Canon EOS 7D Magic Lantern Alpha Available

[Canon Rumors]

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Get Magic Lantern for you Canon EOS 7D
Below is information provided by the Magic Lantern team.

• it was primarily tested on one 7D, and a few days on three other 7D’s;
• during those tests we took 1000 photos and gigabytes of videos;
• there were no crashes or strange behaviors during our tests;
• this release will not alter any data in your camera’s permanent memory;
• this release will not directly alter any so-called “properties” (persistent camera settings);
• this means, some functions like HDR photos, HDR videos, bulb ramping etc will not work yet;
• it is not a firmware upgrade, despite the camera saying “Firmware update program”;
• we have disabled all features that are not yet working perfectly;
• please don’t beg for adding feature XYZ, it will be added as soon as it works without issues.

Features

• Audio meters while recording
• Zebras
• Focus peaking
• Magic Zooom (via half-shutter, or focus ring)
• Cropmarks, Ghost image
• Spotmeter
• False color
• Histogram, Waveform
• Vectorscope
• Movie logging
• Movie auto stop
• Trap focus
• LiveView settings (brightness, contrast…)
• Level indicator
• Image review tweaks (quick zoom)
• and a lot more

Visit the download page for Magic Lantern

Buy the Canon EOS 7D at: Adorama $1357.00 | Amazon $1357.00 | B&H Photo $1357.00

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[cinema-dslr]

wohoooo

[ScottyP]

Canon should either make these features themselves or else they should show up in a limo with a big briefcase full of cash and buy out the Magic Lantern folks.  That would all be a nice innovation they could have over Nikon even if they didn't come up with it themselves.

[heptagon]

Most people don't need these "features" anyways and Canon is all about market share as i learn here every day.

[Schruminator]

I just installed it on my 7D and I love it! It's my first time I've installed ML on a camera and now I see what I have been missing this whole time.

Just off the bat, the Magic Zoom feature (a small area is magnified on screen without taking over the whole screen-- think of Picture-in-Picture on your TV) is awesome and zebra strips are appreciated.

Finally, for everyone wondering what their shutter count is on their 7D (without having to pay $2 to that one website), it is displayed in a sub-menu.

I've only been exploring ML for half an hour or so, but so far it seems stable and well worth the (minimal) effort needed to put it on your 7D. Props to the ML team for pulling this off!

[DB]

Installed ML on my 7D, two quick observations:

(1) AF is slower using my 24-70mm f2.8L lens which is normally very fast, so I took 2 x 16Gb CF cards; one with ML and one without and I can confirm that shooting the same subjects in the same light, that AF is faster without ML. Likewise with video shooting, it took ages to get AF confirm.

(2) My battery meter dropped 2 bars in 5 mins of testing! It's like having my old 70-200mm f/4L IS lens on again, ML seems to be power hungry (perhaps was just me switching between playback and liveview mode a lot), so need to test it with 2 x fresh LP-E6's in my grip and shoot video or stuff for an hour or two and see how it goes.

Lastly, there is not a lot of new functionality turned on by ML as of yet (will presumably come in the next release), but it is nice to see WB, shutter speed, aperture, live histograms etc. at the bottom of your screen when in LiveView mode.

These are merely early observations, have not tested other functionality yet, but will do so.

[DB]

Have had some time to test the new ML Alpha release for the 7D and can happily report that everything works fine, a bit slower, plus the camera heated-up (around the LV button and AF-Lock area just above the joystick controller), so much so that after about an hour's use, I was a bit concerned so turned off the camera.

I plugged the 7D into a 25-inch monitor using the mini-HDMI out cable and tested every possible menu item for both video shooting and still photography. They ALL work GREAT! What is really surprising is the CPU usage of the 7D - seems to be operating at 90% to 95% most of the time when focusing or shooting video (indoors) between ISO 800 to 1600.

For those 7D owners that are interested in the ML firmware upgrade, I'd say try it for yourself. The only drawback is that the 3-inch LCD screen on the 7D is too small to really appreciate the additional functionality and information, unless of course you're shooting video and using an external monitor, then it is a big step up.

I really like the focusing %, the zebras (I set the underexposure to 3% and the overexposure to 84% in the sub-menu, because it defaults to 0% and 99% respectively, so anything white will appear overexposed), the real-time histogram is great and you get separate dots for R, G, or B so you can adjust shutter speed and aperture on-the-fly and see where you begin to lose the highlights etc. The horizontal electronic axis is seamless and appears to be more intuitive that the Canon dual-axis one (you can see behind and it doesn't get in the way).

And all of these are just for starters. Have to say it though, most are aimed at videographers.

[Marsu42]

Most people don't need these "features" anyways

"Need" is a relative term - but ml has functionality that enables you to take shouts you couldn't have taken otherwise (timelapses, focus stackin) and features that I would never want to be without so Nikon is out the question (zebras, focus peaking, unlimited bracketing).

(2) My battery meter dropped 2 bars in 5 mins of testing! It's like having my old 70-200mm f/4L IS lens on again, ML seems to be power hungry (perhaps was just me switching between playback and liveview mode a lot), so need to test it with 2 x fresh LP-E6's in my grip and shoot video or stuff for an hour or two and see how it goes.

Unless there is a specific problem with the 7d alpha, ml isn't that power hungry except if you use one focus peaking algorithm. The impression users get usually is because you use live view a lot longer with ml, and that's what draws power. Be sure to the ml enable power saving timers that dim the display and so on.

And one hint to all 7d users: This could have been possible long before, it's just that it took until a few days ago that someone has lent the devs a (broken) 7d :-p ... so be sure to donate, one dev (Alex) is working on this full time. Also see the forum here: http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/

[canon20d7d]

is anyone else having issues w/ the audio meters? sometime i have meters showing levels and sometimes i dont. also for the update i guess we cant adjust the levels while recording yet unless i havent discovered how to do that yet

[paul13walnut5]

ML isn't about most people, and neither for that matter is the 7D.  It's a little bit like Eye Control Focus, the folk who hated hit seemed to forget about the off switch.

I don't need the green square or spot metering, so I don't use em.

It would be nice to think Canon would open source their firmware to the likes of ML, but then it's Canon who have to deal with warranty repairs.   Given that they denied problems with their stock firmware when it was corrupting my movie files for a year, I don't know if I'd trust them to come up with a stable reliable Canon homologated version of ML.