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Magic Lantern Is Back

magiclantern.fm

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Re: Magic Lantern Is Back

#131

Post by names_r_hard »

pixelmonkey wrote: post #126
names_r_hard wrote: post #29

Thanks to all who are sharing their appreciation for this niche but cool project. I'm the current lead dev, so please ask questions. Got a Canon DSLR or mirrorless and like a bit of software reverse engineering? Consider joining in; it's quite an approachable hardware target. No code obfuscation, just classic reversing. You can pick up a well supported cam for a little less than $100. Cams range from ARMv5te up to AA…

I just want to say "thank you." I run Magic Lantern on my Canon 5D Mark III (5d3) and it is such awesome software. I am a hobbyist nature photographer and it helped me capture some incredible moments. Though I have a Canon R7, the Canon 5d3 is my favorite camera because I prefer the feel of DSLR optical viewfinders when viewing wildlife subjects, and I prefer certain Canon EF lenses. More here: https://amontalenti.co…

You're a better photographer than I am. I'm glad if ML helped you.

Please recruit your programmer friends to the cause :) The R7 is a target cam, but nobody has started work on it yet. There is some early work on the R5 and R6. I don't remember for the R7, but from the age and tier, this may be one of the new gen quad core AArch64.

I expect these modern cams to be powerful enough to run YOLO on cam, perhaps with sub 1s latency. Could be some fun things to do there.

Re: Magic Lantern Is Back

#132

Post by shrinks99 »

waz0wski wrote: post #93
heliographe wrote: post #32

Yes! As a software developer in the photography space, we are deeply in need of projects like this. The photography world is mired in proprietary software/ formats, and locked down hardware; and while it has always been true that a digital camera is “just” a computer, now more than ever it is painful just how limited and archaic on-board camera software is when compared to what we’ve grown accustomed to in the mobile…

Agreed cries in .x3f & Sigma Photo Pro

If you don't know about it already and are a macOS user, you may appreciate https://x3fuse.com/

Re: Magic Lantern Is Back

#133

Post by __mharrison__ »

jibal wrote: post #91
chownie wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> C genuinely is easy to pick up. I feel like this is a bit of an https://xkcd.com/2501/ situation. C is considered easy to pick up for the average user posting HN comments because we have the benefit of years -- the average comp sci student, who has been exposed to Javascript and Python, who might not know what "pass by reference" even means... I'm not sure they're going to be considering C easy.

Everything is passed by reference in Python. Everything is passed by value in C.

Not quite true for Python but a close approximation.

Re: Magic Lantern Is Back

#134

Post by jcelerier »

chownie wrote: post #69
names_r_hard wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with some of what you're saying; some of the well known risks of working in C are because it's a small standard. But much of the undefined behaviour was deliberately made that way to support the hardware of the time - it's hard to be cross-platform on different architectures as a low-level language. C genuinely is easy to pick up. It is harder to master. And you're right, for many domains, there are better op…

> C genuinely is easy to pick up. I feel like this is a bit of an https://xkcd.com/2501/ situation. C is considered easy to pick up for the average user posting HN comments because we have the benefit of years -- the average comp sci student, who has been exposed to Javascript and Python, who might not know what "pass by reference" even means... I'm not sure they're going to be considering C easy.

depends on which school you went? the one I've been to started with C and LISP in the 2010s and then moved on to C++ and java with some python

Re: Magic Lantern Is Back

#135

Post by MDGeist »

WalterSchulz wrote: post #127
MDGeist wrote: post #120

It has been many moons since I used Magic Lantern. Has anamorphic desqueeze ever been a feature or could it be in the future? That's one missing feature that bums me out about shooting videos on Canon.

Support for anamorphic lense ML has for ages: 5:4 (1.25); 4:3 (1.33); 7:5 (1.4); 3:2 (1.5); 5:3 (1.66); 9:5 (1.8); 2:1 (2)

Awesome thanks for the heads up! I wasn't using anamorphic lenses back when I tried ML so I'll have to give it another try now.

Re: Magic Lantern Is Back

#136

Post by teddyh »

teddyh wrote: post #85
bibabaloo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, sure, maybe in a professional setting where you’re getting paid. But this was unpaid volunteer work. If, as a community, we start enforcing professional grade standards on people who are just contributing their free time to give us neat toys and tools, I kinda worry it makes the whole thing the whole thing less fun or sustainable. And if that happens, we probably stop getting these free toys altogether.

Think of it as a non-profit club. If you volunteer to be the treasurer, are you then free to ignore everything and do whatever you like, just because you aren’t paid? Of course not. It’s the same with being a software project maintainer; you have willingly taken on some obligations.

(Many people disagree vehemently with ascribing any obligation at all to software maintainers, as discussed previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43143176>)

Re: Magic Lantern Is Back

#137

Post by pixelmonkey »

names_r_hard wrote: post #131
pixelmonkey wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to say "thank you." I run Magic Lantern on my Canon 5D Mark III (5d3) and it is such awesome software. I am a hobbyist nature photographer and it helped me capture some incredible moments. Though I have a Canon R7, the Canon 5d3 is my favorite camera because I prefer the feel of DSLR optical viewfinders when viewing wildlife subjects, and I prefer certain Canon EF lenses. More here: https://amontalenti.co…

You're a better photographer than I am. I'm glad if ML helped you. Please recruit your programmer friends to the cause :) The R7 is a target cam, but nobody has started work on it yet. There is some early work on the R5 and R6. I don't remember for the R7, but from the age and tier, this may be one of the new gen quad core AArch64. I expect these modern cams to be powerful enough to run YOLO on cam, perhaps with sub…

I've always wanted to work on Magic Lantern myself (I am in the Discord) but just haven't found the time yet! Thanks again!

Re: Magic Lantern Is Back

#138

Post by names_r_hard »

fooker wrote: post #123
names_r_hard wrote: post #29

Thanks to all who are sharing their appreciation for this niche but cool project. I'm the current lead dev, so please ask questions. Got a Canon DSLR or mirrorless and like a bit of software reverse engineering? Consider joining in; it's quite an approachable hardware target. No code obfuscation, just classic reversing. You can pick up a well supported cam for a little less than $100. Cams range from ARMv5te up to AA…

I recently obtained an astro converted 6D. Have played around with CHDK a long time ago as a teenager but never magic lantern. I am a compiler dev with decent low level skills, anything in particular I should look at that would be good for the project as well as my ‘new’ 6D? (No experience with video unfortunately) I have a newer R62 as well, but would rather not try anything with it yet.

Ah I'd love an astro conversion.

I've had a fun idea knocking around for a while for astro. These cams have a fairly accessible serial port, hidden under the thumb grip rubber. I think the 6D may have one in the battery grip pins, too. We can sample LV data at any time, and do some tricks to boost exposure for "night vision". Soooo, you could turn the cam itself into a star tracker, which controlled a mount over serial. While doing the photo sequence. I bet you could do some very cool tricks with that. Bit involved for a first time project though :D

The 6D is a fairly well understood and supported cam, and your compiler background should really help you - so really the question is what would you like to add? I can then give a decent guess about how hard various things might be. I believe the 6D has integrated Wifi. We understand the network stack (surprisingly standard!) and a few demo things have been written, but nothing very useful so far. Maybe an auto image upload service? Would be cool to support something like OAuth, integrate with imgur etc?

It's slow work, but hopefully you don't mind that too much, compilers have a similar reputation.

Re: Magic Lantern Is Back

#139

Post by names_r_hard »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #121
gattr wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to do it as well with a cheap second-hand IXUS 230 HS. It could run (at least) 48 h off a 7.2 Ah 12 V AGM battery, snapping a photo every 3 s (I used a fake-battery power adapter and a small DC-DC converter.)

> I used a fake-battery power adapter and a small DC-DC converter. Same here. I used to live in a fairly tall building in Manhattan, so found my way to the roof, found an outlet, and would set it up to do timelapses of sunsets over the Hudson. The camera lens was pretty dirty, so they weren't great , but I enjoyed them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVpOgP-8c9A

Nearly all Canons have a small access port as part of the battery door, which you can put a power supply cable / through, by design. Don't buy too cheap a dummy battery, the really cheap ones may have very bad voltage regulation. You can get ones designed to work from a USB power bank, or mains.

Re: Magic Lantern Is Back

#140

Post by aorth »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #37
aorth wrote: post #3

> We're using Git now. We build on modern OSes with modern tooling. We compile clean, no warnings. This was a lot of work, and invisible to users, but very useful for devs. It's easier than ever to join as a dev. Very impressive! Thankless work. A reminder to myself to chase down some warnings in projects I am a part of...

It’s not too difficult, if you do it from the start, and by habit. I have an xcconfig file[0], that I add to all my projects, that turns on treat warnings as errors, and enables all warnings. In C, I used to compile -wall. I also use SwiftLint[1]. But these days, I almost never trigger any warnings, because I’ve developed the habit of good coding. Since Magic Lantern is firmware, I’m surprised that this was not alrea…

Great, thanks for sharing the links.

By the way, rift valley software? I'm writing to you from Kenya, one of the homes of the great rift valley. It is truly remarkable to drive down the escarpment just North of Nairobi!

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