Messages

Not sure how to upload actual photos, but here's the one taken normally without liveview.  This is a stack of 20 pics.  If you click it to scroll to the next image, you'll see the Liveview image at 10x.  When I upscale the regular one to match the same approximate size, the regular one starts to pixelate. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152312620288701&set=a.143037638700.112356.566973700&type=1&theater

So that's 20 pics stacked Vs. 4 stacked.  Looking at a single frame of each of the pics (untouched and unstacked @ 100%) on my PC, the 10X is about 2.5x the size of the of the regular pic.  (Of course we're only talking about Saturn itself, not the actual picture size.)  So it is something I'd like to dabble with.  I saw modules somewhere where someone has it taking a screenshot after every push of the button, so maybe an add-on or something like that instead of playing with the source?  It's not a must, but it could be something nice if enough are stacked.  Hard to tell at this point. 

Bill

I'll try to do that in a bit.  The link I posted above is the LV shot.  I also forgot that I'm using a Barlow right now, and that makes it much bigger.  Maybe the regular pics will end up being good enough.  I'm in the process of taking a few dozen pics with 12s in-between, so it will take a few, but I'll post it asap.

The pictures I get doing it this way (with 10x ) are actually viewable.  When I take a regular picture, yes, it's higher resolution, but it's so small (even when cropped and shown at 100%) you can't tell what it is. 

You can use the built in Magic Lantern intervalometer but you will have some mirror shake.

If this was directed at me, I use the intervalometer all the time, but it doesn't allow me to take pics at 10x in liveview like the screenshot does. 

Bill

Huge request that I'm hoping you'd implement, although I'm not sure how many people would use it.  I'm thinking the screenshot function would be fine for this, but if it could be worked into video, that would be cool, too.  I see I can take a screenshot of LV and it even works at 10x!!  You have no idea how awesome this is to me and I thank you for it!  I'm trying to get good pictures of Saturn, but to do that, you really need to take many photos and stack them.  Is there any way that we could have the screenshot feature with an added option to take as many pics as we want?  The 10 second timer is a must for the 1st picture, but after that, they can be back to back.  Up to 1000 would be ideal.  I can easily see me doing 100's at a time like this.  The attached image is what I got from stacking just 4 images in this manner.  It's hard to push all the buttons and also have time for the camera/scope to stop shaking in 10 seconds, but with up to 1000 pics, by the time the 1st few were complete, all shaking from the telescope would be dampened out and the majority would be useable. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152312439213701&set=a.143037638700.112356.566973700&type=1&theater

Thanks for your time and effort, it's really appreciated!

Bill
(Windoze321)

[FPSOverride]

FPSOverride: I can set it to 1 frame every 5 seconds but I seem to be restricted by the optimization setting.  In low light mode, I can get the shutter speed as long as 4 seconds, but no lower the 3.9, I think.  At the same FPS I can go to the High FPS mode and then my shutter speeds are 1/30 - 1/450 or something.  Could we get a combination of the two?  I'm using the gradual exposure (awesome, by the way!) but I want to start at around 1/450 and end around 4, but I've found no way to do it without changing the mode from high to low light.  This would be perfect for the 'Holy Grail' if they were combined.  I've played with the advanced settings, but can't seem to get it in there, either.

As always, thanks you for your work!

I have a request.  Using expanded HDR for photos, would it be possible to make the exposure margin higher than 5?  I'd like to see options up to 15.  Here's the thing.  Even at 5, I have to take 3+ pictures to get the effect I'm looking for and everything in between is a total waste.  What I'm trying to do is take a long exposure of the moonlit clouds.  I would like to HDR it with a very short exposure that gives me detail in the Moon.  So a broader range would allow me to do it with just 2 shots instead of 3-5.  (I'm taking them in the mode that adjusts the shutter, not the other things.  I want to keep a low ISO to reduce noise.)  Having had a shutter failure in my last camera, I'm really trying to keep my shutter count down as much as I can without deterring  my photography habits.

As always, cheers and thank you for this wonderful tool! 

Windoze, OK, so I installed ML and it seems to have gone alright. All the menus are there etc.
I just want to make sure I understand as to how to set shutter speed, Aperture and ISO for movie mode.

I have Exposure Override *ON* from the main menu and have set my aperture, shutter speed and ISO to what i want them to be.

This means that now when i am in movie mode it is using my settings and not the apparent settings that display on the bottom of the screen while in movie mode/live view.

This appears to be the case, as the brightness does not change whether I am pointing it to the window (very bright) or into shadow.

Should be correct.  I've only used it with the fps override, though.

[Bug Report Update:]

Bug Report Update: Intervalometer - I ran it under the exact same conditions as last night except I used the release from the 13th and everything was fine.  I stopped it at 2 hours and 40 minutes and it took 282 pics. 

It should have only been 2 hours and 21 minutes, though (30s interval * 282 pics = 8,460s / 60 = 141 minutes or 2h 21m).  I deleted all the setup pics and only counted the ones from the time that the intervalometer was running, so that wasn't it.  I had written down the start and stop time of the intervalometer and it matched the time given for the 1st and last pics of the set.  I see no gaps in the stars when stacked, though.  Probably due to the combination of the bulb and intervalometer. I'm guessing that's why "There were some changes to timing backend".

Cheers and again, thanks for all your work!

I tried shooting the moon using the kit 70-300mm (at 300MM) and could only get this close -

That's a great shot!  Mine was taken through my telescope with a 12" mirror while holding the camera in front of the eyepiece.  I only had the 2" 30mm eyepiece on it for a magnification of 50x.  (I can go 545x, but the 30mm is the only one I have that fits the whole moon in it.)

Wow, that looks great!
How did you get the trees in there? Are they light painted?
Or did you start shooting earlier when it was lighter?
I'd love to try and get some pics like this.

Thanks!  Yeah, they're painted by the carriage lights of the house.

Edit:  ISO 400, 29s exposures, f/4.5, @20mm (Stock 18-55mm lens).  I think I shot them in a Tungsten White Balance.  Just set your manual focus to a bright star before hand (using the 10x magnification).  Absolutely no editing besides reducing the size of them and stacking them in Photoshop.  I left Blending for all the photos set to Normal.

Aw, man, you should have used the save-to-422 so that you would have not wasted simulated shots for nothing.

(if we even have 422 anymore, I haven't checked in months)

I just looked for it and couldn't find it.  If it is in there, it's hiding pretty well or I'm blind. 

If the skies are clear tonight, I'll be running the exact conditions as last night on the earlier release.

[Bug Report Update -]

Bug Report Update - Intervalometer - Okay, I reverted to the June 13th release and ran (am running) the intervalometer at 30 seconds with the shutter speed at 29 seconds.  No problem at all.  The camera has been running for over 2 hours and 20 minutes and it's up to 275 simulated shots.  Now time to recharge my only battery :-)

There were some changes to timing backend, so it might be related. If the problem happens after exactly X hours/minutes/whatever after powering on the camera, I know where to look.

Now that I think of it, that very well could be.  The difference between 100 and 130 shots is about 14-15 minutes at 29 second exposures.  It did take me about that much longer to set up for the 1st shoot.  For the 2nd shoot, I knew my settings and didn't have to take any test shots.  I also didn't have to wait for my neighbors to go inside because I was setting up in a more secure location.

Edit:  I will do the test on the old firmware if when I wake up I don't see a response saying you found it.

You can enable a dummy shooting mode (snap simulation) and just let the camera blink and beep. It should be enough to reproduce the bug - of course, if it's not caused by some memory overflow when taking a picture.

There were some changes to timing backend, so it might be related. If the problem happens after exactly X hours/minutes/whatever after powering on the camera, I know where to look.

Okay then, I'll try that out.  Unfortunately, though, I only have one battery and I just set it to charge.  I also need a couple/few hours of sleep.  It will still be about 12 hours quicker than waiting till dark, lol.

The 130 pictures that it did take were great, though!  http://pinterest.com/pin/459437599456549748/

Compare the two releases under the same settings then

Okay, but it's morning time here, now.  It will have to wait until tonight.  (Not gonna waste 100+ long exposure shutter actuations on the daytime  )

[Bug Report -]

Bug Report - Intervalometer - I was shooting some star trail pictures and ran into the same problem twice.  I set it up on my camera to take 29 second exposures and set the intervalometer to take a picture every 30 seconds.  (I have a fast Class 10 card with UHS Speed Class 1.)  The first set took exactly 100 pictures perfectly.  When I went to check it, the red light was flashing.  I lit up the display it was counting down and was at 28+ minutes.  The 2nd set went for 130 pictures.  I went outside at the 50 minute mark to see if it was going to stop at 100 again, but it didn't.  When I went out to check again later, the light was flashing again.  This time it was counting down and at 42+ minutes. 

This happened using the release from June 19th.  This did not happen using the one from June 13th, but the setup was different.  Using the one from June 13th, the setup was a 5 second exposure with the intervalometer set at 6 seconds.  I took well over 1,000 pics without an issue. 

So, I don't know if the problem cropped up between releases or if it happened because of the longer exposure time of the last attempt.

Cheers and thank you for all your hard work!

[So, that is the only thing I have to do to try it ?]

So, that is the only thing I have to do to try it ? since I am noob here and just been reading, thats the one thing I have to do to make it work ? I am only interested in Intervalometer atm and thats the only feature I would explore atm
What about bugs and/or when I find some ? is there something I have to do then or what ? how does that part works ?

You just set up your picture for the exposure/aperture/ISO like you would normally do and then hit the Av button to open the LR menu.  Then hit the menu button to bring up the grid style.  Highlight Interval and hit the Q button.  Adjust the time between pics and the delay before the 1st pic. After that I 1/2 press the shutter to start it.  If you're looking to do time lapse without the shutter count rising, then do it the way I described by using Movie Mode on your camera and setting the FPSOverride and the Exposure Override.  No need for the Intervalometer using that method.  Make sure to use the power saving settings to cut off the LCD during recording to save on your battery.

Post bug reports right here.  If something goes wrong, they say to turn off the camera and take out the battery for a minute.

I'm about to post a bug report on the Intervalometer.  Nothing that will threaten the camera, but something that needs to be addressed.

And if you put a new, blank card in, the camera just won't use ML at all right?

Correct.  The bootflag will still be set to look for software, but upon finding none, it just load normally.  That's the only (and extremely tiny) change that occurs to your actual firmware when ML is installed the 1st tie.)  I believe that can be undone by reflashing your camera with the OEM firmware.

You can also just hold the 'Set' button on your camera when turning it on and it will bypass ML as well.

As for ease of use...  I've had my camera for 6 days now.  Tomorrow will be a week.  I've never used Magic Lantern before.  It takes a bit to get the feel of it, but just work on one thing at a time.  For me it was time lapse through the Video (FPSOverride) setting (along with exposure override), and when you drop the fps down as low as I do, then it lags pretty bad when changing the shutter speed.  I wasn't sure it was working and it was a bit frustrating.  Once I figured out I had to just be patient and wait for the changes to the readout of the shutter speed and wait a bit more for the changes to show up on the LCD, I was good to go.  As for everything else I've tried, the changes are pretty instant.  Hoping for some lightning so I can check out the Motion Detect feature!  That should be fun!!   

All sounds a bit too complicated for me at the moment.

Maybe I'll just wait for a stable release that takes you through the steps.

If you want to do it easily, just go into the archives and get the one from the 12th.  Unzip it and put everything you see onto your SD card (not in any folders).  Then put it in your camera and turn it on.  Go to your firmware update (Might have to be in Manual mode to see that option in your camera menu) and update it.  It will tell you it worked and to restart your camera.

Edit:  Once installed, tap the Av button to bring up the ML menu.  Then hit your Menu button to bring up the Grid menu.  (I like this way best, but you don't have to do that.)  Highlight the feature you want to check out and hit your Set button to activate or the Q button to adjust the settings of the highlighted feature.

2nd Edit:  You only have to do the 1st paragraph one time.  After that, you're good to go unless you erase it off of your SD card.

[think]

nanomad, I downloaded the new build (2.3)
Not sure if I will risk installing it yet (I have never installed ML), but if I do, what version of firmware is required for the 1100D?

I looked on my camera, and I have 1.0.5 installed at the moment.

You have the correct firmware.  Look in the archives section for the June 12th release.  That's the one I'm using right now and it seems to work fine.  I haven't upgraded to the latest, yet.  Partially because I'm not positive that I should erase the whole card including the .bin and replace it with everything from the latest release.  I think that is correct.  I'll test it out by adding the new release to a separate SD card, I just haven't gotten around to it.  There's a storm brewing as we speak    Literally 

[have had]

So you definitely need a .fir file to run ML?
It won't just install via the autoexec.bin file?

Well, you need to have had a .fir at some point.  After that, I think you can just use the .bin.

Keep in mind that I'm new here, too.  If we could get an admins input here, that would be reassuring.

I think that the .bin replaces the .fir, but you have to have run the .fir at least one time in the past without reflashing your firmware back to OEM inbetween.

[the .fir file is missing]

Hey, I just got the 18th of June nightly. This is probably on purpose (as stated on the nanomad site), but this time the .fir file is missing. Nice of you to finally put the documentation!

In that documentation are install notes.  In the install notes it says:

There are two ways of running user code on Canon DSLR cameras:
1. Using the update process with a .fir file, which must be digitally signed.
2. Using the bootdisk process: the autoexec.bin file is loaded and executed. This file
does not have to be signed, but the bootdisk flag must be enabled in the camera.

If what I've read before is correct, then as long as you've already gotten it to work with a .fir file, then the flag has been set inside the camera and it should be able to execute the .bin file.  If you haven't gotten it to work before, then I would assume you would need to find the correct .fir file first.  (You can find one in the archives.)