 4 processor!) lacks 4k-movie-mode and I tend to use 100D most of the time. And I'm not a videographer.

EDITEDIT: And that's what some boys are doing with EOS M: https://www.eoshd.com/2019/01/5k-raw-24p-video-for-150-magic-lantern-making-great-strides-on-canon-eos-m/

[Jimkirk363]

If i was to flash to Magic Lantern, how difficult is it to switch back to stock if need be?

[at_ML]

5 hours ago, jimkirk363 said:

If i was to flash to Magic Lantern, how difficult is it to switch back to stock if need be?

Magic Lantern doesn't replace Canon's firmware. "Canon" is there all the time and ML works like a program on your computer on top of your OS (Linux, macOS, Windows or else) If you start without an ML enabled card (or press SET at startup) you are working plain Canon firmware. There is only a small delay after start leaving powersave mode because an ML enabled cam will check the card then. And that's the only permanent change to cam*: A so called bootflag is set forcing the cam to check the card at startup (and after powersave).

If you want to remove the bootflag you have to run installation once again and wait for timeout (60 seconds).

 

*: Exception is 50D which will do movie after installation. Won't be changed by ML deinstallation.

[ScottStearns]

I usually have it on just one or two of my disks. I forget the easy bypass to the Canon firmware and I get annoyed at the general fonts, overlays, and general busy-ness that ML brings. So, if I'm not using its capabilities I don't load it. I imagine much of that stuff is tweakable, but I haven't explored interface settings.

 

I love the intervalometer and advanced bracketing, if you don't have these built in the software is worth having just for this I think. Maybe even if you do already have one.