Magic Lantern now available for 550/T2i

PaulGriffith

PaulGriffith

Since it seems like half of the community here uses a 550D, I thought I'd share that there's now a magic lantern firmware available for your camera.

For those that don't know, installing Magic Lantern on your camera gives you:

* GUI menus: press the ERASE button to display them
* Bit rate control (QScale parameter) for the H.264 encoder
* Zebra stripes for overexposed / underexposed areas
* Spotmeter, histogram
* Cropmarks (16:9, Cinemascope, Fisheye)
* Simple intervalometer
* Trap Focus: camera takes a picture when something comes in focus
* Wireless trigger with the LCD face sensor & your own hand
* AE bracketing (like on 5D2 ML)
* Rack focus
* Stack focus (Live View only)
* Lens data computation
* Onscreen audio meters
* Manual audio gain, selectable input source, disable AGC and digital filters
* Display time remaining during video recording
* Debug functions (display CMOS temperature, screenshot, logging)

They also have a disclaimer:
Even with all the testing this version has received, nobody can
guarantee it is bug-free. There is still a small risk in using this
software, and we want to fix all the bugs and improve it. Please read
the installation instructions carefully!
Click to expand...

All the 5D guys that use it love it though. And, it's free!

http://magiclantern.wikia.com/wiki/550D

PS: I'm in no way affiliated, and it's free software so hopefully this isn't considered promotion?
 
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The same disclaimer could be put on the front of windows, but most people still use it haha.

This has got to be the best 550 news yet, it's now a "real" video camera with zebra stripes, actual audio control with meters and bonuses like an intervalometer. If I had a 550, I'd install it in a heartbeat.
 
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Heh... 550 or any other piece of gear, it's quite remarkable that so many new gadgets are relatively easy to add 3rd-party software to.

Not so long ago, built-in obsolecence and articifial limiters on functionality were very common and extremely difficult to work around. The limiters may still be commonly installed on manufacture, but the fan-communities have made it extremely easy to improve on existing proprietary functionality.

I recall some of the earlier retail modems, when they were becoming somewhat readily available in a choice of speeds. A big hullabaloo was made of one particular brand, which could be bought in either a 14.4 or 28.8 baud. In actuality, the physical device was identical regardless of which speed was "bought". A software limiter throttled the cheaper version of the device, which could be (with great difficulty, back then) overridden with a simple 3rd-party firmware update. Aside from that, the two modems were 100% identical in components.

Sidetrack for lawsuits over contact lens solutions, too. Identical base products rebranded to cover the spectrum of artificially-created "needs". But I digress...

It's amazing today to see not only the ease at which existing digital consumer products can be improved upon by a wider community, but how manufacturers have such a harder time "grading" their products into artificially-created priceponts to cover the market by deliberately limiting the functionality to provide "choice" - and ending up looking like chuckleheads when the consumers wind up being better at creating software that should have been provided to start with.

Kinda on a ramble right now, but seriously - half of the options on that list of improvements should have been official inclusions to start with. If not, then certainly a readily-made official update later.

Yeah. :cool:
 
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