So I took the plunge and installed Magic Lantern on my Canon t3i, and I got to say I love it. I have had it on for the past two day, and it has increased the usefullness of the camera by 100 percent. I does most of the major things that I need from it being, audio monitoring when recording, magic zoom, white balance, movie restart, and time lapse.
Canon T3i with Magic Lantern
- Thread starter laniwolf
- Start date
Is it stable? Magic Lantern on the 5DII is useless to me as it freezes every so often requiring the battery be removed to reset. The 5DII doesn't have any features that are useful to me but the auto restart on the T3i/600D would be useful so if it were stable I would give it a whirl.
So far it has froze on me once requiring me to take out the battery, but that was from trying out a feature I wont be really ever be using which was to lock the mirror while time lapse. It has been problem-free when I use the features I mentioned above, though the magic zoom flickers a little but works well enough to get focus while recording. A functioned that I wished worked well was the focus peaking but its not, the focus peaking is off, it seems like the peaking is shifted up and not aligned with the image. The other functions not mentioned work but I have not put a lot of time trying it out like the ones mentioned. Its too soon to say if it is stable but I have been putting it through its paces, using it for about 26 hours in the last three days with the only one time freezing.
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drapeama
Well-known member
Recently got my T2i, installed the last version (at the time: early June) and it works like a charm since. Never had a single issue. When movies stop recording themself, format the card and copy/paste the folders on the card, use EOScard.exe to make it bootable and it's done.
I really like the cropmarks add-on, as well as the AGC disabled. The audio meters are great too. One thing I like is the manual values for white balance, from 1500k to 12000k. The selected bitrate, being able to record at a lower bitrate allows you to break the 4GB/12mins limit (nice when recording an event). More infos available here and here.
I really like the cropmarks add-on, as well as the AGC disabled. The audio meters are great too. One thing I like is the manual values for white balance, from 1500k to 12000k. The selected bitrate, being able to record at a lower bitrate allows you to break the 4GB/12mins limit (nice when recording an event). More infos available here and here.
PhantomVideo
Well-known member
I have a 600d and its been awesome I have only been able to crash magic lantern when taking stills or switching between play and rec mode quicklty
drapeama
Well-known member
Then I'm probably lucky nothing never happened, never experienced a freeze. Only thing that happened once was that it shown the 'movie has stopped recording automatically' which usually results of a fragmented memory card. A fresh format of the card, re-install ML and everything went fine after.
Another unexpected feature that has been coming in real handy is the video remap. I shoot a lot a pictures in AV or manual mode and have found it a hassle to turn the nob all the way to the other side to get to the movie mode. On more than one occasion I thought that the constant turning of the nob will wear it out pretty fast. But with the Video remapped to the A-DEP it is now just one click away from photos. Awesome.
PhantomVideo
Well-known member
Are you Pc or Mac gshort, read the 550d installation guide real well (there isn't one for 600d) and you'll be sweet biggest tips for safety are,
1) Don't make a SD card bootable without having an autoexec.bin present on card
2) If camera ever crashes, ie becomes unresponisve, doesn't boot or locks up remove battery immedatly
3) Learn to use delete all clips on card instead of format so you don't nuke ml
4) If ever onset and ML is totally not going format card sd card in camera and your back to factory canon the alternative to this is booting with the shutter button half pressed and the camera will also respond as factory
Just have fun with it, while your learning ml always take your battery out before you put your camera away and you'll be sweet !
1) Don't make a SD card bootable without having an autoexec.bin present on card
2) If camera ever crashes, ie becomes unresponisve, doesn't boot or locks up remove battery immedatly
3) Learn to use delete all clips on card instead of format so you don't nuke ml
4) If ever onset and ML is totally not going format card sd card in camera and your back to factory canon the alternative to this is booting with the shutter button half pressed and the camera will also respond as factory
Just have fun with it, while your learning ml always take your battery out before you put your camera away and you'll be sweet !
drapeama
Well-known member
1) Of course, it's well written several time on the instalation page of Magic Lantern. What I do: I created a folder with all the files that are supposed to be on the SD card in order to have ML to work on the camera. When I format the card, I simply copy/paste all the files and use EOScard.exe to make it bootable: no chance to miss something. Worked fine so far.
3) I never used that, but I'll take a look at it!
4) I wasn't aware of that, you're sure? Doesn't ML write something in the memory of the camera, alterating the camera's factory defaults? See here:
MagicLantern.wikia.com said:
PhantomVideo
Well-known member
Yup that is an adjustment, but its only modifying the boot portion of the camera, which means inserting a card without ml will result in a factory boot
drapeama
Well-known member
Thanks for the info, I wasn't aware of that.
Nice to know.
The scarey part for me was updating the firmware, but it really was no trouble. Took about 5 minutes, just make sure you have a full batery before you do, and put it down so you wont touch any buttons while its updating. From what I understand Magic Lantern doesnt write anything permanently to the camera, so once the sd card has been formatted you couldnt tell if Magic Lantern was ever on it.
BTW, Today I used Magic Lantern on its first commercial (paid) shoot with with only one problem. After filming some video, I changed the nob over to manual to shoot some behind the scenes footage of the light setup. But as I snapped pictures the shutter would get stuck half way and I had to press the shutter again to close it, no sweat I will just turn the camera off then on. Still same problem. hmmm. Change the lens to a 50mm. still same problem. Im starting to panic, so Im about to take off the tripod mount to remove the battery, when I think to change the shutter speed. Then I push the shutter again and same thing again. damn... I quickly search the magic lantern menu and realize that I accidentally activated mirror lockup. Dohhhh! Unselected it and it was working fine. Moral of the story, magic lantern was fine, but human error is another thing. On another note, although I have meantioned the focus peaking is not aligned properly with the image. Its use today was a total lifesaver because I still can make out what is in focus, and was incredible helpful for rack focus's even without the alignment.
BTW, Today I used Magic Lantern on its first commercial (paid) shoot with with only one problem. After filming some video, I changed the nob over to manual to shoot some behind the scenes footage of the light setup. But as I snapped pictures the shutter would get stuck half way and I had to press the shutter again to close it, no sweat I will just turn the camera off then on. Still same problem. hmmm. Change the lens to a 50mm. still same problem. Im starting to panic, so Im about to take off the tripod mount to remove the battery, when I think to change the shutter speed. Then I push the shutter again and same thing again. damn... I quickly search the magic lantern menu and realize that I accidentally activated mirror lockup. Dohhhh! Unselected it and it was working fine. Moral of the story, magic lantern was fine, but human error is another thing. On another note, although I have meantioned the focus peaking is not aligned properly with the image. Its use today was a total lifesaver because I still can make out what is in focus, and was incredible helpful for rack focus's even without the alignment.
Mac, Autoexec.bin?! I see Im gonna have to do some serious reading, thanks for all the tips though. Im definitely gonna look into it!
There is now an installation guide in PDF format, in Magic Lantern zip archive.
I consider this to be the best installation video tutorial; it's for Windows, but the only significant difference for Mac is that you should use MacBoot instead of EOScard.
http://vimeo.com/18035870
I consider this to be the best installation video tutorial; it's for Windows, but the only significant difference for Mac is that you should use MacBoot instead of EOScard.
http://vimeo.com/18035870
Digi zoom shortcut?
Digi zoom shortcut?
"seamless toggle between 3x and 1x zoom in video mode" anyone know how to use the shortcut for video zoom? It says
"* ``DISP`` + ``Zoom In / Zoom Out`` on 600D when not recording: quickly enable/disable 3x zoom"
but when I press the DISP and Zoom button it just gives me the 5x 10x zoom for focusing.
Digi zoom shortcut?
"seamless toggle between 3x and 1x zoom in video mode" anyone know how to use the shortcut for video zoom? It says
"* ``DISP`` + ``Zoom In / Zoom Out`` on 600D when not recording: quickly enable/disable 3x zoom"
but when I press the DISP and Zoom button it just gives me the 5x 10x zoom for focusing.
I was trying to install ML to my brand new Canon T3i (600D) bought almost two months ago and when I checked the firmware version it say 1.0.0. Most firmware versions are 1.0.08. from what I've read here in this forum. Do I have to do some firmware update as soon as I got the camera, from the disc supplied?