The Return of Magic Lantern -- New Developer Team

[FHDcrew]

**Haven't been active a while but have been lurking often, just not posting.  Hoping to get back to posting much much more regularly now and actually being involved in this awesome community.  Hope everyone is doing great and making awesome art that plays in sequences of frames 😉

 

"_names_are_hard" from the magic lantern forum made a post yesterday announcing a new official development team; I am not 100% sure but seems as though this was not the case sine a1ex left a few years ago.  Obviously, awesome developments have still occurred in the mean time, such as the incredible work done to the EOS M, 5d Mark iii and more to sd overclock, implement new binning modes that provide more image detail and less moire, and enable excellent previews in modes that previously rendered almost unusable to monitor.

 

Now an official development team is back, and their aim, according to the post, is to implement features into main builds; finally we do not need to dig through forum posts anymore lol...

What is even more exciting is the announcement of great improvements towards Digic 6 and Digic 7 cameras.  The Canon 200d/SL2 has an OFFICIAL build with WORKING RAW VIDEO.  This excites me, as supposedly this camera has an entire stop better dynamic range at ISO 200 than the 5d mark iii does...and DPAF to boot.  Makes me want to get one just to play around with and rig into a poor man's interview b-cam for my Nikon Z6.  The 7d mark ii, 6d mark ii and 750d/t6i also have official builds, though more work needs to be done to implement RAW video.  Still, even this is exciting news, because it looks like a point will be reached in which the aforementioned cameras all have stable RAW video.  Man...the 6d Mark II is gonna become absolutely killer and I believe might overtake the legendary 5d mark iii as the ML king...why?  Full-frame AND Dual Pixel Autofocus.  So exciting.

 

Imagine if they progress on the EOS R and we get RAW video on that...we shall see.

 

Anyways, wanted to share as I think it is exciting that the ML community is getting active again.  Although I have never personally owned a ML camera, it has always fascinated me and I want to pick up a ML-compatible Canon body, even if it's the dirt-cheap Canon 50d that makes it possible to shoot continuous 14-bit RAW video for only $86 US on ebay haha.

 

Exciting times.  Screw modern camera releases.  My 7 year old Nikon Z6 is still alive and kicking.  And these old cameras are about to become beasts.  And to me 5d mark ii/5d mark iii/eos m crop mood stuff looks just as good as your youtube shill Sony FX2 bs anyways lol...

 

https://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=27315.0

 

Also here's the dirt cheap Canon 50d...I might buy one.   Literally the cheapest half decent ML RAW cam in existence:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/326652260011?_skw=canon+50d&epid=100134403&itmmeta=01JYD74BEKB8BK43GTP64YXEYE&hash=item4c0dfdeeab:g:zH4AAeSwaqVoO8fg&itmprp=enc%3AAQAKAAAA4FkggFvd1GGDu0w3yXCmi1dPuUUXNiquWqTtYdpH3VhCftZqA2312R5f5VSKqv6B737uadt8L7po3UhjQmLj7p22fLaKrov1%2FdF7%2FPis094b98Wz%2FnMbwS7WtRhqTqfyUhYZCMMmhc9OdIad%2FLodvcJXSllJYh90xsUWRTm7vGW5QqKQBbevi0jxouClCZ%2Fbk6QKRNa9LTJsvkdX56eaU7F7IwVfBdZCHZOygCtMLm6H3MlF0YovoZEHjhhYqNq10jPFnlPCjhOBrGydgfrK%2BKuCTwN1sGX5Pb3KDZ5MpxcA|tkp%3ABk9SR7i3kafzZQ

[maxJ4380]

Didn't magic lantern get a cease and desist from canon ?   I always thought magic lantern was doing some incredible stuff for canon. After magic lanterns advances I vaguely remember some of canons cameras having issues with timing and overheating which turned out to be software related. 

Which makes me wonder how long the cripple hammer in one form or another has been in active service with canon. In hindsight canon probably could have done all the stuff magic lantern did except they prefer to segregate their market and maximize profit margins it would seem. 

[eatstoomuchjam]

3 hours ago, maxJ4380 said:

I vaguely remember some of canons cameras having issues with timing and overheating which turned out to be software related. 

The EOS R5 was sort of famously software-limited for overheating, but that was changed years ago, largely due to widespread shaming (especially from our gracious host).

3 hours ago, maxJ4380 said:

Which makes me wonder how long the cripple hammer in one form or another has been in active service with canon. In hindsight canon probably could have done all the stuff magic lantern did except they prefer to segregate their market and maximize profit margins it would seem. 

Modern Canons have been hit a lot less by the hammer.  They've had to scramble to catch up with Sony.  Competition is the antidote for market segregation.

There are a lot fewer things on modern Canon where I'd be excited for ML.  Open gate?  Maybe.

For me, at least, I'd be a bit more excited if they added "official" support for some of the newer EOS M bodies that are 4K-capable and have faster SD card slots than the original one.  I don't remember any of the EOS M series having 10 bit recording - but if ML could enable a 10-bit (or more!) mode and keep DPAF working, something like the M200 could become a really fun ultraportable.

[FHDcrew]

47 minutes ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

Modern Canons have been hit a lot less by the hammer.  They've had to scramble to catch up with Sony.  Competition is the antidote for market segregation.

Agreed modern Canon bodies really are not very crippled. The fact that the $649 R50V has CLOG3 10 bit is proof. But still, advancements on these older cameras is always exciting, and those old canon sensors certainly have a unique look that I think isn’t quite the same on the newer bodies. 

[TrueIndigo]

You mentioned the 50D, so here is a ML RAW video test I shot with that camera in 2013, just using the 18-55mm kit zoom lens. The location is Weymouth Harbour, which I have often used for other tests so I can compare different cameras. The CinemaScope frame size was 1584 x 662, then enlarged to FHD for YouTube. I bought the camera secondhand purely for ML RAW shooting. Although I was using a battery grip, the camera still got very hot (really hot -- sometimes you couldn't keep your hand on top of the pentaprism hump). Also, as I'm sure you know, the camera is not capable of recording sound, so you'll have to make a separate arrangement for that. With all that said, the images have a retro feel, and (unlike with plastic cameras) just holding the solid body made it fun to use.