An Easy Magic Lantern How-To from CNET

[slclick]

In a nutshell, I'd like to read the bullet points from actual users here on the Forum on how (besides the few listed above) it would benefit a stills only shooter on a 5D3.

How about

• full res silent pictures (w/o moving the mirror or shutter)
• auto-ettr metering
• focus stacking
• dual_iso for 14+ ev dynamic rang
  e
• bulb timer
• handheld mlu (less shake w/o IS)
• audio remote shot (clip your hands = shutter release)
• key customization
• "dot tune" for auto afma
• raw histogram, raw zebras and focus peaking (in lv or picture review)
• changing exposure in picture review

Focus Stacking? Hmmm...How would you rate the results compared to proprietary software such as Helicon Focus?

Oh and thanks for the list!

 

[Lawliet]

Focus Stacking? Hmmm...How would you rate the results compared to proprietary software such as Helicon Focus?

Depends on the lens breathing. If that's well controlled, it saves the whole trouble of using a microstep capable slider. Or worse - doing it manually.

 

[Marsu42]

[Focus Stacking? Hmmm...How would you rate the results compared to proprietary software such as Helicon Focus?

Without a macro rail, they're equal. Helicon remote does with laptop tethering what ML can do anywhere, anytime. Of course you still need Helicon Focus or such to assemble the stack. I use it for mushroom photos - lay camera on something, shoot ~20 frames stack, get a beautiful pixel-sharp shot with bokeh behind.

 

[slclick]

[Focus Stacking? Hmmm...How would you rate the results compared to proprietary software such as Helicon Focus?

Without a macro rail, they're equal. Helicon remote does with laptop tethering what ML can do anywhere, anytime. Of course you still need Helicon Focus or such to assemble the stack. I use it for mushroom photos - lay camera on something, shoot ~20 frames stack, get a beautiful pixel-sharp shot with bokeh behind.

I use a rail...damn, now I'm tempted to brick, I mean ML my camera.

 

[dgatwood]

At least for the flash firmware part, that is (nearly) proven by ML's reverse engineering: It's plugged into the main firmware an only activated when the flash is used - unlike all other parts. This results in the annoying circumstance that you cannot program the flash via ML because the settings (the "prop") are not always present.

Interesting. So they are doing plug-ins at least for certain pieces of optional functionality. In that case, I guess that suggests that the problem is either that A. nobody is seriously interested in improving the core or B. that it sucks so badly that nobody can figure out how to improve it.

Canon marketing declared all those features 'ultra high-end' and doesn't deem the regular Canon DLSR user worthy of such 'beyond advanced' features like focusing peaking, zoomed focus boxes, zoomed video modes, zebra (or even true 1080p while we are at it). That is why. Canon has been taken over by marketing MBA droid types.

IIRC, my last $200 mini-DV camcorder had digital zoom and zebra pattern support. There's nothing ultra-high-end about it. That falls under ultra-basic video support, so much so that IMO any camera that can't do zebra patterns is a complete joke, unsuitable for prosumer use, much less professional use.

So if Canon's marketing division truly thinks that these are ultra-high-end features, then they need to find marketing people whose videography experience goes beyond shooting home movies of cats.

 

[dgatwood]

I think you are wrong. I think it's clearly deliberate decisions. You can even see where they have even coded some more advanced things and then locked out the written code or removed it and if you listen in detail to all the things their guys say at trade shows and so on....

Bear in mind that such elisions could also mean that they tried it, but it didn't quite work as well as they had hoped, and they didn't have time to debug it further and make their ship date.

I mean just look at the games they played with AutoISO. Utterly trivial code. It's 1/100000000000000000000000th the complexity and time of tons of stuff in the firmware but they took FIFTEEN YEARS to dribble it out (and even now only for 7D2 and 1DX in reasonably complete form). And yet the basic code for it is so simple that you teach a newbie programmer (one who had never programmed before) how to code the basics of it (maybe not the modal synching into the knobs and dials, but the main code) in their first week and it would like one page of code.

Trivial, yes, but it is a feature. That actually strongly supports my assertion that they're basically only making software changes that are driven by hardware changes (and only the minimal changes needed to support those hardware changes), while not taking the time to add even low-hanging-fruit features that are software-only.

 

[Marsu42]

I mean just look at the games they played with AutoISO. Utterly trivial code.

Trivial, yes, but it is a feature.[/quote]

Auto-ISO is still stupid or semi-broken on Canon:

• Flash locked to 400
• No way to set min. aperture in Tv
• Crippled values for min. shutter in Av
• No EC in M except for 1dx (dunno about new 7d2)

 

[LetTheRightLensIn]

I mean just look at the games they played with AutoISO. Utterly trivial code.

Trivial, yes, but it is a feature.

Auto-ISO is still stupid or semi-broken on Canon:

• Flash locked to 400
• No way to set min. aperture in Tv
• Crippled values for min. shutter in Av
• No EC in M except for 1dx (dunno about new 7d2)

[/quote]

AFAIK it has EC in M on the 1DX and 7D2 as well as no crippled min shutter value. But it only took them 15 years! : And again, if those who don't code, only knew how utterly, utterly, utterly trivial the basic coding for AutoISO is. I mean the 5D3 crippled min shutter in Av is just absurd. There is zero technical reason for it and, if anything, it added an extra 15 seconds of coding to implement (and probably wasted 8 hours in product management and marketing meetings).

 

[Marsu42]

AFAIK it has EC in M on the 1DX and 7D2 as well as no crippled min shutter value.

Interesting - is the flash still locked to 400 on the 7d2?

And again, if those who don't code, only knew how utterly, utterly, utterly trivial the basic coding for AutoISO is.

Indeed, that's why I managed to code my own ML auto-iso module

I mean the 5D3 crippled min shutter in Av is just absurd. There is zero technical reason for it and, if anything, it added an extra 15 seconds of coding to implement (and probably wasted 8 hours in product management and marketing meetings).

This is one of the things really annoying about Canon, they don't have a built-in limit when it comes to crippling their own products. The most absurd setting is on the 6d - the min. shutter speed is only up to 1/250s, but down to 1second :-> like anybody would use that with auto-iso.