Alex Dumitrache
Magic Lantern v2.3 – User's Guide
Magic Lantern v2.3
Stable ports: Canon 5D Mark II, 550D, 60D, 600D, 50D and 500D
Ports in progress: Canon 5D Mark III, Canon 5D (classic), Canon 1100D/T3
User’s Guide
www.magiclantern.fm
July 23, 2012
Magic Lantern is an open (GPL) framework for developing enhancements to the amazing Canon 5D Mark II and 550D/T2i digital SLRs. Magic Lantern is being developed by a small team, helped by a very enthusiastic and respectful user community.
Active developers:
Alex – main developer
Arm.Indy – author of crypto tools and most new ports
G3gg0 – reverse engineering guru
Coutts – porting ML to 5D classic
Nanomad – porting ML to 1100D/T3
SztupY – author of ML USB controller and others
Past developers (come back guys!):
Trammell Hudson – original author and former leader of Magic Lantern project AJ – developed the AJ version of Magic Lantern for 5D Mark II
Code contributions piersg, nandoide, stefano, trho, deti, tapani, phil, RoaldFre, Colin Peart, cpc, msi, robotsound, maclema, adijiwa, kyselejsyrecek, mk11174, Scrax, OnePercent, Raymond Lo, Rob Kramer, Takashi Miyake, Tobias Doerffel, Paul Nolan, Martin M, and the list is growing:)
Card tools by Pel, Zeno, lichtjaar
Website Team Redkite Bart, Nanomad, Michael Zöller, Malcolm Debono, CameraRick, Francis Danforth, Scrax, 1%
Magic Lantern logo by elJoseph
Thanks to all the users who provided feedback, reported bugs, and supported the Magic Lantern project by donations!
Also, thanks to CHDK team and all the supporters of the old 5D2 Magic Lantern!
Magic Lantern is being developed by independent film makers in our spare time and at risk to our beloved cameras. We hope that it saves you time and aggravation on set, and we’d appreciate your support. You can help by donating via PayPal, or through equipment donations. You can also contact me (Alex) via email ‹broscutamaker@gmail.com›. Thanks!
Features
• Audio: disable AGC, audio meters, manual audio controls, selectable input source (internal, internal+external, external stereo, balanced), audio monitoring via A/V cable.
• Exposure helpers: zebras, false color, histogram, waveform, spotmeter, vectorscope.
• Focus tools: focus peaking, zoom while recording, trap focus, rack focus, follow focus, focus stacking.
• Movie helpers: Bitrate control, movie logging (Exif-like metadata), auto-restart after buffer overflow or 4 GB limit, HDR video, advanced FPS control.
• LiveView adjustments: contrast, saturation, display gain for using LiveView in darkness.
• Cropmark images: user-editable overlays to assist framing and composition.
• Fine control for ISO, Shutter, Kelvin white balance and other image settings.
• Bracketing: advanced exposure bracketing, focus stacking.
• Remote release with LCD face sensor and audio trigger, without extra hardware.
• Timelapse: intervalometer (for photos and movies), bulb ramping (manual and automatic), recording at very low FPS (down to 0.2 FPS), silent pictures without shutter actuation.
• Astro- and night photography: bulb timer for very long exposures (up to 8h).
• Info displays: focus and DOF info, CMOS temperature, shutter count, clock.
• For strobists: flash exposure compensation, range up to -10 to +3 EV (depends on the camera).
• Power saving: Turn off display or reduce backlight in LiveView during idle times.
• Handy features: Quick zoom in PLAY mode, key shortcuts for commonly-used features, customizable menus.
• And much more!
Important notes
• After opening the card door, always wait for LED confirmation (or for 5 seconds) before removing the card!!! (no such problem on 550D).
• If you have a bootable SD card and have the BOOTDISK flag set in the camera (which the installer does), and you do not have an AUTOEXEC.BIN file on the card the camera WILL NOT BOOT! It will hang and not wake up until the battery is removed.
• If you encounter a “locked up” camera, quickly remove the battery.
• When in doubt, remove the battery and reboot.
• And, remember that this software can damage or destroy your camera.
Known issues
• First second of recorded audio may be very loud.
• SD monitors are not completely supported (magic zoom and RGB tools will not work).
• Magic Lantern has no audio controls for Canon 600D/T3i and newer cameras. Luckily, you can disable AGC from Canon menus.
Common terms
Movie mode
Most cameras have a dedicated movie mode on the mode dial. In this case, it’s obvious what movie mode is.
However, the following cameras do not have a dedicated movie mode. For these cameras, Magic Lantern considers the following configurations as “movie mode”:
• Canon 5D Mark II: in LiveView, with movie recording enabled AND LiveView display set to Movie.
• Canon 50D: in LiveView, with movie recording enabled from ML menu.
When movie mode is active, Magic Lantern will show a Mv symbol on the bottom info bar. In this mode, certain ML tools that normally work for stills (like intervalometer or audio remote shot) will change their behavior and will record movies.
The Q button
Most cameras have a button labeled as [Q]. A few cameras don’t, so you will have to use some other button:
• 5D Mark II: use the Picture Style button.
• 50D: use the FUNC button.
• 500D: use the LiveView button.
Liveview screen layout
Magic Lantern uses the available screen space to display operational information in a clear and practical manner. The image shows a screenshot with commonly used ML features enabled.
Some items that may need more details:
• Audio meters: this shows the audio record levels, in dB. The bars become yellow at -12 dB and red at -3 dB.
• FPS: the current FPS value is displayed with 3 decimal places (25.000, 24.000, 23.976 etc).
• Shutter speed: in movie mode, values that maintain a certain amount of filmic motion blur (180 degree shutter) are displayed in green. In photo mode, values that may cause blurry pictures are displayed in red.
• ISO: values with low noise (negative digital gain) are displayed in green.
• Clipping dots on histogram: they appear when the image contains overexposed areas.
• Green/magenta white balance shift: not all cameras let you adjust these in movie mode; fine-tune them from White Balance submenu in ML menu.
• Focus distance: this is displayed for most newer Canon lenses. If your lens does not report focus distance, ML will display the AF/MF status instead. Detailed focus and DOF info is displayed in the Focus menu.
Key shortcuts
PLAY mode shortcuts
• Q (550D), UNLOCK (60D), DISP (600D), LV (500D), FUNC (50D) or Picture Style (5D Mark II): show exposure tools (zebra, false color, histogram, waveform, spotmeter) and crop-marks (as configured from Overlay menu).
• SET + Main Dial (Scrollwheel) in PLAY mode: customizable function (preview HDR images, timelapse playback and others). See SET+MainDial.
• LV: create a transparent overlay from current image (when Ghost Image is active). You can use it for panoramas or for repeating shots.