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not that i hadn't experienced this problem with newer builds but yes, it is better now. Always count to 10 before getting card out after opening the door, and I always check does camera wake up with empty CF, if it doesn't - do the battery reset, otherwise battery gets drained fast in mine. Newer could pinpoint the settings causing them, bet with default settings almost newer happen, with mine setup - often enough to annoy.

+1 on the battery, have happened to me. I have noticed that cheaper unbranded lp-e6 voltage swings more, and it's internal resistance is higher, thus on a shutter cation (that is power hungry) voltage would drop and the camera would think it is empty thus switching it self off to protect it self. Good alternative batteries does not do that. toughs I have had various adventures with them - and the funny thing is only the original canon battery runs without a glitch, all others have died and exchanged.

http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=8850.0

even tough idea it self is nice, I think ETTR gives better result (when used right)

Is there grip involved? I remember that my grip for 7D correctly reported state of only one of two batteries, including battery adapters.

Is the battery adapter chipped, mine isn't and I get a prompt  when I switch camera and I have to confirm to continue to use it, this also happened with one of alternative batteries.

mine measures 8.2V (on PSU it is says 8V 3A), have been using it without any problems on 7D and 6D

well, IMHO

you use lavalier when (when using sound on tape / sync):

• you can't control framing
• you are one man team
• you have a wide shot you have no place to hide boom
• indoors in reverberant space, where close placed omni gives you the better result

as for what to buy, things to note:

• legal (free) frequencies
• power requirements
• get the best lavalier you can get (Countryman, Sennheiser, DPA, Rode)
• get the best radio system you can afford (Sennhaiser, Sony, Rode)

to conclude- you need both boom and lavalier, and a radio system, there are ENG type kits, that have one receiver, one belt-pack transmitter, one block transmitter, or get two kits from rode one newshoter and other filmmaker. Rode is one of the best band for the buck, built well sounds good. And 2.4GHz legal anywhere, not like 400 to 860MHz, you have to now your why around.

well, there are some portable hard drives that can download the files trough USB from camera - like these - http://www.digitalfoci.com/df-photo-solutions-backup/product/54-picture-porter-advanced.html

IMHO

well 1.74x crop would be ok if you could mount EFs lenses, there are some good ones that are sharp enough for 4K, good that most 3rd party manufacturers like sigma, tamron and tokina make their glass EF not EFs mount, despite not covering the FF sensor. So unless there are some other huge problems like moire it is still a good option then. tough if it got moire then - sorry, but canon really screwed this up then...

So got info back from service, psu board failure. Probale cause for this is shorted lens power pins, 7D does not have protective circuit like later cameras, tough later cameras have less protection from battery side, except ones that are ment to be used with newer LP-E6n.

One more try (same link).

The same, front LED blinks only with power adapter, nothing else happening.

same here

This reminds me of the very short time the camera stays on if the communication between two digic cores is unsuccessful.

I saw somewhere topic about this. Can this be a result of camera overheating. I'm just speculating here of probable scenario, as this happened when person I lent camera to switched it off, took card out copied pictures and then inserted it back in and camera did not turn on, he called me and I instructed do the battery removal, and start without card, it did not help. Maybe camera got stuck without card, overheated... just speculating. On Wednesday I'll have chance to bring it to repair shop.

Here's a LED blinking test for 7D: autoexec.bin.

No change for me

Look here this should clarify, I made video how it looks - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qseFkmGknPM

Nothing else in any combination, including portable display test, have no reaction except, when camera is powered by external power adapter it blinks the front led.

did tests without grip, now also with.

with - no reaction what so ever

without only with battery adapter blinks front led

same, just the front led blinking.

As I wrote - front led blinks with interval about 3 sec. In all modes, regardless card door

Have been using my 7D for quite some time with ML without any serous hiccups, have lent it to coworker many times as well, no problems.

Now it seems to be frozen, it does not turn on at all,

*) tried all modes,
*) with card that was 100% working with ML,
*) formated on computer, on 40D, made sure that it is clean with eoscard, and even without card.
*) Tried other batteries, that I'm sure are ok, as worked on the same coworkers 5Dmk2, so batteries are ok
*) Took small battery out, left the camera off, on, with covers open and closed

and all combinations of above - camera seams to be dead.

only reaction I got was when instead of battery I attached it to external power adapter (that I use for long time-lapses), turned it on and it started to blink front yellow led with interval about 3 seconds...

FW 2.0.3, ML magiclantern-Nightly.2016Jul09.7D203

One think I could think off, it froze while using alternative battery, that sometimes had acted up, like on charger it is full, in camera show empty, but works like it had been full.

there is no sound monitoring to headphones on 7D, at least in nightly builds or elsewhere that I would know of.

on 60D vs 7D, the major difference form video perspective is CF vs SD cards (7D CF -> can shoot in RAW, SD to slow) and 7D has full resolution always on HDMI, important for external monitoring. I had the same dilemma, chose 7D (there are more + to it than I mentioned), audio monitoring can be solved with a http://www.juicedlink.com/ preamp that has headphones out.

So noise wise, there are a lot of people using the 160-320-640-1280 iso's. But I doubt if you can see that much of a difference...1/3 of a stop less noise isn't that much.

it makes sense when you use h264, I do that for most work, it is better just have to be more careful with highlights. I also when have to go up the ISO scale ramp up h264 bitrate, so i would get less artifacts and it would be easier to clean up after.

In raw video - have not done much, but yes stick with whole step ISOs that has given the best results for me.

flee market is your friend!

On Canon EOS you can adapt many old manual lenses - and for filming that is ok - You can look for m42 mount (Zenit, Praktica), K mount (pentax), and Nikon F lenses. Adapter would cost 5-20$, and manual lenses tend to be cheaper because they are impractical for photography, but are good for video.

As of lights - you either buy them or build them. Kinoflo type lights are pretty easy to build and doesn't require a lot of power, also light is quite nice and soft. youtube is full of DIY solutions for lighting. Sometimes you can find something real cheep that with few modifications would become grate light, so think about that.

Lens wise you are pretty much covered, except you would need like 20mm, 35mm, 85mm fast primes, but in general you are fine. 17-50 2.8 is good for most work, and if it is to dim - only lights can help - going to f/1.4 is only 2 stops, meaning you could go from iso 1600 to 400 but you would have problem focusing, as 2.8 is already hard on that tiny camera screen, and believe me, cinema is not so flat space/shallow depth of field, if not to say opposite. They just can light the place up. Lens and aperture should be a creative decision, not out of exposure.

does not matter as long as there is no interframe interpolation happening before twixtor. So better use intraframe codec (all-i), also bitrate is better used in lower FPS (same bitrate for lower fps gives more data to each frame).

he doesn't ship to Latvia

I would not advise FD lenses on EOS body because you need adapter with optical element, and then you need a real good one, a long the level of metabones, because flange distance of FD is smaller than on EF. Tough on m4/3 and Sony E this is one of the best options price / performance wise. Just for video maybe, but as I do timelapses, I still need it to work decent in photo mode as well.

as for the 50mm ones, for video definitely go with old manual lens, easier to work with and they can easily be de-clicked. Auto focus on any 50mm canon lens is awful. Even on the expensive 1.4 and 1.2 ones, it is not precise, you can try focusing the same spot like 10 times and maybe one will be in focus.

only problem with old lenses - there are so few options on the wide angle ok Mir-20, zenitar-16, peneleg 8, but they fall back to modern counterparts by miles. Tokina has some good options there 11-16 and the new 11-20 that you do not need to rob a bank for.

pentacon 50mm is practica lens, but as I said it is matter of individual lens as quality varies a lot. Helios 44M-4 is average sharp, bet best I have seen is 44M-6, have never seen with index 7, tough non are sharp wide open, you have to compare them head top head with same settings to be sure. I have compared the Jupiter 37A (135mm f/3.5), and at f/5.6 it blew out Canon's 70-200 f/2.8 @ 135mm f/5.6 but wide open it looses.

All Pentacon 50mm lenses I have seen have been nice sharp. Helios has a specific bokeh when wide open, and you can't mistake if for any other lens (maybe the same design Zeiss Biotar).

Get a decent adapter tough, and make sure you can focus to infinity, I have had lenses that had to be adjusted. For video I rarely use ones with AF confirm chip as I have found that they tend to misbehave and can have error on some cameras, so I found it more cumbersome. But do not go to fancy either, no pint of paying large amounts for simple adapter. Even tough you camera is not a weather sealed, adapted lens rarely is so be aware of that. I have to because my 7D is and with L lenses I can use them is quite harsh weather, but with manual lenses I have to be careful.

super sharpness is not always the best thing, because it will emphasize moire more, so I tend to use lenses and according apertures that are sharp enough for video, unless you film with 5Dmk3, 7Dmk2 or RAW in crop mode then you need all sharpness you can get. So I have had problems with my Jupiter 37A, I have to be careful.

I got asked to write more detailed about old lenses you can adapt, but I'll write here because someone else would benefit as well, I think.

First - you can adapt following mounts to EF:

• m42 (Zenit, Praktica, older Zeiss, Pentax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M42_lens_mount)
• Pentax K (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentax_K-mount)
• Nikon F tough only the ones with manual aperture and focus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikon_F-mount#Pre-autofocus)

Second - You can find very god and very bad lenses on those mounts, so you should do research before purchase and always check the lens for problems (lose focus thread, stuck aperture, fungus on glass, damaged etc)

Third - Especially with soviet lenses the quality varies, so you can have two lenses with same designation and one is stellar, other is bad.

Fourth - Lens worth getting:

• Helios 44[Y]-[X] 58mm f/2.0 – [Y] means mount – where M stands for m42, K for Pentax K, the [X] at the end is sharpness, 1 trough 7, higher the number – sharper the lens. It based on Carl Zeiss Biotar 2/58. One of, if not the most popular soviet old m42 lenses because sold as kit lenses for Zenit cameras.
• Jupiter 37A 135mm f/3.5 – there is also multi-coted version, based on Carl Zeiss Sonnar design, it is believed to be successor of Jupiter-11 witch is a lens with similar parameters and characteristics, but with m39 mount. Razor sharp lens, when stepped down, one of my favorites.
• Industar 50-2 50mm f/3.5 – one of the most common old m42 lenses, is also common in rangefinder cameras and older m39 mount, grate for macro photography.
• Mir-20 20mm f/3.5 – wide angle lens, based upon Carl Zeiss Flektogon 2,8/20, no the sharpest lens in corners, flares quite easily. Outperforms most of the kit lenses for DSLR's tough. Rear filters – so rather hard to obtain, was supplied with 3 filters – uv, yellow, orange. There is more modern version M and also multi-coated
• Mir -1  37mm f/2.8 – Highly praised but not really m42 lens, it is m39 mount, that you can adapt with simple ring, might not focus to infinity without adjustment, because m39 is 44.2mm not 44.5mm to film plane. This lens received "Grand prix Brussels 1958". It is bit wider than normal lens, based on Carl Zeiss Flektagron, It has new sibling Mir-1b witch are true old m42 lenses. Flares really easily, but does that really beautifully.
• Industar 61L/Z – 50mm f/2.8 – a nice normal lens, design based upon Carl Zeiss Tessar, with rather exotic Lanthanum glass witch is thought to be a little radiative, but also with good optical characteristics. Other is rather peculiar iris design, witch halfway mes nice star sharped bokeh. One of my favorites for HD DSLR filming.

Also worth to mention:

• Jupiter 9 85mm f/2.8
• Helios 40-2 50mm f/1.5

Also you can find many Zeiss m42 lenes and most of them are grate tiough I would say they are overpriced. There also are Praktica lenses that are mostly really good especially their 50mm one, that is sharper than Canon's 50mm f/1.8

there are many good Nikon lenses, but they might feel odd because they turn the other way for focus, and I'm not so familiar with them. I've mentioned lenses that I personally can vouch for, so if someone has something to add - please do!

I have worked with Tamron 18-50 f/2.8 without stabilization, and it is nice lens. con is that it has short focus throw, so it is hard no nail focus in manual mode, but it is with most photo lenses anyway. I own Canon 18-85 f/4-5.6 IS USM and it has grate stabilization, works well for hand held. but is is dark. the canon 24-105 f/4 i think is out of you budget, but it is a worthy investment, it will work on FF, and it is a good lens, good stabilization also.

Sigma art series lenses are very good, I would not look for stabilization below 35mm as it is not that necessary, when you master holding camera right. but if you go with Sigma, go only with ART series.

So I have two approaches either good stabilized lens (dark) or a fast prime. And here you can have many choises, because you also are from post soviet world - so there are plenty of grate old manual lenses to choose from, because with a simple adapter you can mount any m42 (Zenit, Practica), K (Pentax) lenses. if you digg around you can find superb ones (some that I use - http://ansius.lv/old-m42-lenses/)