Magic Lantern Firmware - Good or Bad?

[CanonCameraFan]

Magic Lantern is, well, just magic although I prefer the Christmas edition. Had a couple of glitches after upgrading to v2.3 though nothing specific enough to call a bug. So reverted to 2.2 which is brilliant (550D). I use it for stills. As long as the installation instructions are followed exactly there should be no problems. To remove all traces of ML just disable the boot flag.

[Marsu42]

Had a couple of glitches after upgrading to v2.3 though nothing specific enough to call a bug.

Please report all problems to the forum and help development, even if you cannot pinpoint the exactly. If a couple of people give a vague impression, the devs can triangulate the real problem. You can post feature requests, too, if you fell there are regressions in the feature set.

[Orangutan]

Wow, I just had an innocent enough question followed by some website research ... but had no idea some folks out there would be so spiteful in return for no apparent reason. Sheeesh.

Personally, I'd like to thank you: I was thinking about installing ML, and the flood of positives + lack of negatives has sealed it for me.  If you were trolling you failed. 

On the serious side, be aware that your posts had the hallmarks of a troll, even though you may very well not have intended that.  For example: it was your first post with a new account (you have no history of legitimate participation).  Second, you asked an "innocent" question but in a leading way.  Third, you answered your own question in the negative, rather than leaving it open for replies.

If you weren't trolling, you might want to be a bit more careful with your posts.

[Drizzt321]

It works very well on my 500d. You can find a lot of features.
But I am not sure I will install it on 5dMkII.

I've put it on my 5d2 now (after the final unified build came out). Very quick and easy, and gives me a ton more controls and features such as timelapse with exposure ramping. Now I just have to figure out how to use it properly 

[cliffwang]

I would also suggest people donate a few money to ML if you can.  ML is really help us to extract the limitation of some Canon camera.  Give them some motivation to do better jobs.

[emag]

ML was the deciding factor in getting the 60D vice 7D and I have no regrets.  I'm enjoying the learning curve and spent the past two days playing around with FPS override and Bulb Ramping.  'twould be nice to enable MFA for cameras that don't have it native, mayhaps it will be incorporated someday.

[Marsu42]

ML was the deciding factor in getting the 60D vice 7D and I have no regrets.

I also got the 60d because of Magic Lantern (and the then big price gap to the 7d) but I admit I'd like to have the 7d af ... but not having zebras, focus peaking, focus stacking, unlimited bracketing? No way.

[ejenner]

I tried it again several weeks ago for my 5DII after trying it a few years ago on my T1i and not feeling comfortable with it.

I really don't shoot much if any video.  Originally I thought I'd want another CF card so I could have 2 with ML and 1 without 'just in case', but decided just to have it on my 2 cards.  It just works.

Totally great so far.  Features I use regularly:

one-touch zoom to 100% in preview
Focus stacking (totally awesome for macro, useful for landscapes)
Bracketing (not only good for more than 3 exposures, but automatically takes all 3 without having to be in LV)
zebras (over and under exposure in LV - much better than the Canon software and adjustable.  Now I can see what is really overexposed vs. what I can actually recover from a raw file.

That's mostly it.  Unless it totally and permanently bricks my camera (and for me it is worth the risk), I'll be keeping it just for stills.  Just have to decide how much to donate now.

The only issue I found is that you have to be careful not to take out the CF card too quickly after opening the CF card door (like wait 2-3 seconds) or it will drain your battery.  One you get used to that, all is good.

There are still a few thinks for stills I'd like to see, but it's still very useable/useful as-is.

[mws]

I like it, I put it on my 50D just so I could record video with it, granted there is no sound, but it was just for fun. Works great.

[skitron]

The only issue I found is that you have to be careful not to take out the CF card too quickly after opening the CF card door (like wait 2-3 seconds) or it will drain your battery.

I think I remember reading this in their info now that you bring it up. I was just about to buy a new battery for my 50D but I'll try charging/storing one more time because I was most definitely yanking the card immediately after turning off. Thanks for the reminder!

As for ML with respect to Canon warranty, according to US law, Canon cannot refuse to warranty the camera just because the 3rd party soft was installed. They can only refuse to warranty if they can show the 3rd party soft caused the problem.

So, for example, if you have a mechanical problem with a button or knob or whatever, Canon cannot refuse to warranty according to US law just because you installed ML, or even if you send it to them with ML installed.

Of course this is according to US law, not according to the economics of going after them in the legal system when they refuse to warranty in contradtiction to US law.

[skitron]

I like it, I put it on my 50D just so I could record video with it, granted there is no sound, but it was just for fun. Works great.

LOL, my initials are also mws and I also put ML on my 50D just so I could record video and it also works great for me too!