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For those new here and wondering if ML really does work with the 50D I can tell you it does.  I used my 50D as a 2nd/3rd level camera at a wedding I shot last weekend and it ran like a clock.  A number of people were amazed seeing it do timelapse without an intervalometer hanging off of it.  Thank you guys so much for this!

Here are a couple of samples I did with the 50D shooting raw video files.

Test 2 was shot on a rainy, stormy day.  Primarily doing short clips.  No color correction done.

Palms in the Keys.

Here are several clips I shot using the 50D with Magic Lantern.  Lens is the cheap 80-200mm.  First two clips of the orchid were done at f5.6 , 1/30th, 800 ISO.  Due to stormy weather build up I had to increase the ISO to 1600 on all clips after that.  Card is an 800x 120MB/s San Disk Extreme.  Write rates stayed around 60MB/s

Most images are done at full zoom at 200mm, but the real close ups are done using the 5x crop mode.  I  shot 15-30 second clips continuously for about 30 minutes, but recording was being stopped and started.  During a previous test indoors I was able to shoot in excess of 6 minutes continuous until overheat shut down the camera, which I was expecting around the 4 minute mark.

Most clips were shot as the rain and wind were building up pretty good.  Mediocre avail light, due to heavy cloud covering.

Images were converted to dng, then run through Darktable in Linux to modify the files. Only real modifications done were using profiled noise reduction, very small increase in brightness.  Darktable then exported all images to 16bit TIF format for rendering.  Final render was done in Vegas Pro 10 64 in Win7 at 29.9 at 1920x1080p.

Computer is a DIY, 8 core AMD FX 8350, water-cooled, OC to 4.7GHz, with additional external fans.  32 GB DDR3, 120 GB San Disk SSD for rendering.  Total of 12 TB storage.  Took just over 2 minutes to render, a minute or two for Darktable to profile each set of images, perhaps 30 seconds to convert to dng.  Took way more time to switch between Ubuntu and Windows.  Yes, I could have used my VB install to make this seamless, but I wanted to do a full run test for myself.

Yes, I have some hot pixels I did not bother cleaning and I wasn't real careful in modifying files.  With that said, the images are pretty darn good for a camera that was never designed to shoot video, much less raw.

dave

Well, I've been using the 50D for a month or so and I'm pretty impressed with what ML does.  Yes, I get the occasional hang, but that doesn't matter.  This works and is beautiful and I love it and...ok, enough of that.

I did a test shoot a few weeks back while shooting a class reunion.  Venue temperature was around 85F.  I had been shooting continuously with the camera for several hours, in still mode.  I shifted to raw video mode and let it fly.  It ran for over 6 minutes before it overheated.  That is far more than I thought it could.  Shooting on a San Disk 120 card.

There haven't been many updates or entries lately, so I figured I'd post these findings to let you know we are still here and very much appreciative!!!

dave

I've been a long time user of ML on my T2i and happily donated to the project.  When I can afford more I will definitely donate more to help this great project!  So I want to first thank all of the developers, testers, commentors and idea folks...you are amazing!  I used ML extensively with the T2i and it never failed me.

So now that I'm getting older and my disabilities are making things a bit tougher, I decided to begin moving away from dedicated video gear and switch almost completely to DSLRs.  I decided to swap my old and trusty XHA1 to Adorama for a 50D and interesting lens.  I could not believe what I ended up getting...essentially a new 50D.  When I received it I noticed there wasn't a scratch on it.  No dirt, no dust, no prints.  I then checked the shutter activations --- 186 total !!!  This was after I did an initial test of maybe 25 clicks to just make sure it worked.  So yeah, I have a NEW 50D (for all intents and in my weird world).

Yes, I immediately installed ML and then the nightly build.  No, I did not read the instructions or advice (where is the fun in that, but I am doing it now).  Began pushing buttons, trying to do what I considered logical choices and voila, first RAW video shot 30 minutes after I opened the UPS box.  Yeah, it looked like crap, but it worked!  Next day I did another shoot, this time taking more time to figure things out, and it came out pretty good, not great, but in that I had not bothered to learn even the basic ops of the 50D and was just guessing at ML video, I'm happy.

So now I am reading all I can.  I'm watching scores of videos and fine tuning this monster down.  All I can say is...

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!

This is FUN!!!  And it works beautifully.  I'm going on a short camping trip over the next couple of weeks, so I'll be shooting a bunch and will post some samples when I get back.

For things I have learned...

Main CF card is a San Disk Extreme 32GB, 120 MB/s.  It has worked flawlessly.

Secondary Card is something I wanted to test...got a SDXC to CF II adapter.  Inserted my PNY Elite SDXC 90 MB/s into the adapter, installed ML nightly on the SD card and began blasting away.  Have not tested a long video (figure it is going to be iffy), but it did work well on a 20 second shoot, RAW video.  Will be interesting if this thing actually works for any amount of time.  What does work well is using it with the still side.  Since I have a bunch of fast SD cards, this is kind of cool for me.

Once again, thank you all...from the Old Guy  Dave

Alex, where is the fun in reading directions? 

Sure, this made sense and negates my entire thread, but it least it gave me something to do for a few hours.  I'm old and bored.  Anyway, the feature seems to be working well so far.  Starting it up on the 600d now.

Has anyone tried using this with a "long shoot"? Seems like it should work, as the file size I got on a 10 minute shoot was about 75MB doing 0.2fps at 1920 x 1080, and with that thinking, then a 4GB limit might hit somewhere around the 9-10 hour mark if the camera doesn't overheat.

I'll give it a shot and let you know how it goes.

dave

dave

Got around the over exposure part by putting on 2 polarizing filters (circular and linear), then cranking them down to essentially black.  Can now set light and color exposure to whatever I want, operating at 0.2fps.  Still have the extreme motion blur from the slow shutter speed.  So you can force the slow frame rate on the t2i, but you have to use filters and will get motion blur.

Which brings up the point, why would the camera automatically reduce shutter speed if everything is set to manual and I guess it doesn't do it on the "6x..." series camera?  Haven't tested it yet on those, but will soon.

dave

Thanks Alex.  Yeah just figured that one out too, limitation of the camera model.  I then assume this would be the same on the 500d, but looks like it does drop on the 60 and 600D, is that correct?

For future reference, did a new card, replaced lens with an old Tamron pure manual, got the same result.  What I was able to see once I went below 2fps was that the "movie" would consist of the first frame at the set exposures, next frame would ratchet up and 3rd frame would go massive over exposed.  Since my aperture control with the Tamron lens is pure manual, and I set the Canon max ISO to 400, I am assuming that ML doing fps override then ratchets down the shutter speed dramatically.  I don't know how I missed it before, but in reviewing the video I saw the motion blur on the images, where shutter speed was shown to be set to 1/4000 or 1/2000 or 1/1250, but in reality I guess it was way down from there.

Having fun!

dave

Tried it again, using the suggested things above, but no luck.

If I turn fps override off, set the A and S to pegged limits (4000 and 22), in Live View image is black.  Turn fps override on and start recording at 0.2 fps.  Initial image (1 second) is perfect. image at "Second 2" immediately jumps to extreme over-exposed.   Tried this multiple ways:

1) set parameters for fps override, then set ap and shutter while fps override is on, then start movie
2) set params, set ap and sh while fps off, turn fps on and start movie
3) turn fps on, start movie, set params, set ap and sh
4) start movie, darken ap and sh, set params, turn on fps

all give the same result.  1st frame is perfect, 2nd frame goes to over exposed, 3rd frame goes to blown out.

but  I did just notice that for some reason the "Optimize..." control will initially show a range, then it will only show 1:1.  I will remove RC1, reformat and reload to try again.  Will also try on a different card.  Info to follow.

I LOVE MAGIC LANTERN!!!  If I can get this part working it will be absolutely AWESOME!!!!

:)dave

Camera:  550d;  Canon Firmware: 1.0.9;  16GB SanDisk Extreme SD HCI  30MB/s; Canon 50mm f1.8 lens; Ambient Temp  32c

In this test I wanted to see how dialing down the FPS in movie mode, using FPS Override, worked.  Shot was done in a covered porch, each shot starting immediately after the previous ended.  All camera controls set to Manual.  Shoots were done to create approx. 10 seconds of finished video for each test.

Tests #1-#4: Aperture, Shutter speed and ISO all same (f18; 1250; 100)
FPS Override as follows:
Test #1:  3 FPS, 100 second shoot
Test #2:  2 FPS, 150 second shoot
Test #3:  1 FPS, 300 second shoot
Test #4:  0.5 FPS, 600 second shoot

During the test shoots, it is obvious that exposure becomes more and more over exposed as fps rate drops. 

Test #5 changed exposure parameters from #4, but almost to a reverse view as it seemed that where it should have gotten darker, the shot got even lighter.

Test #5 :  Aperture f22,  Shutter 4000,  ISO 100
Camera overheated at about 4 minutes shooting time (4 seconds movie time) and required shut down.  This may be only due to high outside temp, even though shooting in shade.

Main concern is that when using slow fps, trying to focus, set exposures are very difficult due to view delay in Live View.  Not certain why over-exposed.

Been using ML now for about 9 months.  Have it on T1i, T2i, T3i and 60D.  Love the features, love the innovation, love the idea, love the community!

dave

Using the two camera concept above just made me realize the perfect bypass for the size/time limitation, without a loss of frame or sound. 

1) Is it possible to have Cam1 (master) synch Cam2 (slave) to all coding, frame rates, shutter, etc. ?
2) Make timecodes synched, filenames synched but add in an additional marker to denote the second camera.
3) Make the 2 camera switch to where camera1 is on and cam2 is off.  On the automatic switchover, have camera 1 continue to record for perhaps 2 or 3 additional seconds as Cam2 is coming online. On switchback, same occurs with Cam2 to Cam1
4) With timecodes synched on the videos and similar filenames, aligning in editor would be a breeze.

dave