2013 vs 2026 in camera mods and software

[Andrew - EOSHD]

What a fucked up insight it is into software dev and releasing stuff I've had so far in 2026.

Seems that influencers have conditioned everyone to expect everything for free, you just can't charge money for work any more even if it is a cutting edge NLE, they expect open source, free, and zero copyright so they can clone the source code and offer their own. Dark days ahead.

It seems partly a generational thing not just social media (I hope not) but the internet crowd is tough to please for the camera hacks too. The Mario 64 stuff went nowhere. On reddit even outright hostility - a mix of luddites and anti-AI. A lot of the younger folk who have grown up without computer skills (phone conditioned) don't seem to appreciate the technical side at all, or have that nice pirate outlook on it. They have gone from punks to a "why would I risk bricking my valuable possession" mindset, and I don't remember this being the case in 2013 with Magic Lantern and the 5D Mark II raw video mod, even pros we using it.

The internet needs sorting out. It's a cesspool.

 

[MrSMW]

Sadly, it’s just part of the world that we now live in.

It peaked for me around 1986/87, though at the time as a teen, I did not realise or appreciate it.

I rank my decades as:

1980’s, 1970’s, 1990’s, 2000’s, 2010’s with the 2020’s firmly in last place…

I don’t think the world/society is fucked as such, just that it is in decline and the more it is (IMO), the less I take part in it and do my own thing(s) instead.

Unfortunately, the human race & society cannot be hacked…

[BTM_Pix]

15 hours ago, Andrew - EOSHD said:

What a fucked up insight it is into software dev and releasing stuff I've had so far in 2026.

Seems like you’ve had a head on collision with a combination of gatekeepers and the sort of cranks who also cosplay as medieval sword fighters as their other hobby.

A major problem for anyone trying to create a product now is that increasingly a lot of people are incapable of just taking a look at it and moving on with their lives if they don’t fancy it.

Absolutely everything HAS to have a dramatic performative reaction for so many people now.

Its why we can’t just have anything nice anymore.

[Andrew - EOSHD]

I have never been more disappointed with the new generation and their pathetic social media conditioned brains. Can only hope Gen Alpha might be better and be more curious to understand how things work again, getting back some of that punk spirit people used to have rather than them being absolutely zombified consumers. It's weird - they have grown up in a gilded age of tech but some of the GenZ lot are the worst luddites imaginable!

55 minutes ago, BTM_Pix said:

Seems like you’ve had a head on collision with a combination of gatekeepers and the sort of cranks who also cosplay as medieval sword fighters as their other hobby.

The internet is fucking broken in every sense, in the community way, in the commercial way. Was making great progress until it came time to release stuff online... I don't fancy putting fliers on lampposts and leaflets through doors, so online it is...

It was like stumbling out into a post apocalyptic hellscape of anger, bots and gatekeepers, so different to how it was in the 2000s and 2010s...

[BTM_Pix]

Can it run on a Pi5 by any chance as I may have an idea....

[BTM_Pix]

By the by, one of the new firmwares for that FM-1 synth I was talking about was widely - and rightly - praised for how good it was and how completely transformative it was for the unit.

People absolutely loved it.

Then he had the temerity to want to sell it.

Well you can imagine what happened next.

[Andrew - EOSHD]

How dare they be able to pay the rent and eat!!

[Fat Nerd]

23 hours ago, Andrew - EOSHD said:

What a fucked up insight it is into software dev and releasing stuff I've had so far in 2026.

Seems that influencers have conditioned everyone to expect everything for free, you just can't charge money for work any more even if it is a cutting edge NLE, they expect open source, free, and zero copyright so they can clone the source code and offer their own. Dark days ahead.

It seems partly a generational thing not just social media (I hope not) but the internet crowd is tough to please for the camera hacks too. The Mario 64 stuff went nowhere. On reddit even outright hostility - a mix of luddites and anti-AI. A lot of the younger folk who have grown up without computer skills (phone conditioned) don't seem to appreciate the technical side at all, or have that nice pirate outlook on it. They have gone from punks to a "why would I risk bricking my valuable possession" mindset, and I don't remember this being the case in 2013 with Magic Lantern and the 5D Mark II raw video mod, even pros we using it.

The internet needs sorting out. It's a cesspool.

 

 

Before anything, thanks for digging deep into the R5/R8, it would be unbelievably awesome once we can get to use Opengl for image processing on Digic X Canon cameras

I probably read the exact reddit reply you're referring to here a few days ago. The redditor who replied was the perfect mix of immaturity, ignorance and cynicism. And an utter tool

I think the negativity around vibecoding is usually spewed by those who are at the left peak of the dunning kruger curve - they don't know the effort and time required for the reverse engineering (especially if the system is offline/cannot be remotely accessed) and testing

[Anaconda_]

It's certainly an interesting topic, but I think there's legality issues with selling 3rd party hacks. I also feel like selling a hack sucks out all the punk. Imagine if Magic Lantern came with a pricetag! 

Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 games have been hacked to run on Mac hardware as though native apps - you can also load them onto iPhones! The tools to make that happen are completely free - although you do have to provide your own game file. If the dev of the tools put a price on it, Nintendo's famously agressive lawyers would shut it down very quickly. 

Lots of websites that host the games for free dispaear all the time. Of courses they do, that's stealing! But the github for the tools to turn those games into native apps is being updated very regularly. 

[fuzzynormal]

Man, welcome to being an old man, my man.  Come on in.  Water's fine.  You just float away.

[Andrew - EOSHD]

23 hours ago, Anaconda_ said:

It's certainly an interesting topic, but I think there's legality issues with selling 3rd party hacks. I also feel like selling a hack sucks out all the punk. Imagine if Magic Lantern came with a pricetag!

There's a difference between a hack and a piece of software and I don't agree that there's a blanket legal problem with selling third party hacks anyway.

There's a lot of naivety and bedwetting when it comes to the legal side.

If you get a DMCA from Canon, so be it. Nobody in their right mind is going to come fishing in my bank account with a $5000 per hour lawyer just to get my last £1.50 which I spent at Greggs.

23 hours ago, Anaconda_ said:

Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 games have been hacked to run on Mac hardware as though native apps - you can also load them onto iPhones! The tools to make that happen are completely free - although you do have to provide your own game file. If the dev of the tools put a price on it, Nintendo's famously agressive lawyers would shut it down very quickly. 

Lots of websites that host the games for free dispaear all the time. Of courses they do, that's stealing! But the github for the tools to turn those games into native apps is being updated very regularly. 

The Nintendo Switch emulators use a private key that's property of Nintendo to break encryption, which does make them illegal.

Booting software via existing camera system features is not the same at all.

If you stay away from the illegal stuff like bypassing firmware signing, distributing private encryption keys, it helps!

[Anaconda_]

You are right about emulators and keys, however you don’t need emulators to play Switch or Switch 2 games on Mac anymore. They run natively using NXNative. It’s now the same as opening FCP or any other Mac app.

I understand hard work should be rewarded, but I’m also of the opinion that putting a price tag on a hack will attract legal attention. Whether that’s a legitimate legal claim is besides the point, it’ll be expensive to test and to prove.

On top of that, there’s also audience expectations to manage. Being able to use a hack for free and then the dev suddenly asking for some money doesn’t leave a nice taste.

[Andrew - EOSHD]

2 hours ago, Anaconda_ said:

You are right about emulators and keys, however you don’t need emulators to play Switch or Switch 2 games on Mac anymore. They run natively using NXNative. It’s now the same as opening FCP or any other Mac app.

I expect you still need the private keys to break encryption so they run without the Switch's ROM's encoder/decryption service.

This is nothing like how Magic Lantern worked.

2 hours ago, Anaconda_ said:

I understand hard work should be rewarded, but I’m also of the opinion that putting a price tag on a hack will attract legal attention. Whether that’s a legitimate legal claim is besides the point, it’ll be expensive to test and to prove.

You should be grateful there are people willing to take that risk.

And at least they make the effort to understand the legal side, unlike the armchair internet experts.

2 hours ago, Anaconda_ said:

On top of that, there’s also audience expectations to manage. Being able to use a hack for free and then the dev suddenly asking for some money doesn’t leave a nice taste.

Yes I agree, how dare they run a business in communist camera town.

----

The same people whinging about an indie dev selling a genuinely amazing tool for $5 are the ones who happily pay Adobe $50 per month on a subscription, the monster which their dumb attitude towards software licenses created in the first place.

I have never seen such an entitled generation of users in my life when it comes to software.

Every smartphone app is now freemium junk, that relies on gating features behind a subscription because nobody wants to pay the $5 one off up front.

Open source and free is the fastest way to find the bottom of the software quality barrel. If you can't pay the devs, yet expect them to answer customer support requests 100 times a day, how do you expect them to keep grinding at the millstone and updating the project?

Why do you think so much of the open source stuff gets abandoned by the main devs? Even Magic Lantern at one point too?

I just think the whole attitude is fucking stupid to be honest.

[Fat Nerd]

Concerning open source projects I like what Bilal fakouhri did for his crop mood project. Ask for contributions and only release the build/code once he reached his funding goal

But agreed with you Andrew, there's way too much entitlement these days

[Andrew - EOSHD]

That could be an interesting way of doing it.

Influencers open sourcing stuff for attention has done a lot of damage to expectations.

If a mod or software is relatively low effort (like most free stuff is) and unsupported, of course giving it away will drum up attention for clicks...For anything of high quality, the dev has to take on the legal risk, the bricking risk, and the customer support emails - it's a full time job.

[Anaconda_]

Maybe becoming used to low effort software has also taught people to be skeptical when the real thing shows up. As you said, pros used to load ML on the camera they used for a real income, myself included, but  there's no way I'm putting someone else's vibecoded mod on my P6k Pro. I guess ML came (comes?) with a comminuty that help troubleshoot and support which felt exciting to be part of. 

I did however do that hardware mod for my P4K, which puts a V-mount on the back and moves the monitor to the top. It was made by someone who put in real knowledge and thought, and that's what's worth paying for. But of course it was a lot more effort on my side than simply loading up an SD card.

 

 

Last thing on the Switch comment - the software used to play them on Mac doesn't supply any keys or anything, they all come with the game when you buy it. You could equate it to burning CDs. If you own the original CD (or in this case, game) you can make a usable backup. It's only when you start distributing or illegally obtaining that music that problems could occur. 

Whether people actually buy the Switch games or find them elsewhere isn't in the NXNative dev's control, so how can they be liable? 

[Andrew - EOSHD]

40 minutes ago, Anaconda_ said:

pros used to load ML on the camera they used for a real income, myself included, but  there's no way I'm putting someone else's vibecoded mod on my P6k Pro.

Well, that's your choice isn't it? It doesn't mean to say others won't, but this is why a degree of professionalism and doing software as a livelihood matters because if its just engineered as influencer bait and flung out for free, you're more likely to end up with a brick.

On the other hand if the source is trusted and the risk is assessed as being very low, I'd pay for that personally especially if it enables a feature on a camera in a world first that's useful.

It also depends what type of mod it is... Does it flash firmware? Or does it enable an existing service mode to run scripts off a card?

This is where a bit of knowledge from the customer helps so they can understand the risk being diving in with some Instagrammer's free shit.

As for vibe coding... Depending on the combination of what type of human and what type of AI model wrote the code, the quality of the vibe coded version is a very wide spectrum... It can wind up being much better than the human slop code and better than some of the human professional code as well.

40 minutes ago, Anaconda_ said:

I did however do that hardware mod for my P4K, which puts a V-mount on the back and moves the monitor to the top.

OK

40 minutes ago, Anaconda_ said:

It was made by someone who put in real knowledge and thought, and that's what's worth paying for.

So we agree that real knowledge and thought are worth paying for.

How do you square that with "Imagine if Magic Lantern came with a pricetag!" then?

Especially those pros who used it for paid work in the mid 2010s and delivered raw Cinema DNG to paying clients, without even so much as a donation to those who put the hard work in.

40 minutes ago, Anaconda_ said:

Last thing on the Switch comment - the software used to play them on Mac doesn't supply any keys or anything, they all come with the game when you buy it.

I am skeptical - the software needs to break the encryption or emulate what the Switch hardware decoder does.

 

[Anaconda_]

22 minutes ago, Andrew - EOSHD said:

Well, that's your choice isn't it? It doesn't mean to say others won't, but this is why a degree of professionalism and doing software as a livelihood matters because if its just engineered as influencer bait and flung out for free, you're more likely to end up with a brick.

On the other hand if the source is trusted and the risk is assessed as being very low, I'd pay for that personally especially if it enables a feature on a camera in a world first that's useful.

It also depends what type of mod it is... Does it flash firmware? Or does it enable an existing service mode to run scripts off a card?

This is where a bit of knowledge from the customer helps so they can understand the risk being diving in with some Instagrammer's free shit.

As for vibe coding... Depending on the combination of what type of human and what type of AI model wrote the code, the quality of the vibe coded version is a very wide spectrum... It can wind up being much better than the human slop code and better than some of the human professional code as well.

OK

So we agree that real knowledge and thought are worth paying for.

How do you square that with "Imagine if Magic Lantern came with a pricetag!" then?

Especially those pros who used it for paid work in the mid 2010s and delivered raw Cinema DNG to paying clients, without even so much as a donation to those who put the hard work in.

I am skeptical - the software needs to break the encryption or emulate what the Switch hardware decoder does.

 

I never disagreed, just trying to look at it from all sides. Like I said, it’s an interesting topic.

I don’t have to explain my thoughts on whether ML came with a price tag or not, because it didn’t. If it did, I may not have used it, or I might have bought it and then become an astronaut 15 years later… who knows?

You're right about vibe coded software, but there’s either very little or no peer review. I’ve vibe coded stuff that I’ve passed on to friends and colleagues. I know 10 people who use on project daily and reliably, but I wouldn’t dream of putting it online publicly, let alone for a fee. I’ll leave that to the experts who actually know what they’re releasing.