EOS 5D Mark III Firmware 1.2.1 Available for Download

[LetTheRightLensIn]

...
15. Removed "support" for 3rd party batteries...

16. Removed the unofficial support that was apparently left in the f/8 firmware improvement for the 1DX that let the 1.4x TC III work with the 70-300L (if you keep it at 300mm). (Kinda ironic that they force you to sell your Canon TC and go buy a Kenko it seems or spend an extra $250 for a Kenko and, assuming it is not as sharp, not get the full performance you should be able to and need to get out of the 70-300L. Still hoping that they will put out a 1.2.2 with 'various minor fixes' and they will support this combo unofficially.) I don't have the 1DX but two people are telling me that they see it report as f/8 and work on their 1DX after they put in the f/8 firmware for that body. Canon removed it from the officially reported list (maybe since the TC only fits if you use it on the long end at 300mm) but apparently left the support code in on the 1DX and seemingly removed it when they took six months to otherwise perhaps copy and paste the code over the 5D3.

 

[LetTheRightLensIn]

Will I lose all my custom settings when performing this upgrade?

no

 

[LetTheRightLensIn]

Magic Lantern is working on a true RAW and 14 bit video recording along with 4:2:2 to the card, something we'll never see from Canon.

And they've already said it will never be something that will work for video people...best they've gotten so far is 720 at 24fps for 2s...the reality is you'll never get long recording times because the camera has a buffer to deal with. 1080p wont happen.

Really, it's an upgrade for time lapsers and may have some cool other uses.

If this is the case, the soft output of the 5DmkIII compared to other cameras, as documented on many of his tests, may in fact be impossible to fix with a firmware update, at least one from canon.

That said, what they did find interesting was that the resolution of the DNGs they got from their RAW mode were way higher resolution than just the traditional h.264 video stream from Canon. Not sure if that means that Canon intentionally is crippling it, or if the h.264 encoding loses a lot of resolution, but, that could be useful for some purposes.

Of course, if you want Raw video at 2k, you'd just spend the same amount on a BMCC instead and get a much nicer workflow.

I wonder if they can feed that 'raw' DNG stuff into the h.264 compressor and get better quality out? Or if they can push it out frame by frame over the HDMI and delete each frame from the buffer afterwards so nothing would ever overflow and you could at least get an 8bit or maybe 10bit crisper image out over HDMI? It seems like it should be possible but it's hard to know the internal Canon subsystem, it might not be, or even if it is, it quite likely might require all sorts of knowledge far beyond what they have been able to hack out so far and might only be reasonably doable by Canon people with full docs and access?

 

[LetTheRightLensIn]

15. Removed "support" for 3rd party batteries...

Yes, this is true unfortunately..All my 3rd party batteries no longer register with the camera so i won't know how much charge they have left..this really sucks.

They released a new manual document warning about counterfeiting along with this improvement to insure that you don't use phony batteries.

 

[LetTheRightLensIn]

15. Removed "support" for 3rd party batteries...

Yes, this is true unfortunately..All my 3rd party batteries no longer register with the camera so i won't know how much charge they have left..this really sucks.

Sorry about that. However, I guess as you have a number of batteries, you must have numbered them in order to keep track of them. I am guessing that you have a "bin" for charged batteries and another for uncharged batteries. Keep them fully charged. Always keep a spare. More depending on the shoot. Shoot till the battery dies. Recharge immediately (or as soon as you possibly can...). I think that all you will miss is the flashing battery indicator... As for me, even though I have only Canon batteries, I seldom pay attention to the indicator when I am in the throes of shooting. I usually look at it as an afterthought...

When you are shooting video if the battery conks out when you are rolling you are very likely to lose the current shot. It can be recovered with voodoo but its not easy.

No audio on the HDMI out makes that feature less useful for recording as well. You'll need to use a good slate and / or roll the recorder and record on internal then try to match the TC in post. Very disappointed that they hyped this feature and failed to mention the NO AUDIO part. Nikon / Sony HDMI out has audio.

I didn't test that yet, that is unfortunate. I thought people using beta 1.2.0 said audio over HDMI worked fine? And that some docs for 1.2.1 implied it should work?

 

[distant.star]

Fixes a phenomenon, na naaaa na nana. Phenomenon, na nana na.

I know it's a phenomenal camera, but I had no idea it's this phenomenal!

The obfuscation of language!

When I worked in software support, the company would not allow the word "problem" to be used. Every problem was an "issue." We also had many "chats" about these things -- So, how's that CGI issue?

And now it's come to this -- not a problem, not an issue, but a phenomenon.

For me, I'm not bothered enough by any of the problems they're fixing, so my cheap batteries and I will go along unmolested by corporate bickering.

 

[cayenne]

I wonder how long before Magic Lantern is set up to work with this new firmware?

CC

 

[skitron]

So are all of the third party lenses still focusing correctly with this firmware version? I'd hate to think Canon would sabotage them with a firmware update but can't put it past them if they sabotaged third party batteries.

 

[WillShootPhotos]

Will I lose all my custom settings when performing this upgrade?

Nope - custom settings, your "my menu", etc all stay the same.

- Will

 

[Rienzphotoz]

Finally installed it ... delighted that the AF on my Tamron 24-70 f/2.8 VC still works good without any hiccups due to Canon's new firmware "fix"

 

[rpt]

Fixes a phenomenon, na naaaa na nana. Phenomenon, na nana na.

I know it's a phenomenal camera, but I had no idea it's this phenomenal!

The obfuscation of language!

When I worked in software support, the company would not allow the word "problem" to be used. Every problem was an "issue." We also had many "chats" about these things -- So, how's that CGI issue?

And now it's come to this -- not a problem, not an issue, but a phenomenon.

For me, I'm not bothered enough by any of the problems they're fixing, so my cheap batteries and I will go along unmolested by corporate bickering.

Yup! But you have to admit - phenomenon beats issue or bug hands down...
Even though it still is a bug or a problem...

 

[psolberg]

That said, what they did find interesting was that the resolution of the DNGs they got from their RAW mode were way higher resolution than just the traditional h.264 video stream from Canon. Not sure if that means that Canon intentionally is crippling it, or if the h.264 encoding loses a lot of resolution, but, that could be useful for some purposes.

Of course, if you want Raw video at 2k, you'd just spend the same amount on a BMCC instead and get a much nicer workflow.

yup. BMCC FTW.
Regarding the RAW video hack of ML,
EOSHD has a really interesting update
http://www.eoshd.com/content/10250/canon-5d-2k-raw-feed-update-1920x720-possible-on-1000x-card

Canon’s Chuck Westfall and Tim Smith say line skipping on the sensor was necessary to get down from the native sensor resolution of 21MP+ to 2MP, implying this results in moire and aliasing. However the 2K output of the sensor is much cleaner without the same moire issues as the final 1080p video, and resolution is much closer to 1080 lines than the mushy 5D Mark III 1080p is.

The softer image with moire and aliasing appears to be introduced by the image processor further (and crudely) resizing the 2K raw image, which seems unnecessary. All the camera should need to do is crop to 16:9 and compress the data, not reduce the resolution dramatically further like it is doing. It could be that in order to provide a simultaneous VGA live view feed and 1080p to the SD card, the 2K data has to be downrezed to a middle ground between 640×480 and 1920×1080, then upscaled back to 1080p but I’m purely speculating.

line skipping, yikes. I'm sure we haven't heard the last of this yet.

 

[LDS]

Is the CF formatting after the firmware update really necessary, or removing the firmware file is enough?

 

[LetTheRightLensIn]

A tweet from J.M. offers this sample of video taken using the internal recorder with the same settings, old vs. new firmware:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vuwbn2582pv67i3/5d3121.png

So maybe I actually was correct in my initial take where I said it looked like the video was sharper.
Internal vs external seems similar but new vs old firmware seems different.

Maybe it does grab more details and not mush details in shadows as much now.

(I think I have seen a few very weird artifacts with the new firmware though perhaps popping up in video.)

 

[photosites]

Magic Lantern is working on a true RAW and 14 bit video recording along with 4:2:2 to the card, something we'll never see from Canon.

And they've already said it will never be something that will work for video people...best they've gotten so far is 720 at 24fps for 2s...the reality is you'll never get long recording times because the camera has a buffer to deal with. 1080p wont happen.

Really, it's an upgrade for time lapsers and may have some cool other uses.

If this is the case, the soft output of the 5DmkIII compared to other cameras, as documented on many of his tests, may in fact be impossible to fix with a firmware update, at least one from canon.

That said, what they did find interesting was that the resolution of the DNGs they got from their RAW mode were way higher resolution than just the traditional h.264 video stream from Canon. Not sure if that means that Canon intentionally is crippling it, or if the h.264 encoding loses a lot of resolution, but, that could be useful for some purposes.

Of course, if you want Raw video at 2k, you'd just spend the same amount on a BMCC instead and get a much nicer workflow.

I wonder if they can feed that 'raw' DNG stuff into the h.264 compressor and get better quality out? Or if they can push it out frame by frame over the HDMI and delete each frame from the buffer afterwards so nothing would ever overflow and you could at least get an 8bit or maybe 10bit crisper image out over HDMI? It seems like it should be possible but it's hard to know the internal Canon subsystem, it might not be, or even if it is, it quite likely might require all sorts of knowledge far beyond what they have been able to hack out so far and might only be reasonably doable by Canon people with full docs and access?

I checked out the DNG file posted on eoshd.com. Each file is about 5MB. Therefore, to get 30fps, you need a sustained write bandwidth of 150MByte/s (that is 1.2Gbits/s). That will be quite challenging even for the fastest notebook SSD. A 64GB CF card, even if it were fast enough, would only store about 7 minutes of video.

Therefore your suggestion to use the HDMI out is potentially the solution. HDMI 1.0/1.2 supports a bandwidth of 4.95Gbit/s and HDMI 1.3 supports about 10Gbit/s. BTW, does anyone know which version of HDMI is supported by 5D3?

Ofcourse, I am no camera engineer. These are just rough calculations that I came up with.

Lastly, pardon my ignorance in video, doesn't the 'uncompressed HDMI' output as provided by firmware v1.2.1 mean raw? Is the ML DNG just a higher resolution raw compared to the one provided by firmware v1.2.1?

 

[Rat]

So are all of the third party lenses still focusing correctly with this firmware version? I'd hate to think Canon would sabotage them with a firmware update but can't put it past them if they sabotaged third party batteries.

Ew.

Just... ew.

Can't the ML community produce a version that just adds support for 3rd party batts again?

 

[neighborsgoat]

Will I lose all my custom settings when performing this upgrade?

Nope - custom settings, your "my menu", etc all stay the same.

- Will

Well, maybe not the custom settings, but I've lost some setups related to the focus point selection on the custom shooting modes (C1-C3 on the mode dial). Before the firmware update, on C1 I had all 61-point automatic selection AF, on C2 I had AF point expansion (the nine center points) and on C3 I had Single point spot AF. After the upgrade to 1.2.1, all three custom shooting modes had single point AF. I had to reprogram them back to what I was used to.

 

[cthetoy]

My 3rd party batteries worked with after the firmware upgrade. I bought these batteries off Ebay two weeks ago from Super_techmedia. Batteries from Eforcity failed. I bought those 6 months ago.

 

[eyeland]

Maybe someone should start a thread where we can compile a list of working 3. party batteries (and any possible tips or tricks concerning their usage))

 

[dirtcastle]

Can someone tell me when mistakes got elevated to "phenomenon" status?

I'm not picking on CR... it is clearly the industry's boilerplate language. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought a phenomenon was something amazing and hard to explain, rather than simply being a software bug or a hardware shortcoming.