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You just need a fitting HDMI cable and a monitor/TV set with HDMI input to answer most of your questions.

Ok - I've found a TV set with HDMI. Thanks for bearing with my idiocy!

Walter -

Yes: if I had the hardware I would know how well it worked. Wait - you're saying that ANY monitor with HDMI will show me? As in a computer monitor? That's terrific: thanks!

(At first I really didn't understand what you were saying...)

I've tried to google the answer to this, but I get too many contradictions: what's the situation for using an external monitor on the 5Dii now? This guy claims that ML a field monitor can show full HD -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwbHC0d7Wgw

But when other people try, it doesn't work and he doesn't answer questions...

Is it still limited to 480i while recording? Or has that gone now? Is there anything I need to watch for when buying a monitor? (I'd prefer a 5" and I mostly care about racking focus.)

It has nothing common with any Canon's camera. What you call cinematic here - is a color toning and some film grain.

I'd say it has more to do with the short cuts and camera movement. If you look at individual frames the "cinematicness" often vanishes. And that's true of "real" cinema too - motion and the extra visual cues it provides change our perception. The main thing that mattered here is the skill shown in shooting and editing.

On the hand if you look at eg 11 seconds the the frozen image is impressive in a way that has nothing to do with colour grading: the camera (which may be either a 5D or BMPCC from the comments - I've seen video from both that shows they can do this) has handled transitions from very dark skin tones to highlights extremely gracefully - the way that film or a real cinema camera does. And its maintaining low contrast detail in the skin. I've never seen anything like this in video from the M. If you look at eg 3.08 in zeek's video the face is several times large but the detail is much less.

Bigger sensor pixels give more information than small ones and a higher date rate preserves more of that information. Grading plays with this information, but it has to be there in the first place. The BPMCC and 5Diii are simply both much more capable cameras than the M - they should be. One is a much larger more expensive camera from the same manufacturer and the other is heavily optimised for video quality! If bigger, more expensive cameras and more specialised cameras didn't produce superior results then all cameras would be small, cheap and general purpose...

IMO this thread reached esoteric level like some audiophile discussions.

I think that's inevitable given the looming presence of the word "cinematic"...

  (i forgot to bring my polarizer).

To be honest, the shot probably looks better for it! One to add to the notebook...

Sigma 35 Art = best lens hands down. Fight me

I like the lens in the Sigma DP2. (The new 45mm f2.8 shipping with the Sigma FP seems to be a very close relative when I look at the diagrams.)

And now the Pro card is working as well.

..I followed exactly the same steps each time. I can't see any point to a video, but if you want one, I can provide it.

...I should have said, the working card is another Sandisk from Amazon (not an Amazon seller.) This time an "Ultra." 64GB.

I'll reinstall from BOTH cards when the phone is charged. Maybe there will be some useful info you can get from the install display, but I'm doing the same thing every time.

After that, I'd suggest that I should reformat the failing sd card on my laptop instead of the M, to see if that makes a difference. Comments?

I did some experimenting while waiting for my old smart phone to charge up. (I've gone retro and you wouldn't want to see video from my current phone - it's literally VGA, I think.) I had a second card and installing from it worked. I tried another install from the first card failed again (yes, it had been reformatted.)

From the moment you install/reinstall magic lantern. Do all from scratch.

It booted into the normal non-ML fw despite the .bin being changed to .bak.

I can't see how an install video is likely to help, but sure.

Screenrecording please. From start to finish. Too much guesswork already.

Again, of what? The install, or my finger tapping the screen to try to launch the menu?

Lack sources and clear descriptions. You do realize build used is experimental and differs very much from other builds?

I'm not sure how anyone could "realise" this if you're saying that's it MORE experimental than the other builds in your bitbucket. Is it?

I will wait for screen recordings showing clearly what you do from start to scratch. Too much guesswork otherwise.

Talking of guesswork, screen recordings of WHAT? Another install? Or my attempts to activate the menu?

(And I honestly can't see why you'd need either. Re. the install otherwise ML claims to have installed, so clearly it got the right inputs. And if all I'm supposed to do to activate the ML menu is to tap the screen, then how many ways are there to do that...? Are you really asking for a video of my index finger tapping the screen in every possible place with "info" in every possible setting, because that's all I can provide...)

Don't trust anyone in flash business!
Have you tested the card for capacity fraud with h2testw (Windows) or F3/F3X (Linux, macOS)?

No. But in this case we're concerned that the card is 32GB or less - I think? And I doubt anyone is infiltrating Amazon's supply chain with perfect (afaict) Sandisk packaging with the nefarious aim of selling people 128GB cards for the price of 32s...

And have you tested for speed fraud by benchmark runs using a decent cardreader and tools like CrystalDiskMark (Windows) or BlackMagic Disk Speed Test (macOS)?

Which leads to the question of what counts as a decent card reader? This seems like it should be a reasonable guide -

https://www.reviewed.com/cameras/best-right-now/the-best-sd-card-readers

...But, honestly, not a priority for me unless someone says strongly that it should be. At the moment I can't see why card speed or anything reasonably related to it should be an issue. (I hate taking cards out of cameras and normally use the usb connection - I don't like physically straining cards. So a faster card reader than the one built into my laptop is just another piece of junk I don't need and will quickly lose...)

This seems like its useful for card speed testing on linux -

https://www.fosslinux.com/501/how-to-run-benchmark-tests-on-sd-memory-cards-in-elementary-os.htm

My current card reader is the one built-in to my old X200, so very slow.

You don't have to have a fully charged battery for the autoexec.bin test. You're not doing an installation ...

No. But eliminating factors in debugging is never a bad thing.

I'm just using PS to apply the lut, I don't really use PS at all (unless I need to manipulate an image in a physical way, like remove some object). I use rawtherapee because it's the most advanced raw processor I know, and I've tried many.
Rawtherapee has the support to apply lut, but just Hald CLUT, not 3dLut. I need yet to convert the luts I use to Hald CLUT to use it directly without photoshop.
I'm actually planning to do all the work with rawtherapee on a MLV project I have, and then just glue everything with kdenlive, so I can keep it all open source...

This might be useful -

https://discuss.pixls.us/t/gimp-how-to-apply-3d-lut/1567/50

and

http://opensource.mikrosimage.eu/ColorPipe-tools/LUTLab/LUT_to_LUT/

To verify if card is bootable and detected as such:
Rename Autoexec.bin to *.bak. If your cam gets stuck (black screen, not responsive) the card is bootable. Remove battery, rename autoexec.bak to .bin and lets find out what is actually going on with your card as Danne suggested.

Thanks - I'll try that later today. (I want to recharge the Canon original battery first - I want it back at 3 bars seeing the install instructions make a big deal of that.)

To me it looks like the card isn't recognized as a bootable card.

That's what I was thinking. It seems to be true almost by definition: the files are there but the card isn't being used to boot from. It's hard to imagine an unsuccessful boot leaving the regular fw in action and not throwing up any error messages or what have you.

2 options:
- Backup ROM0.BIN and ROM1.BIN and prepare card with EOScard/MacBoot utility. Wipe card contents and copy extracted build content to card. Retry.

Note for anyone reading this who uses linux: "make_bootable.sh" seems to be the equivalent. (?) Although  I can't find a copy, so -

- Use a smaller card (32 GB or less).

Sorry: I should have said what the card is - I'll add it my original post. It's a 32GB Extreme Pro, straight from Amazon. So it should be the safest card in the world, based on my reading of forum posts.

Format card in cam, copy extracted build content to cad and redo installation.

Or in other words, just try again doing exactly what I did before? (No irony - that was my plan too!)

The card you're trying to launch ML from has autoexec.bin on it?  And a directory called ML?

Yes. And an ML-SETUP.FIR

When you say you pressed the delete button, did you hold it down for a long time?  On my M2 it is necessary to hold it down.  There's as little spinning thing that goes round and when complete you go to the ML menu.  So try that if you've haven't already.

I held it down for literally a minute just now: nothing.

It´s a camera, not your mistress , try tapping screen with one finger.

Then someone should really talk to the people doing ML install videos...

No, I tried that too. And just did so again. Nothing. (And, yes, the touch screen is working.)

Looks like a natural light from windows

Yes, but that doesn't mean that it is...

Install made with FW 2.02, full Canon battery, settings cleared to defaults, camera set to Manual Stills mode. I used danne's crop_rec_4k_mlv_snd_raw_only_2020Jan18.EOSM202.

(Edited to add: The card is a 32GB Extreme Pro, straight from Amazon.)

Installer said everything worked.

Restarted and tried to launch ML menu in Manual Stills and Manual Video by -

- Tapping screen with two fingers

- Pressing delete button

- "In LiveView, toggle the INFO/DISP button until you see the Magic Lantern audio levels and footer bar" as per wiki (Which from my memory of using an EOS M with ML a couple of years doesn't actually work for the M???)

No response to any of the above.

The camera created a LOGS folder which has a ROM0.bin and ROM1.bin file on it. (Links removed.)

The camera hasn't complained at all but obviously I'm a tad alarmed. (Plus I want to get ML working!)

...The obvious thing to do is to try another attempt at installing, but obvious isn't always smart - plus I thought a dev might want some data from the install that would be lost. (Assuming that I haven't just failed to discover the correct way of launching the menu...)

Not just nicely shot but great writing and voice acting too.

...How did you light the interior shots?

https://www.newsshooter.com/2019/12/25/portkeys-introduces-a-multi-functional-camera-handgrip/

I really appreciate this - that's potentially very useful. Thanks!

MCM rewire mustn't be crop.

Thanks!

1. No: this mode has long recording times because of small resolution (compared to other modes)
2. Yes, this mode brings a lot of moiree

->Yes, the value is small using an external monitor, because the EOS M maximum working recording quality is reduced.

That's not great news, but I appreciate knowing the real situation - now I can plan what to do.

Look at ZEEK video

Magic Lantern RAW Monitor | FEELWORLD F570 WORKS w/ No Pink/Dropped Frames MV1080 |

Thanks. Like I said in my first post, I started with Zeek's videos - and then reading the comments I found that the information in the video (not this one) was obsolete but that the video hadn't been updated. So as an information source, problematic. But if you say this one is still relevant, that's great.

Edited to add: having just talked about this with Zeek on youtube, I'd really caution anyone against using him as an information source. He doesn't get that just posting "External monitors work fine with the EOS M" is problematic when they only work with lower quality modes, as long as he's happy with those modes. A nice guy, but what he posts can be misleading because it's incomplete. Or it's obsolete and no longer the case at all, but he keeps the video up anyway.

I am looking for some basic tips to have less depth of field in low light situations. Specifically, if my daughter is performing in a mostly darkened room on stage and my camera is on a tripod, what are my best settings to make sure she isn't just in focus on one part of the stage and blown out if she moves forward or back? My goal is infinite focus, which can be tough in low light.

That the room is mostly darkened shouldn't matter as long as your daughter is well-lit. Not unless you want to record detail in the parts of the room too, in which case you need low light ability plus massive dynamic range.

Also I think you mean MORE dof, not less.

Basically -

- Adjust your aperture to get the dof you want (put on app on your phone or print a table out)

- Set your exposure for your daughter, not the dark parts of the room. Assuming she has white-pink skin, use false color like this

https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/how-to-use-false-color-nail-skin-tone-exposure/

...The only element of exposure you change is ISO, so put it up to what you need. This may introduce quite a bit of noise, but we'll come to that next...

- Then denoise in post. Avisynth provides a lot of denoisers and is free:

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&ei=Tj0wXtWdHIyegQaaiJSoDw&q=avisynth+denoise+tutorial&oq=avisynth+denoise+tut&gs_l=psy-ab.3.0.33i160.2287.3775..5137...0.2..0.336.801.1j1j1j1......0....1..gws-wiz.......0i71j0i22i30.MVKhJbhNRio

Assuming reasonable stage lighting and a reasonable position, this should get you an ok result. If it doesn't, you need a new camera like an A7s or maybe a latest generation Fuji. Companies like lensrentals.com will rent you a camera for a day or two and deliver and pick it up by courier.

Oh - I'd suggest turning your in camera noise reduction off: it won't do as good a job as NR in post and using both makes artefacting more likely.

Also, buying a dummy battery and shooting with a USB powerpack may help. Heat in the camera = noise, and batteries are a major source of heat. So are screens: if the camera is going to be locked down, you might want to turn the screen off.

And if you do need to shoot at high ISO, raw will probably work better than any of the picture profiles.

Also, perhaps is there a thread with post-processing compression techniques? I don't need 20GB for a kid's play.

Super-easy:

https://www.gizbot.com/how-to/tips-tricks/5-easy-steps-compress-large-video-files-with-vlc-media-player-036522.html

Finally, try to shield the lens from glare from stage lights etc - use a lens hood, etc.